Historic wall art for homes with soul

When Ernest Meissonier worked on 1807, Friedland, he treated the painting as a prestige project. Hundreds of preparatory studies and models lay behind the finished scene. Yet one of the most talked-about transactions involving the work had a curious beginning: in 1876, the American department store magnate Alexander T. Stewart bought the painting directly from the artist without having first seen it. The price was $60,000, a sensational sum for the time. The story says something about how highly Meissonier’s meticulous history painting was valued during the 19th century – and how much weight an artist’s name could carry even before the buyer stood before the canvas itself.