The fire of Moscow, 1812

Details

Probably Boetticher 16.
Exhibition:
Probably Berlin Academy Exhibition, 1830.

Description

Three French soldiers are standing and talking under a soot-blackened sky: on the left an ordinary infantryman, a fusilier, in the centre, from behind, an officer, probably of the infantry, with a short sword, and on the right a cuirassier or dragoon in a white cavalry coat. Right behind them, two French cuirassiers are lying exhausted in the grass next to their horses. The hillock commands a view of the Moskva valley, with the silhouette of Moscow and its flames in the background. Albrecht Adam, a pupil of the battle painter Johann Lorenz Rugendas the Younger, had long harboured the wish to experience war at first hand, and this came true in 1809 when he took part in the battles of Aspern and Wagram. From May to December 1812, Adam took part in the Russian campaign in the entourage of Napoleon’s Grande Armée, and as a travelling companion of Eugène de Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy, where he experienced the great fire of Moscow in the night of 14 September at first hand. Thanks to his Russian servant, Adam managed to escape from his burning quarters just in time. He then decided to leave the army. On his way back home, equipped with 50 Louis d’Or and travelling on a horse-drawn carriage, he once again passed the battlefields of Moshaisk, Borodino, Semlewo and Smolensk. Adam processed the impressions of this campaign Adam between 1827 and 1833 in a lithographic series of 100 sheets, published under the title ‘Voyage pittoresque et militaire de Willenberg en Prusse jusqu’à Moscou 1812’. On plate 49 (‘A French sentry’), the infantryman on the far left can be seen with a rifle and fixed bayonet; the soldier standing on the right in a white coat is taken from the motif ‘On the battlefield near Moscow on 8 September’. We would like to thank Daniel Hohrath, Ingolstadt, for valuable information on the soldiers’ uniforms.