Alphonse de neuville biography

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Alphonse de neuville biography: Born Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe Deneuville to wealthy

Alphonse-Marie de Neuville was, along with Ernest Meissonier and Edouard Detaille, one of the leading military painters in France in the second half of the 19th century. He began painting military scenes in , and the following year made his Salon debut with two paintings of The Siege of Sebastopol. It was not until the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in , however, that de Neuville came fully into his own.

During the siege of Paris, the artist was attached to a unit defending the outskirts of the city at Le Bourget, and saw the action and effects of the war at close hand. For the rest of his career de Neuville made a particular specialty of scenes from the Franco-Prussian war of , in which the emphasis was not on the battles themselves but on the human drama.

Even in such scenes of fighting as the Battle on the Railway Tracks of and Attack on a House at Villersexel of , de Neuville chose to concentrate on the individual actions and courage of the French soldiers, often battling against overwhelming odds.