The Art Gallery of NSW was ten years old when, in 1891, it instructed a buyer in Paris to find some 'grand distinctive works' by contemporary painters that would draw in crowds as Alphonse de Neuville's romantic Defence of Rorke's Drift was still doing nine years after its purchase.

The buyer soon found something. Edouard Detaille, France's greatest war artist of the day after de Neuville, had recently painted a small cavalry charge that took place at the battle of Friedland in June 1807. A French victory over a Russian army near the Russian city on the Baltic now called Kaliningrad, Friedland was the culminating action of an extraordinary campaign which began 20 months earlier in Bavaria and gave Napoleon a five-year hegemony over central Europe. In the best Napoleonic fashion - though not entirely due to Napoleonic genius - the battle was decided before the first salvoes were fired. The Russians had crossed a river to destroy an isolated French corps, but much of the rest of the French army came up quickly and drove the Russians into the river.

The battle was notable for the limited use of French cavalry, perhaps because Napoleon wanted to make peace with the csar and decided not to humiliate the Russians by hounding them as they fled. But cavalry were used throughout the day, and Edouard Detaille seized on one small, typical, forgotten charge that seemed to sum up Napoleon's cavalry as they galloped to gold-braided glory under the eyes of their emperor. The result was Vive l'empereur, a vast and vigorous canvas. Detaille excised any gore from his painting, but it remains as true to its subject as any artist would ever achieve.

In 1893 the Gallery paid Detaille £3000 for the painting, four-fifths of its entire acquisition budget that year. The Sydney Mail hailed it as a masterpiece, 'a full exposition of the philosophy of war of old times' which 'remained epic and legendary'. On the same page the newspaper featured some NSW cavalrymen who were in England competing in a tournament with the British army. The juxtaposition of the two articles says much about how Australians of the day imagined war and their place in it. Despite their slouch hats and suntans, the New South Welshmen were also seen as heirs to the 'epic and legendary' tradition Detaille had epitomised.

Vive I'empereur proved as popular as the Gallery had hoped. Many came to see the painting, and cheap reproductions of it were soon hanging above many mantelpieces. Young Bernard Smith, later a famous art historian, grew up in a home that had one. It fascinated him, though not for its subject. To his child's eye 'the back legs of the front horse always seemed to be falling off'.

Vive l'empereur's popularity could not survive the Great War. The military tradition Australians sensed they had started at Gallipoli seemed utterly unlike its action and ethos, while khaki, trench clubs and howitzers had made a mockery of glory. In any case, Australian art galleries were beginning to focus on collecting modern and Australian art. From the 1930s the painting was often consigned to storage. In 1959 a heavy storm drenched it, destroyed its frame and lifted off some of its paint. Repair did not seem worthwhile now the crowd pleaser had become a white elephant. It was stored and largely forgotten.

Many years later, the whirligig of taste has moved on. Art that was popular with 19th-century Australians is back in, and The defence of Rorke's Drift is once more counted among the Gallery's proudest possessions. Vive I'empereur was remembered at last, and in June 2001 the Friends of Conservation, the Gallery's conservation benefactors, decided to make its restoration their next major project.

Reproduced, in part, from an article by Craig Wilcox in Wartime, the official magazine of the Australian War Memorial, Autumn 2002, issue 17.