The Belgian painter Louis Paternostre was born in Brussels in 1824 and died there in 1879. Paternostre studied under Picot and at the École des Beaux-Arts and exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1857 to 1872. He painted history and genre scenes, as well as portraits, and was especially accomplished in the depiction of battles and animals. The present canvas depicts a horse, rearing in surprise in the midst of a battlefield. Given the date of the work the battle is likely meant to be one of the Franco-Prussian wars of the 1870s.