We can not apply Hamerton's remark concerning Turner to Meissonier.
Hamerton said that throughout Turner's long life he was lamentably
unfortunate in that he never came under the influence of a strong and
good woman.

Meissonier associated with good women, but he never knew one with a
spread of spiritual wing sufficient to fit her to be his companion. There
is a minor key of loneliness and heart hunger running through his whole
career. Possibly, in the wisdom of Providence, this was just what he
needed to urge him on to higher and nobler ends. He never knew peace, and
the rest for which he sighed slipped him at the very last. "I'm tired, so
tired," he sighed again and again in those later years, when he had
reached the highest pinnacle.

And still he worked--it was his only rest! Meissonier painted very few
pictures of women, and in some miraculous way skipped that stage in
esthetic evolution wherein most artists affect the nude. In his whole
career he never produced a single "Diana," nor a "Susanna at the Bath."
He had no artistic sympathy with "Leda and the Swan," and once when
Delaroche chided him for painting no pictures of women, he was so
ungallant as to say, "My dear fellow, men are much more beautiful than
women!"

During the last decade of his life Meissonier painted but one portrait of
a woman, and to America belongs the honor. The sitter was Mrs. J. W.
Mackay, of California.

As all the world knows, Mrs. Mackay refused to accept the canvas. She
declared the picture was no likeness, and further, she would not have it
for a gift.