perity.
The rewards he gained were such as are earned only by hard and
constant labor. When he came to Paris about the year 1832, from Lyons,
where he was born, he was about nineteen years old. His parents were
in humble circumstances, and would seem to have been able to do
nothing to advance the lad, who arrived in Paris with little money in
his pocket, and with no friends at hand. He had, however, the
materials out of which friends and money are made: health, a generous
spirit, energy, and a clear purpose, and with these he went to work.
We do not hear much about his early life in Paris. When he first
appears in sight, he is working in the same studio with Daubigny, the
landscape-painter, the two painting pictures for a dollar the square
yard, religious pictures probably, and probably also copies, to be
sent into the country and hung up in the parish churches. Although
this may have seemed like hardship at the time, yet there is no doubt
it was good practice, for among artists we are told it is an accepted
doctrine that in order to paint on a small scale really well, you must
be able to paint on a larger. And it is said that Meissonier was in
the habit all his life of making life-size studies in order to keep
his style from falling into pettiness. So, after all, the painting of
these big pictures may have been a useful ordeal for the artist who
for the next sixty years was to reap fame by painting small ones.

While he was earning a scanty living by this hack-work, Meissonier
found time to paint two pictures which he sent to the Salon of 1836.
One of these attracted the attention of a clever artist, Tony
Johannot, who introduced him to Leon Cogniet, with whom he studied for
a time, but from whom he learned but little. The mechanism of his art
he had pretty well mastered already, as was shown by the Salon
accepting his early pictures, and the chief advantage he gained from
his stay in Cogniet's studio was a wider acquaintance with the world
of artists; for Cogniet was a favorite teacher, and had a great many
pupils, not a few of whom became distinguished painters. But his style
of painting was not one to attract Meissonier, who was ambitious to
paint like the old Dutch artists, Terburg, Metzu, Mieris, and others,
who have the charm that their pictures are finished with the most
exquisite minuteness, and yet treated in such a large way that, after
awhile, we forget the microscopic wonder of the performance and think
on