The Stuttgart-born career soldier Christian Wilhelm von Faber du Faur (1780–1857) served for years in the Napoleonic army, like a vast number of able-bodied mercenaries of his day. Also an amateur artist, Faber du Faur drew sketches of what he saw on the campaigns, and these were reproduced in colored plates in varied editions through his lifetime, with various texts in German and French. Popular military historian North (In the Legions of Napoleon, etc.) has translated prose captions from one of Faber du Faur's editions. (Other editions included poetry, making this a debatable choice.) The 92 plates are very much by an amateur artist, someone dedicated to showing detail, but stiffly, without emotiveness. Yet any fan of "outsider" art will feel their strange immediacy, as if the artist were struggling toward an impossible objectivity. Like the images, the clinical tone of the captions seems at some distance from actuality; sometimes terse and clearly translated throughout, they lack personality, going instead for deadpan comments like: "The bodies had been exposed to the burning heat of the summer sun, and they were rotting." Caveats aside, the historical charge of these drawings is enough to justify this release, and their peculiar power more than makes up for any shortcomings in the glosses. (Sept.)
