A Gentleman in Eighteenth-Century Dress Seated on a Bench with a Staff in His Hand; Study for "An Account of the Siege of Bergen op Zoom"

Before becoming Napoleon's official painter of military exploits, Meissonier produced genre scenes with figures dressed in eighteenth-century costume. This is one of two large-scale studies in the Cohen gift preparatory for a miniature-scale painted composition depicting two men discussing the Siege of Bergen op Zoom, a 1747 maneuver in which the French army captured the Dutch town. This genre scene, for a painting in oil on wood only two inches in diameter, hints at Meissonierʼs ultimate ambition as a military painter. The location of the painting is unknown, but the composition is known through an engraved reproduction in a volume from 1889 (Catalogue of the Celebrated Collection of Paintings . . . Formed by Mr. E Secrétan . . ., Paris, 1889, no. 56).