John Everett Millais

L'Enfant du Regiment (The Random Shot)
1854-55
17 3/4 x 24 in. (45.1 x 61.0 cm)

Millais derived his subject from Donizetti's opera "La Fille du régiment." The heroine of the opera is Marie, offspring of a secret liaison between an aristocratic Englishwoman and a French army officer. After her father's death in battle, Marie is adopted by his regiment. The action of the opera takes place in 1805, during the Napoleonic Wars, and she is no longer a child but a young woman. The scene in the painting, a pathetic incident from her earlier life, is the artist's own invention: during fighting in a church she has been wounded and lies sleeping on a knight's tomb.