The Wounded Cuirassier, study (Le Cuirassier blessé quittant le feu, esquisse)

Here, a soldier in Emperor Napoleon’s cavalry leads his horse downhill, looking back at a dark, ominous sky. The composition’s repeated diagonals—the outstretched legs of man and horse, the sword, and the slope of the rough terrain—heighten the scene’s physical and psychological tension. Brooklyn’s canvas is a study for a large painting (now at the Louvre) that Théodore Géricault exhibited at the 1814 Salon in Paris, after Napoleon had been deposed and exiled to Elba earlier that year.