Born into a dynasty of southern painters, Charles Parrocel continued an artistic legacy firmly established by his father, the painter Joseph Parrocel. Trained in an environment in which history painting and military scenes held a privileged position, he developed his iconographic repertoire accordingly, adopting a pictorial language marked by particular attention to the movement of soldiers’ and horses’ bodies. Upon his father’s death, Charles became successively the pupil of two of the most eminent history painters of the early eighteenth century, Charles de La Fosse (1636–1716) and Bon Boullogne (1649–1717). Passionate about cavalry, the young artist is said to have served in the cavalry between the ages of 17 and 18 before travelling to Rome in 1712, where he was soon appointed a royal pensioner at the Académie de France à Rome.
On his return to France after nearly a decade of absence, he was admitted to the Académie Royale as a painter of battles. This official recognition granted him access to important commissions and led him to follow Louis XV during the military campaigns of 1744 and 1745.
In conceiving his painted works, Parrocel produced numerous preparatory sketches, varying in degree of finish. This study sheet by Charles Parrocel perfectly illustrates the central role of drawing in his creative process, which the artist sometimes approached in the form of series. A drawing preserved in a private Parisian collection appears to have been executed at the same period as the present work (ill.1). Both sheets, executed in black chalk and heightened with red chalk, present several variations on one or more male figures armed with a sword, captured at different stages of combat.
Here the artist explores a range of attitudes — attack, imbalance, retreat or fall — by multiplying points of view in order to analyse the rotation of the body and the tension of the gesture. Rather than an individualised representation, the figure becomes a vehicle for experimentation, enabling the study of the dynamics of movement and anatomical precision. Reworked contours, superimposed lines and touches of red chalk emphasise volume and reinforce the vitality of the movements. The line, free and nervous, constructs the figures through successive accumulations, deliberately leaving hesitations and corrections visible.
This type of study reflects a studio practice characteristic of the academic training Parrocel received at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (ill. 2). Repeated observation of the body in action constituted an essential prerequisite for the development of ambitious compositions: the liveliness of the line and the attention paid to effects of imbalance testify to the painter’s concern to render movement with the greatest possible accuracy.
Far more than a painter of battles, Parrocel established himself as a reference in costume aesthetics and provides valuable insight for historians. This study fully illustrates the essential place of drawing in Charles Parrocel’s practice, in which the observation of movement forms the foundation of pictorial invention: the sheet retains the spontaneity of a work in progress and reveals the very process of creation. It thus bears witness to a moment of experimentation in which the power of his future compositions is constructed through drawing.
M.O
