Portrait of a Carabinier

A cavalry portrait at cabinet size

A carabinier belonged to a mounted arm, and a portrait of one is a picture of a soldier whose trade is conducted from the saddle. What makes this entry legible is its scale set against its neighbour in the same record. The catalogue dates it 1814, and it dates a wounded cavalryman by the same painter to 1814 as well — at 294 x 358 cm, roughly thirty-six times the surface of this one. Same year, same arm of service, and two completely different addresses to a viewer: one built for a public wall, this one for a wall you stand close to.

What the record holds

The location is the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, one of four works in this register recorded there, all of them by this painter. The dimensions are 64 x 45 cm. Romanticism is the style term and French the nationality attached to the painter. The work is filed under portraiture, male portraiture and Animal Art > Horse, and the measured colour family of the image is brown.

Where the horse is in a portrait like this

The animal heading is on the record, but nothing in the title places a horse in the frame, and this entry is written from a catalogue rather than from the painting. What can be said is that the sitter is identified by a mounted role. Whether the animal appears is not something this file settles.