A Mounted Officer
Jean Baptiste Édouard Detaille · 1877
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 46.5 × 38.2 cm (19 1/4 × 15 in.)
- Currently held
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Movement
- Realism
A Mounted Officer captures the quiet authority of a French cavalryman with the precision and dignity that defined Édouard Detaille at the height of his powers. Detaille trained under Ernest Meissonier, the foremost military painter of nineteenth-century France, and inherited his master's obsessive fidelity to uniform, equipment, and posture. Where others romanticised the battlefield, Detaille documented it — his figures feel like portraits of real men rather than symbols of glory. Painted in 1877, just years after the Franco-Prussian War in which Detaille served as a witness alongside the French army, this work carries the weight of lived experience rather than studio imagination. Detaille was so respected for his accuracy that the French military consulted him when designing new uniforms in the 1880s, a rare honour for a painter. This hand-painted oil reproduction is produced on canvas using traditional oil pigments, allowing the subtle gradations of light across the officer's coat and the restrained tension of horse and rider to come through as they do in the original, now held at the Art Institute of Chicago. It is the kind of work that rewards close looking.
Hand-painted oil reproduction
Painted in real oil on stretched canvas by master copyists. Delivered unframed — ready to frame at home.
Choose a size
In Detaille's style.
Send us a photograph of your family, pet, or home — we'll paint it as a custom oil on stretched canvas in any style you like. From £220.
← Real customer commission · see the full gallery
Code WELCOME20 at checkout for 20% off your first commission.
Commission yours →
