samedi 31 mars 2018

Musician of the month: Fife player

At last! We're on the last day of March, it's still time to publish a post about the musician of the month :)

I am in my Napoleonic period (I can hear the Ancients calling), so I painted a musician that belongs to the Napoleonic Chasseurs à pied de la garde: a fife player.

Let's begin with the pictures of the figure:





You may know that there were two sorts of musicians in the Napoleonic regiments. The first belonged to the military bands, who walked in front of the troops during the parades, and the second were the fifes and drums, who were used in battle to communicate the orders. The fifes were used during the Napoleonic era, but were replaced by the trumpets in the middle of the 19th century.

The fife is a small wooden flute, such as these:





I chose to paint a dark brown fife, which means that it is rosewood, a tropical hardwood that makes very good music instruments.



This mini was given to me by Borodino - lucky me, these minis are out of production! Thank you, mate.

And one question for my scholar readers: my first idea was to paint a fife wearing the colors of the Bataillon of Neuchâtel, a famous Swiss troop in french service, but I couldn't find any evidence of such musician, even though fife playing is a Swiss tradition nowadays. What do you think of it ? Do you think I might paint a fife player of that sort ? Any help welcome :)

17 commentaires:

  1. Nice figure, and stylish paint work. Joyeuses Paques.

    RépondreSupprimer
    Réponses
    1. Thank you! Something different from the usual fighting figures... Joyeuses Paques également :)

      Supprimer
  2. Un beau sujet, une belle mise en scène et une très belle figurines...

    RépondreSupprimer
    Réponses
    1. Merci. De la part du metteur en scène que tu es, j'apprécie vraiment.

      Supprimer
  3. Very nice. A HäT bod..and out of production! This I never understand. Why anyone makes all the effort of sculpting, then making the molds and then...out of production. Do the molds become useless? If so..why can´t a cast be made of the first mold before it becomes useless and then kept in reserve until enough time has passed or demand increases again ?

    RépondreSupprimer
    Réponses
    1. Thank you Paul. Yes, we know that Hät's strategy is difficult to understand to most of us... but I would say the same about other manufacturers :)

      Supprimer
  4. klasse bemalarbeit eigentlich wie immer bei dir
    top figurenbemalung
    wenn mann den so sieht kann man den fast auch hören so gut ist der

    RépondreSupprimer