Grenadier of the Imperial Guard — Print & Oil Painting

The cap takes up nearly a third of the figure. Tall, black and deep piled, a brass plate stamped across the front and a red plume standing up at one side, it is the headdress that made the Guard recognisable at a distance, and the painter uses it exactly that way: as a silhouette before it is a hat.

Under it the face is unidealised. Weathered skin, a heavy moustache, deep lines running down from the nose, eyes fixed on something past the viewer's shoulder. Nothing in the expression is heroic and the painting is better for it.

The coat is deep blue with a red collar and red cuffs, brass buttons down the front, a pair of white belts over the chest and a broad red sash at the waist, a white glove on the visible hand, a sabre and cartridge box at the hip. The regulation coat of the Foot Grenadiers carried white lapels, which this one does not, so the uniform is best read as a painted impression rather than a plate from a manual.

His musket stands vertically in front of him and the barrel runs the full height of the canvas, splitting it. Behind, comrades in the same dress recede into brown smoke, with a hedge of bayonets on the right and a low orange fire on the left. From our Napoleon era collection, alongside Majestic Napoleonic Officer in Uniform.