The Polish painter Chelminski was contemporary with the military painters
working in France, and his work is similar, although his training was that
of Munich, not Paris. In Napoleon’s Retreat from Russia, he suggests in
the tragic sunset lighting of the sky, the frightful demoralization and
suffering of Napoleon’s army, defeated by boundless steppes and relentless
winter.—Gift of James J. Hill.
[The Roe Covert. Gustave Courbet, 1819-1877]