01 Work, The art of War, Emil Hünten's Battle of Mars-La-Tour, August 16,1870, with Footnotes

Emil Hünten  (1827–1902)

Battle of Mars-La-Tour, August 16,1870 , c. 1902

On behalf of the Supreme Prince Henry VII of Reuss in Bonn.

Oil on canvas

height: 140 cm (55.1 in); width: 205 cm (80.7 in)

Bismarck-Museum, Friedrichsruh

Battles of Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte, (Aug. 16–18, 1870), two major engagements of the Franco-German War in which the 140,000-man French Army of the Rhine, under Marshal Achille-François Bazaine, failed to break through the two German armies under General Helmuth von Moltke and were bottled up in the fortress of Metz. It was followed by the Count de Mac-Mahon’s abortive attempt to rescue Bazaine, which ended in Mac-Mahon’s crushing defeat at Sedan.

The French Army had been in retreat and its command in a state of shock since German victories in the first week of August. Bazaine was given command of the Army of the Rhine on August 12, as it was falling back from Metz toward Verdun. He was intercepted on August 16 by the German general Constantine von Alvensleben’s III Corps of 30,000 men near Vionville, east of Mars-la-Tour. Alvensleben, with one-quarter the troops of Bazaine, captured and secured Vionville, thus blocking the French escape route toward the west. The resulting Battle of Mars-la-Tour included the last major cavalry engagement in western Europe. Each side suffered about 16,000 casualties. More on Battle of Mars-La-Tour

Emil Johannes Hünten (19 January 1827 – 1 February 1902) was a German military painter. His works were often lithographed.

Born in Paris on 19 January 1827, he studied art under Hippolyte Flandrin and Horace Vernet at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. In 1848, he moved to Antwerp to work in the studios of Gustaf Wappers and Josephus Laurentius Dyckmans, before heading to Düsseldorf in 1851 where his teachers were Julius Lessing and Wilhelm Camphausen.

With such influences, it is not surprising that the artist began to paint historical scenes from the life of Frederick the Great, and gradually turned to military subjects. His work appealed to Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia who invited him to accompany the army on the campaign in Schleswig-Holstein in 1864. Two years later, Hünten was attached to the Prussian forces in the Austro-Prussian War, and four year later, he covered the Franco-Prussian War.

Among his customers were many famous people. Otto von Bismarck ordered a scene from the Battle of Gravelotte. He won medals for his works at Berlin (1872) and Vienna (1873), and became a member of the Berlin Academy in 1878. He excelled also as a painter of horses. 

He died at Düsseldorf on 1 February 1902. More on Emil Johannes Hünten

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01 Work, The art of War, Pierre Georges Jeanniot's La ligne de feu/ The line of fire, with Footnotes

Pierre Georges Jeanniot 

La ligne de feu/ The line of fire, 16 août 1870, c. 1886

Depicting the Battle of Mars-La-Tour

Oil on canvas

 Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau

The Battle of Mars-la-Tour was fought on 16 August 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, near the village of Mars-La-Tour in northeast France. One Prussian corps, reinforced by two more later in the day, encountered the entire French Army of the Rhine in a meeting engagement and, following the course of battle, the Army of the Rhine retreated toward the fortress of Metz. More on Battle of Mars-La-Tour

Pierre Georges Jeanniot was taught by his father Pierre-Alexandre Jeanniot, who for a long time was director of the art college in Dijon. He embarked on a military career, but exhibited watercolours as early as 1872 at the Paris Salon. In 1873, he exhibited his first oil painting there, Le Vernan at Nass-sous-Ste-Anne, and continued to show work there regularly. In 1881, having reached the rank of captain, he left the army in order to work full time as an artist. He settled in Paris, where he won an honourable mention in the Salon of 1882, a third-class medal in 1884 and a silver in 1889 and 1900. His was an assured and independent mind, and so he joined the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts as soon as it was set up in 1890. He was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur.

The earliest works he sent in consisted mainly of scenes of military life. Later he was best known for his scenes of fashionable women in Paris at the time of the Belle Époque and on the beaches of the then very new seaside resorts, and for his views of race-meetings, all of these providing valuable sociological evidence. He also illustrated many literary works, among them Maupassant’s Contes choisis (1886), Germinie Lacerteux (1886), Goncourt’s La fille Élisa (1895), and Daudet’s Tartarin de Tarascon (1887). He collaborated on the illustration of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables in 1887 and also illustrated Zola’s La Débâcle and The Rat-Race (La Curée) of 1893-1894, Octave Mirbeau’s Calvary (Le Calvaire) of 1901, Molière’s Le Misanthrope in 1907, Balzac’s The Peasants (Les Paysans) in 1911, Les Liaisons dangereuses by Laclos in 1917, as well as Voltaire’s Candide and the Voyage à St-Cloud and other works. He was one of those who launched Modern Life (La Vie Moderne), and later he directed the Journal amusant. His drawing is vigorous and expressive, and his great strength lay in his brilliant depictions of the comedy of contemporary life. More on Pierre Georges Jeanniot

Please visit my other blogs: Art Collector, Mythology, Marine Art, Portrait of a Lady, The Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The Canals of Venice, Middle East Artists, 365 Saints, 365 Days, and Biblical Icons, also visit my Boards on Pinterest

Images are copyright of their respective owners, assignees or others. Some Images may be subject to copyright

I don't own any of these images - credit is always given when due unless it is unknown to me. if I post your images without your permission, please tell me.

I do not sell art, art prints, framed posters or reproductions. Ads are shown only to compensate the hosting expenses.

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Thank you for visiting my blog and also for liking its posts and pages.

Please note that the content of this post primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online.