Drummer Boy Attacked by a Cossack

Jean Victor Schnetz French
 Formerly attributed to Théodore Gericault French

Not on view


Schnetz left his first teacher, Jean-Baptiste Regnault, to join the studio of Jacques Louis David in 1812. He continued studying with Gros, whose work hangs nearby, after David’s exile to Belgium following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. This drawing, however, shows most clearly the stylistic influence of Gericault, whom Schnetz befriended in Italy in 1817. Both artists produced high-contrast drawings using white gouache around this time. Although this work was most likely made after the fall of Napoleon, the identification of the attacking horseman as a Cossack—a member of a Slavic military unit—suggests the subject’s association with the French invasion of Russia in 1812.

Drummer Boy Attacked by a Cossack, Jean Victor Schnetz (French, Versailles 1787–1870 Paris), Brush and brown wash, heightened with white over black chalk on brown wove paper

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Drummer Boy Attacked by a Cossack, Jean Victor Schnetz (French, Versailles 1787–1870 Paris), Brush and brown wash, heightened with white over black chalk on brown wove paper
Drummer Boy Attacked by a Cossack, Jean Victor Schnetz (French, Versailles 1787–1870 Paris), Brush and brown wash, heightened with white over black chalk on brown wove paper

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