Battlefield with Soldier on Horseback (Napoleon?)

baron Antoine Jean Gros

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Gros was among the most prolific of Napoleon’s propagandist painters. His lifelong passion for drawing horses in action suited him to the task of producing large-scale military subjects. Here, a mounted figure—possibly Napoleon—on a rearing horse leads a summarily indicated troop across a battlefield, suggested by the fallen soldier in the lower right foreground. The calligraphic curves and quick zigzag hatching are characteristic of Gros’s use of pen and ink.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art