, - align = "right" , , - align = "right" , Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet (20 December 1792 – 30 October 1845) was a

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

and

printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique ...

, more especially of military subjects.

Life

Charlet was born in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. He was the son of a

dragoon Dragoons were originally a class of mounted infantry, who used horses for mobility, but dismounted to fight on foot. From the early 17th century onward, dragoons were increasingly also employed as conventional cavalry and trained for combat wi ...

in the Republican army, whose death in the ranks left the widow and orphan in very poor circumstances. Madame Charlet, however, a woman of determined spirit and an extreme

Bonapartist Bonapartism () is the political ideology supervening from Napoleon Bonaparte and his followers and successors. The term was used in the narrow sense to refer to people who hoped to restore the House of Bonaparte and its style of government. In ...

, managed to give her boy a moderate education at the Lycée Napoléon, and was repaid by his lifelong affection. His first employment was a minor post in the Paris city administration, where he had to register recruits: he served in the National Guard in 1814, fought bravely at the Barrière de Clichy, and, being thus unacceptable to the Bourbon party, was dismissed from the city administration in 1816. He then, having from a very early age had a propensity for drawing, entered the atelier of the distinguished painter

Baron Gros Antoine-Jean Gros (; 16 March 177125 June 1835) was a French painter of historical subjects. He was granted the title of Baron Gros in 1824. Gros studied under Jacques-Louis David in Paris and began an independent artistic career during the ...

, and soon began issuing the first of those lithographed designs which eventually brought him renown. His ''Grenadier de Waterloo'', 1817, with the motto "The Guard Dies and Does Not Surrender" ()—a famous phrase frequently attributed to Cambronne but which he never uttered, and which cannot, perhaps, be traced farther than to this

lithograph Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the miscibility, immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by ...

by Charlet—was particularly popular. It was only towards 1822, however, that he began to be successful in a professional sense. Lithographs (about 2000 altogether), watercolours, sepia drawings, numerous oil sketches, and a few etchings followed one another rapidly. Later in his life there were also three exhibited oil pictures, the especially admired '' Episode in the Campaign of Russia'' (1836), the ''Passage of the Rhine by Moreau'' (1837), and ''Wounded Soldiers Halting in a Ravine'' (1843). His military subjects particularly delighted Charlet, and they found an energetic response in the popular heart where they kept alive a feeling of pride and regret for the recent past of the French nation and discontent with the present. These feelings increased upon the artist himself towards the close of his career as Charlet designed many subjects of town life, peasant life, and the ways of children with much wit and whim in his descriptive mottoes. One of the most famous sets is the ''Vie civile, politique, et militaire du Caporal Valentin'', 50 lithographs dating from 1838 to 1842. In 1838 his health began to fail owing to an affection of the chest. Charlet was an uncommonly tall man, with an expressive face, bantering and good natured. His character was full of boyish fun and high spirits, with manly independence and a vein of religious feeling. He was a hearty favourite among his intimates, one of whom was the painter

Théodore Géricault Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault (; 26 September 1791 – 26 January 1824) was a French painter and lithographer, whose best-known painting is '' The Raft of the Medusa''. Despite his short life, he was one of the pioneers of the Romanti ...

. Charlet married in 1824, and two sons survived him.

Legacy

A life of Charlet was published in 1856 by a military friend, De la Combe.

Notes

References

External links

IllustrationsAnne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library
numerous military lithographs and some original drawings by Charlet. {{DEFAULTSORT:Charlet, Nicolas-Toussaint 1792 births 1845 deaths 19th-century French painters French male painters Painters from Paris Pupils of Antoine-Jean Gros 19th-century French male artists