Militaires sous un arbre (Soldiers under a Tree)

Isidore Pils (1813-1875) was a French painter best known for his military and religious paintings during the July Monarchy and the Second Empire. Soldiers under a Tree is a watercolor and graphite study depicting resting soldiers in the informal medium that Pils used for his on-site observations of military life. The watercolor medium allowed rapid execution and portable materials, making it ideal for the kind of direct observation of military camps and maneuvers that Pils pursued throughout his career. The soldiers are depicted in a moment of rest—their postures relaxed, their equipment set aside—in a composition that emphasizes the quotidian reality of military life rather than its dramatic moments.

Pils's military watercolors are important documents in the history of 19th-century French military painting because they record the daily life of soldiers with an immediacy and informality that his larger, more finished paintings cannot match. Soldiers under a Tree captures the uneventful moments of military existence—the rest, the waiting, the boredom—that constitute the vast majority of a soldier's experience but are rarely depicted in formal military painting.

Soldiers under a Tree is Pils's military watercolor at its most immediate: soldiers resting in the informal medium of watercolor and graphite, capturing the quotidian reality of military life between the dramatic moments that formal military painting prefers to depict. The watercolor medium preserves the freshness of on-site observation that larger paintings lose.