Italeri No. 6037, 1/72 scale Austrian & Russian General Staff

 My wife and I saw Ridley Scott's Napoleon just before it was pulled from the theaters. I had my doubts about it going in, having heard of obvious historical inaccuracies and Scott's attitude toward historians, which he stated as "Were you there, mate? No? Then STFU!" Perhaps Scott thinks he's valuing lived experience over book learning, or art over pedantry, but he's really valuing ignorance over knowledge. Even with his cavalier attitude, Scott would have been very short on material about Napoleon without the detective work of historians.

Anyway, seeing the movie made me want to know more about the Napoleonic Wars and to try my hand at painting Napoleonic figures, something new for me.

I started off by priming the whole set with Mr. Surfacer 500, then painting faces and hands with Vallejo flesh tones. The figures are molded in polypropylene, which takes paint rather poorly, so the primer coat was essential, and even that was easy to scratch off. Then I started painting uniforms on one of the two trees of figures, the Russians.

My knowledge of Napoleonic uniforms is close enough to zero to constitute complete ignorance, so I had to do some research. I found that except for the three general officers, the remainder are grenadiers, probably the Pavlovski grenadiers, who kept their miter hats after other Russian grenadier regiments had traded them in for shakos. I found images online, including color plates from the 19th century and beautifully painted figures in larger sizes, and at first what I saw was blue uniforms. This made sense to me, since the diagonal white straps crossing over blue-uniformed grenadiers' chests would form the Cross of St. Andrew, an official emblem of the Russian Empire. In fact, it's the ensign of the Russian navy both under the czars and since the fall of the Soviet Union.

But I also found green, and various shades between blue and green, and a description of the Napoleonic Russian uniform color as "bottle green." That description is very specific, and wouldn't be applied to any color you'd describe as blue. I think the source of the supposed blue color is similar to the notion that USAAF P-51s in the ETO were painted blue, namely fading of color images and faulty color reproduction. But I'd painted them all blue! What was I to do?

I decided that repainting three generals wasn't too much trouble, but that repainting 18 grenadiers was out of the question. Before this, my figure painting experience was modern figures, generally WWII troops in monochrome uniforms. I could practically paint an entire platoon in olive drab in the time it takes to paint one Pavlovski grenadier! (Yes, while painting these, I kept telling myself to just be patient. The more patient I was, the better I enjoyed painting them. But that didn't mean I wanted to start over!)

One modification I made, based on the review of this set at Plastic Soldier Review, was to shave the monogram of Czar Alexander from the saddle blankets and paint on a star of St. Andrew. All the painting was with various Vallejo colors, except for some shiny bits that I painted with my old stock of Model Master metallics. The turf on the bases is Woodland Scenics held down with some of their scenery cement, which I then thinned and let soak into the attached turf to help it hold together.

I have yet to paint the Austrians, so they'll be the subject of a future post. Meanwhile, these figures are for the time being on display at AAA Hobbies in Magnolia, NJ.