Thomas Couture (French, 1815-1879)

The present work is a study for one of the figures in Couture’s never-completed monumental commission Le baptême du prince impérial. The soldier in this study, his eyes cast reverently downward, appears on the left side of the painting, to the right of the figure of the Zouave, silhouetted in front of the flags over the proper right shoulder of the figure of Napoléon III. The present figure has been variously identified as either a cuirassier, who together with the Zouave were intended to collectively represent a personification of the military, or possibly a portrait of either Jérôme Napoléon Bonaparte II or Prince Oscar of Sweden.