Édouard Detaille

[2] Detaille made his debut as an artist at the Salon—the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts—of 1867 with a painting of Meissonier's studio.

[2] At the Salon of 1868, he exhibited his first military painting, The Drummers Halt, which was based solely on his imagination of the French Revolution.

With Repose During the Drill, Camp St Maur, which he debuted the following year, Detaille established his reputation as a painter.

[3] In the spring of 1870, he went on a "sketching trip" to Algeria with three other young painters, Étienne-Prosper Berne-Bellecour, Alexander Louis Leloir, and Jehan Georges Vibert.

Detaille appears as a guest at a party at the home of the Princesse de Guermante in Part Two: Chapter One of Marcel Proust's novel Cities of the Plain, where Detaille is referred to as "the creator of the Dream", his 1888 painting also known as Le Rêve which shows soldiers asleep on a battlefield dreaming of military glory.

Test uniforms created in 1912 by Édouard Detaille for the French line infantry. From left to right: trumpet in parade uniform, private in service uniform and kepi , private 1st class in parade uniform, private in service uniform and leather helmet, officer in parade uniform, officer in service uniform and bonnet de police (side cap), private in field uniform and leather helmet, private in field uniform and kepi .