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 :)