Three Studies of Horses. Verso: Torso of a Man seen from Behind

Born into a family with military connections, Detaille embarked on his artistic career as a teenager in the studio of Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891). With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, he received an appointment to serve in the Eighth Battalion, thus obtaining a position close to the conflict. This experience with the reality of war and military service shaped the rest of Detaille's career.
Here Detaille made three careful studies of a horse's head with bridle and bit to understand the disposition of the various leather straps and metal rings in the harness. These studies may have been executed around the time that Detaille made a series of illustrations featuring the various uniforms of the cavalry during the second part of the war of 1870-1871, many of which were used for his later publication "Types et Uniformes. L'armée française" (2 vols. Paris, 1885-1889).