commission to illustrate scenes from the campaign. The Emperor Napoleon III at Solferino took Meissonier more than three years to complete. The work, a battle scene, represented something of a departure for the painter of bonshommes and musketeers though Meissonier had already painted scenes of violence and massacre, such as Remembrance of Civil War, and in 1848 had indeed seen active service as a captain in the National Guard, when he fought on the side of the republican government during the June Days. In autumn 1861 he was elected to a chair in the Institut de France when the members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts voted for him to join their number. To the Salon of 1861 he sent A Shoeing Smith, A Musician, A Painter, and M. Louis Fould; to that of 1864 The Emperor at Solferino, and 1814. He subsequently exhibited A Gamblers' Quarrel (1865) and Desaix and the Army of the Rhine (1867). In June 1868 Meissonier travelled to Antibes with canvas and easel, together with his wife, son and daughter, and two of his horses, Bachelier and Lady Coningham. He may have been attracted there for historical reasonsin 1794 Napoleon had been imprisoned in Fort Carré, and in 1815, returning from exile on Elba in 1815 he had come ashore at Golfe-Jouanand the island of Sainte-Marguerite where the Man in the Iron Mask was imprisoned 1686–1698, was a little out to sea. The light of the south attracted Meissonnier. "It is delightful to sun oneself in the brilliant light of the South instead of wandering about like gnomes in the fog. The view at Antibes is one of the fairest sights in nature." And it is possible that the influence of plein-air landscapists had encouraged Meissonier to abandon for a while his obsession with historical authenticity in favour of something more spontaneous: " of creating eye-catching visual effects by means of a few salient touches of the brush. If these Antibes landscapes never matched [-] the work of Pissarro, they nonetheless revealed Meissonier as a painter of remarkable versatility whose ambitions were not entirely at odds with those of the École des Batignolles." Meissonier worked with elaborate care and a scrupulous observation of nature. Some of his works, as for instance his 1807, remained ten years in course of execution. To the great Exhibition of 1878 he contributed sixteen pictures: the portrait of Alexandre Dumas fils