Эдуар Детайль: Художник французской армии

French painter

Jean Baptiste Édouard Detaille (ʒɑ̃batist‿edwaʁ dətaj; 5 October 1848 – 23 December 1912) was a French academic painter and military artist noted for his precision and realistic detail. He was regarded as the "semi official artist of the French army".

Detaille was born in Paris and grew up in Picardy. His was a prosperous military family; his grandfather had been an arms supplier for Napoleon. An amateur artist who was friends with a number of collectors and painters, including Horace Vernet, Detaille's father encouraged his son's artistic endeavors. He began his artistic studies at age seventeen under the famous military painter Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier; he had originally approached him to ask for an introduction to the renowned Alexandre Cabanel but Meissonier decided to teach Detaille himself. Meissonier became a major influence on his style, and it was he who inculcated an appreciation for accuracy and precision in Detaille. Detaille made his debut as an artist at the Salon—the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux Arts—of 1867 with a painting of Meissonier's studio. In the spring of 1870, he went on a "sketching trip" to Algeria with three other young painters, Étienne Prosper Berne Bellecour, Alexander Louis Leloir, and Jehan Georges Vibert.

In 1912, Detaille created new uniforms for the French army. They were never adopted by the Minister of War, but the blue gray greatcoats would influence later French World War I uniforms, and the Adrian helmet was heavily influenced by his designs. During his life, he had amassed an impressive collection of military uniforms and artifacts. He bequeathed the collection to the Musée de l'Armée in Paris following his death in 1912 in Paris.

Detaille appears as a guest at a party at the home of the Princesse de Guermante in Part Two: Chapter One of Marcel Proust's novel Cities of the Plain, where Detaille is referred to as "the creator of the Dream", his 1888 painting also known as Le Rêve which shows soldiers asleep on a battlefield dreaming of military glory. The painting, which is in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, also appears in Paintings in Proust by Eric Karpeles, published by Thames & Hudson.

His niece married Charles Otzenberger, who subsequently called himself Otzenberger Detaille.