The painting by the English artist Laslett John Pott “The Retreat of the French Army from Moscow” presents an image of these events that still exists in collective consciousness. The French soldiers wander among the snowy desert. The artist depicted in the foreground a guardsman in ragged clothes with a bandaged head. A drummer boy sits on his shoulders.
They are followed by other soldiers: a guardsman, a grenadier, a simple infantryman, lancers and cuirassiers who have lost their horses. The soldier closing the group has fallen. His friend tries to pick him up. In the lower right corner, the artist painted a cuirassier helmet and equipment. Apparently, they were abandoned by those who passed along this road earlier. A forest is visible in the background.
The image of “General Frost”, who destroyed the Grand Army of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, quickly took a significant place in the European collective consciousness. In part, this was due to the attempts to explain the defeat of the French soldiers by the sudden harsh Russian winter.
In the canvas painted in the 1870s, the artist depicted a disorderly retreat: representatives of different branches of the Napoleonic army walk together. This plot could only reflect the last weeks of the war.
The English artist Laslett (Leslie) John Pott was born in 1837. He specialized in historical subjects, including the Napoleonic theme. The painting “The Retreat from Moscow”, which he exhibited in 1873 at the Royal Academy, became the first in this series.
The dramatic nature of the plot favorably distinguishes this work from most others by Laslett Pott, which are mainly dominated by lush interior costume scenes. The sticker on the back of the painting indicates that in the mid-1970s this canvas was kept in the collection of Forbes Magazine and exhibited in the United States.
Subsequently, the painting, apparently, was acquired by a Russian collector. The Borodino Museum-Reserve bought it in 2011. It is a rather rare example of English painting from the Victorian period among those housed in Russian museums, including large art collections.
