Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe de Neuville (1835-1885)
Was a very good French Academic painter who studied under Eugène Delacroix. His dramatic and intensely patriotic subjects are famous to illustrated episodes from the Franco-Prussian War, the Crimean War, the Zulu War and various portraits of soldiers. Some of his works have been collected in the most important world museum. He was born at Saint-Omer, France the May 31, 1835. With Edouard Detaille and Ernest Meissonier are one of the most important “Peintres de guerre” of France. After the first school in spite of the opposition of his family he entered the naval school at Lorient, where he advert in 1856, his artistic instincts. After being discouraged by several painters of repute, he was admitted to work in François-Edouard Picot's studio. He did not remain there long, and he was painting by himself when he produced his first picture, The Fifth Battalion of Chasseurs at the Gervais Battery (Malakoff in Crimea). In 1860 Neuville painted an Episode of the taking of Naples by Garibaldi, and sent to the Paris Salon in 1861 The Guard Chasseurs in the Trenches of the Mamelon Vert. At the same time he painted a number of remarkable pictures: The Attack in the Streets of Magenta by Zouaves and the Light Horse (1864), A Zouave Sentinel (1865), The Battle of San Lorenzo (1867), and Dismounted Cavalry crossing the Tchernaia (1869). In these he showed peculiar insight into military life, but his full power was not reached until after the Franco-Prussian War. He then aimed at depicting in his works the episodes of that war, and began by representing the Bivouac before Le Bourget (1872). His fame spread rapidly, and was increased by The Last Cartridges (derniere cartouche), in which it is easy to discern the vast difference between the conventional treatment of military subjects, as practised by Horace Vernet, and that of a man who had lived the life that he painted. He also exhibited in London some episodes of the Zulu War. The most famous of his Eglish history work is The Defence of Rorke's Drift (1880).In 1881 he was made an officer of the Légion d'honneur for The Cemetery of Saint-Privat and The Despatch-bearer. During these years Neuville was at work with Édouard Detaille on an important though less artistic work, The Panorama of Rézonville. De Neuville died in Paris on May 18, 1885.