Initially she concentrated on religious subjects like The Magnificat ( 1872 ), but upon going to Paris in 1870 she was exposed to battle scenes from Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier and Édouard Detaille, and switched her focus to war paintings.

In that same year he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, an honour secured on the recommendation of French artist Meissonier.

Meissonier became a major influence on his style, and it was he who inculcated an appreciation for accuracy and precision in Detaille.

Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier ( 21 February 1815 – 31 January 1891 ) was a French Classicist painter and sculptor famous for his depictions of Napoleon, his armies and military themes.

Meissonier enjoyed great success in his lifetime, and was acclaimed both for his mastery of fine detail and assiduous craftsmanship.

Ernest Meissonier was born at Lyon.

It was the first attempt in France in the particular genre which was destined to make Meissonier famous: microscopic painting miniature in oils.

In the following year the New Salon was formed ( the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts ), and Meissonier became its president.

Of all the painters of the century, Meissonier was one of the most fortunate in the matter of payments.

Meissonier was attached by Napoleon III to the imperial staff, and accompanied him during the campaign in Italy at the beginning of the war in 1870.

When the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts was re-vitalized, in 1890, Ernest Meissonier was elected its first chairman, but he died soon ; his successor was Puvis de Chavannes.

His son, Jean Charles Meissonier, also a painter, was his father's pupil, and was admitted to the Légion d ' honneur in 1889.

Meissonier or Meissonnier was the name of several people:

Juste Aurèle Meissonier ( 1695 – 31 July 1750 ) was a French goldsmith, sculptor, painter, architect, and furniture designer.

The leading engravers and etchers of France have been engaged upon plates from the works of Meissonier, and many of these plates command the highest esteem of collectors.

Working hard for daily bread at illustrations for the publishers Curmer, Hetzel and Dubocherhe, Meissonier also exhibited at the Salon of 1836 with Chess Player and the Errand Boy.

Leland Stanford, the university's founder, as painted by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier in 1881 and now on display at the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts | Cantor Center

Dimanche à Poissy by Meissonier, 1851

Napoleon, mounted, campaigning in France in 1814, wearing a grey overcoat, by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier.

" And it is possible that the influence of plein-air landscapists had encouraged Meissonier to abandon for a while his obsession with historical authenticity in favour of something more spontaneous-" of creating eye-catching visual effects by means of a few salient touches of the brush.

* Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts revived in Paris under the leadership of Ernest Meissonier ( its President ), Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Jules Dalou, Auguste Rodin, Carolus-Duran, Bracquemond and Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse, with an annual exhibition reviewed as the Salon de Champ-de-Mars, opening a fortnight later than the official Paris Salon

Mercié also designed the monuments to Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier ( 1895 ), erected in the Jardin de l ' Infante in the Louvre, and Louis Faidherbe ( 1896 ) at Lille, a statue of Adolphe Thiers set up at St Germain-en-Laye, the monument to Paul Baudry at Père Lachaise, and that of Louis-Philippe and Queen Amélie for their tomb at Dreux.

* Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier ( 1815 – 1891 ), painter, sculptor and mayor of Poissy

Statue of Meissonier at Parc Meissonier in Poissy ( Yvelines ), France.

* Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier ( 1815-1891 ), French Classicist painter and sculptor famous for his depictions of Napoleon, his armies and military themes

Meissonier himself said that his house and temperament belonged to another age, and some, like the critic Paul Mantz for example, criticised the artist's seemingly limited repertoire.

French designers like François de Cuvilliés, Nicholas Pineau and Bartolomeo Rastrelli exported Parisian styles in person to Munich and Saint Petersburg, while the German Juste-Aurèle Meissonier found his career at Paris.

Charge of the French Cuirassiers at Friedland-by Meissonier on 14 June 1807

Gemito moved to Paris in 1877 where he found a great friend in noted French artist Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier.

Meissonier became known as the French Metsu, a reference to the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Gabriel Metsu, who specialised in miniature scenes of bourgeois domestic life ; " grandiose history paintings did not sell as readily as smaller canvases such as landscapes or portraits, which fitted more easily onto the walls of Paris apartments ".

* Marc Gotlieb, The plight of emulation: Ernest Meissonier and French salon painting ( Princeton University Press, 1996 ) ISBN 0-691-04374-4, ISBN 978-0-691-04374-6

French artists such as Ernest Meissonier, Edouard Detaille, and Alphonse de Neuville established military genre painting in the Paris Salon.

* January 31-Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, French classicist painter ( b. 1815 )

Leland Stanford, Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, 1881, Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts | Stanford museum

Ernest Meissonier, Puvis de Chavannes, Auguste Rodin and others rejected this proposal and made a secession.

He began his artistic studies at age seventeen under the famous military painter Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier ; he had originally approached him to ask for an introduction to the renowned Alexandre Cabanel but Meissonier decided to teach Detaille himself.

Ernest Meissonier, Self-portrait, 1889.

In 1838 Meissonier married a Protestant woman from Strasbourg named Emma Steinhel, the sister of M. Steinheil, one of his artistic companions.

When, in the summer of 1859, Emperor Napoleon III, together with Victor Emmanuel II King of Piedmont and Sardinia, tried to oust the Hapsburgs from their territories in northern Italy, Meissonier received a government commission to illustrate scenes from the campaign.

The Emperor Napoleon III at Solferino took Meissonier more than three years to complete.

The work, a battle scene, represented something of a departure for the painter of bonshommes and musketeers though Meissonier had already painted scenes of violence and massacre, such as Remembrance of Civil War, and in 1848 had indeed seen active service as a captain in the National Guard, when he fought on the side of the republican government during the June Days.

In June 1868 Meissonier travelled to Antibes with canvas and easel, together with his wife, son and daughter, and two of his horses, Bachelier and Lady Coningham.