Show Me The Monet

Fame is what results not what happened

If judged by popularity during their lifetime, we should be gazing at paintings by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815- 1891).

Haven’t heard of him?

The French realist’s portrayals of Napoleon’s army were unparalleled. He attracted national acclaim for magnificent detail and realism. The painting “1814” depicting Napoleon’s retreat is noted for the way he captured emotion rather than action after the French lost the Battle of Laon. The emperor’s nephew, Napoleon III, claimed Meissonier was the greatest living artist in the world.

Meissonier was far more popular than Monet and Degas, who worshipped him. English art critic John Ruskin so revered the painter he would view his work under a magnifying glass, “marveling at Meissonier’s manual dexterity and eye for fascinating minutiae.”

His paintings go for $500,000 or less today.

Compare with Claude Monet’s “Haystacks” that recently sold at auction for $110.7 million in 2019, making it the most expensive Impressionist artwork ever to be bought at auction. “One of the most recognizable images in art history, Monet’s ‘Haystacks’ series has long served as an inspiration to countless artists since its creation in the early 1890s,” said the auction house’s head of Impressionist and modern art, August Uribe.

Haystacks is the ninth most expensive painting ever to be sold at auction, a list topped by Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi,” which went for $450 million at Christie’s in New York in 2017. Still, Meissonier had to convince Napoleon III to permit Monet to exhibit at the Paris Salon.

Immortality has many roads.

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