Le Colonel Langlois, un Peintre de l’Épopée Napoléonienne 1789-1870.

Catalogue de l’exposition.Giovanangeli.Catalog of the exhibition dedicated to this military painter, library Marmottan on 2000. 80 pages, 32 illustrations in colours and 15 illustrations in black and white, size 28 x 20 cms. Pupil of the Big baron and Horace Vernet, the colonel Langlois contributed, as so many others, in the construction of the napoleonic legend. But he was the only one to execute panoramas on this subject, spectacles which he exploited in Paris between 1835 and 1855, namely the Battle of Moskowa, the Fire of Moscow, the Battle of Eylau and the Battle of Pyramids. The panoramic canvases all having disappeared, they are sketches, studies and photos which allow to evoke them. If the colonel Langlois did not leave up to here a big name in the history of the French painting, it is at first because the execution of panoramas was not recognized as one of fine art and did not so contribute to its reputation. But the pictures of Salon, of which many were commanded by Louis-Philippe for the historic Museum of Versailles, show remarkable qualities of composition and Langlois shows himself an excellent landscape painter in Egypt during his study trip for the panorama of the battle of Pyramids. Finally Langlois was a pioneer of the photography, one of the first to be understood the interest of it and to be practised it. It is so an original artist, in the talent recognized by his contemporaries that one can rediscover.