CHARLET, NICOLAS TOUSSAINT French designer and painter, more especially of military subjects, was born in Paris on Dec. 20, 1792, and died there on Oct. 3o, 1845. The son of a dragoon in the Republican army, he was educated at the Lycee Napoleon, and served in the National Guard in 1814. In 1816 Charlet entered the atelier of Gros, and soon began issuing the first of those lithographed designs of subjects drawn from the Napoleonic wars which eventually brought him renown. Lithographs (about 2,000 altogether), water-colours, sepia-drawings, numerous oil sketches, and a few etchings followed one another rapidly, and he exhibited some large canvases. His best work was the "Episode in the Retreat from Russia," exhibited in the salon of 1836.
See De la Combe, Charlet, sa vie, ses oeuvres (1856) .