tary subjects, was born in Paris on the 20th of
December 1792. He was the son of a dragoon in the Republican army, whose
death in the ranks left the widow and orphan in very poor circumstances.
Madame Charlet, however, a woman of determined spirit and an extreme
Napoleonist, managed to give her boy a moderate education at the Lycee
Napoleon, and was repaid by his lifelong affection. His first employment
was in a Parisian mairie, where he had to register recruits: he served
in the National Guard in 1814, fought bravely at the Barriere de Clichy,
and, being thus unacceptable to the Bourbon party, was dismissed from
the mairie in 1816. He then, having from a very early age had a
propensity for drawing, entered the atelier of the distinguished painter
Baron Gros, and soon began issuing the first of those lithographed
designs which eventually brought him renown. His "Grenadier de
Waterloo," 1817, with the motto "La Garde meurt et ne se rend pas" (a
famous phrase frequently attributed to Cambronne, but which he never
uttered, and which cannot, perhaps, be traced farther than to this
lithograph by Charlet), was particularly popular. It was only towards
1822, however, that he began to be successful in a professional sense.
Lithographs (about 2000 altogether), water-colours, sepia-drawings,
numerous oil sketches, and a few etchings followed one another rapidly;
there were also three exhibited oil pictures, the first of which was
especially admired--"Episode in the Campaign of Russia" (1836), the
"Passage of the Rhine by Moreau" (1837), "Wounded Soldiers Halting in a
Ravine" (1843). Besides the military subjects in which he peculiarly
delighted, and which found an energetic response in the popular heart,
and kept alive a feeling of regret for the recent past of the French
nation and discontent with the present,--a feeling which increased upon
the artist himself towards the close of his career,--Charlet designed
many subjects of town life and peasant life, the ways of children, &c.,
with much wit and whim in the descriptive mottoes. One of the most
famous sets is the "Vie civile, politique, et militaire du Caporal
Valentin," 50 lithographs, dating from 1838 to 1842. In 1838 his health
began to fail owing to an affection of the chest. He died in Paris on
the 30th of October 1845. Charlet was an uncommonly tall man, with an
expressive face, bantering and good natured; his character corresponded,
full of boyish fun and high spirits, wi