Albert Paul Bourgeois

Albert Paul Bourgeois never left the battlefield, literally. He painted while standing on the grass where the wounded fell, brush in one hand, sketchbook in the other, aiming to catch the exact color of a dying man’s coat in the smoke. That’s why his big canvas, Last moments of Marshal Lannes at the Battle of Essling, shows Marshal Lannes’ blue uniform turning gray where blood mixes with gunpowder.

Look for the way the red sash bleeds into the mud; Bourgeois used real battlefield dirt mixed into his paints.