Choc de cavalerie ou Combat de cavalerie

Cavalry clash in an open woodland glade: a light-coloured horse rears at the centre of the mêlée while a rider in a red-brown coat falls from his mount and a grey horse lies stricken on the ground, horsemen pressing in from either side through the smoke of gunfire beneath a high, clouded sky. Born in Brussels and trained in the studio of Pieter Snayers, Adam Frans van der Meulen entered the service of Louis XIV and became the historiographer of the king’s conquests; the museum notes that he executed many small canvases of skirmishes such as this one, painted about 1660 in an alert, worked-up handling of light touches. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.