| Art Encyclopedia: Baron Antoine-Jean Gros |
(b Paris, 16 March 1771; d Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine, 25 June 1835). French painter. He was one of the most honoured and respected painters during the reigns of Emperor Napoleon I, King Louis XVIII and King Charles X. For these monarchs he executed large paintings of contemporary history and allegory, although he was also known as a painter of mythological subjects and of portraits in a Romantic vein.
See the Abbreviations for further details.
| 5min Related Video: Antoine-Jean Gros |
| Biography: Baron Gros |
Antoine Jean Baron Gros (1771-1835), was one of the first French romantic painters. He is best known for his depictions of Napoleon's military campaigns and heroic deeds.
The son of a painter, Antoine Jean Gros was born in Paris on March 16, 1771. At the age of 14 he entered the studio of Jacques Louis David, the acknowledged leader of the classical revival. Although his own work became radically different from David's, he maintained a lifelong respect for his teacher and envisioned himself as the upholder of the Davidian tradition.
In 1787 Gros entered the Académie de Peinture, and when the Académie dissolved in 1793 (a result of the French Revolution) he went to Italy. He met Josephine Bonaparte in Genoa in 1796, and she introduced him to Napoleonic society. Gros entered Napoleon's immediate entourage and accompanied him on several north Italian campaigns. Gros also became involved with Napoleon's program of confiscating Italian art for removal to France.
Gros returned to Paris in 1800 and began to show his Napoleonic paintings in the annual Salons. The most famous of these are the Pesthouse at Jaffa (1804) and Napoleon at Eylau (1808). These works served to deify Napoleon, showing him engaged in acts of heroism and mercy. Stylistically, the paintings were revolutionary:their exotic settings, rich color, agitated space, and general penchant for showing the gruesome specifics of war and suffering differed radically from the cool generalizations of Davidian classicism that Gros had learned as a student. The presentation of contemporary historical events was also new, a harbinger of the realism that developed steadily during the first half of the 19th century in French, American, and English painting. Finally, the emphatic emotionalism of Gros's art established the foundation of romantic painting that Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix developed after him.
Unlike that of some of his countrymen (David is a case in point), Gros's position did not suffer after the fall of Napoleon. Gros painted for the restored monarchy, for instance, Louis XVIII Leaving the Tuileries (1817), and he decorated the dome of the Panthéon in Paris with scenes of French history (1814-1824). For this Charles X made him a baron in 1824. But these works lack the zest and commitment of Gros's Napoleonic period, perhaps because they were not based on the immediate kinds of historical experiences that had inspired the earlier paintings.
Although marked by considerable public success, Gros's later career was in many ways acutely troubled. Basically, he could not resolve his personal esthetic theories with his own painting or with the work of his younger contemporaries. To the end Gros wished to propagate the classicism of David, and he took over David's studio when the master was exiled in 1816. By the 1820s, however, the revolutionary romanticism of Géricault and Delacroix, among others, had clearly begun to eclipse classicism, and Gros found himself fighting a lonely and losing battle for conservatism. Ironically, he was fighting a trend that his own best work had helped to originate. As he persisted, moreover, his own painting began to show a diffident mixture of classic and romantic attitudes. Thus, while he was inherently a romantic, he tragically came to doubt himself. Gros died on June 26, 1835, apparently a suicide.
Further Reading
The most thorough and penetrating analysis of Gros's art in relation to the complexities of romanticism and classicism is in Walter F. Friedlaender, David to Delacroix (trans. 1952).
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Antoine-Jean Gros |
For more information on Antoine-Jean Gros, visit Britannica.com.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Baron Antoine-Jean Gros |
| Wikipedia: Antoine-Jean Gros |
| Antoine-Jean Gros | |
 Antoine-Jean Gros, by L. Massard after François Gérard |
|
| Born | March 16, 1771 |
| Died | June 25, 1835 |
| Field | Painting |
| Training | College Mazarin |
Baron Antoine-Jean Gros (16 March 1771 – 25 June 1835), also known as Jean-Antoine Gros, was a French neoclassical painter.
Contents |
Born in Paris, Gros began to learn to draw at the age of six from his father, who was a miniature painter, and showed himself as a gifted artist. Towards the close of 1785 Gros, by his own choice, entered the studio of Jacques-Louis David, which he frequented assiduously, continuing at the same time to follow the classes of the Collège Mazarin.
The death of his father, whose circumstances had been embarrassed by the French Revolution, threw Gros, in 1791, upon his own resources. He now devoted himself wholly to his profession, and competed (unsuccessfully) in 1792 for the grand prix. About this time, however, on the recommendation of the École des Beaux Arts, he was employed on the execution of portraits of the members of the National Convention, and disturbed by the development of the Revolution, Gros left France in 1793 for Italy.
He supported himself at Genoa by the same means, producing a great quantity of miniatures and fixes. He visited Florence, but returning to Genoa where he made the acquaintance of Joséphine de Beauharnais. He followed her to Milan, where he was well received by her husband, Napoleon Bonaparte.
On 15 November 1796, Gros was present with the army near Arcola when Bonaparte planted the French tricolor on the bridge. Gros seized on this incident, and showed by his treatment of it that he had found his vocation. Bonaparte at once gave him the post of inspecteur aux revues, which enabled him to follow the army, and in 1797 nominated him on the commission charged to select the spoils which should enrich the Louvre.
In 1799, having escaped from the besieged city of Genoa, Gros made his way to Paris, and in the beginning of 1801 took up his quarters in the Capucins. His esquisse of the Battle of Nazareth (now in the Musée de Nantes) gained the prize offered in 1802 by the consuls, but was not carried out, owing it is said to the jealousy of Jean-Andoche Junot felt by Napoleon; but he indemnified Gros by commissioning him to paint his own visit to the pest-house of Jaffa. Les Pestiférés de Jaffa (Louvre) was followed by The Battle of Aboukir, 1806 (Versailles), and The Battle of Eylau, 1808 (Louvre).[1] According to the article about Gros in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, 1911, these three subjects – the popular leader facing the pestilence unmoved, challenging the splendid instant of victory, heart-sick with the bitter cost of a hard-won field – gave Gros his chief title to fame.
Britannica further remarks that as long as the military element remained bound up with French national life, Gros received from it a fresh and energetic inspiration which carried him to the very heart of the events which he depicted; but as the army, and its general separated from the people, Gros, called on to illustrate episodes representative only of the fulfilment of personal ambition, ceased to find the nourishment necessary to his genius, and the defect of his artistic position became evident. Trained in the sect of the Classicists, he was shackled by their rules, even when by his naturalistic treatment of types, and appeal to picturesque effect in color and tone he seemed to run counter to them.
At the Salon of 1804, Gros debuted his painting Bonaparte Visiting the Plague House at Jaffa. The painting launched his career as a successful painter. It depicts Napoleon as he visits his own men in Jaffa (part of present-day Israel and Syria). He had just massacred the countries after losing an attempt to conquer Egypt and his men caught the plague. Opinions differ as to why he visited: whether it was to determine if he should leave his troops to die in Jaffa, or to boost morale. The painting is important for Gros because he shows Napoleon in a mostly positive light. He also showed an exotic setting and a recent event, which set him apart from his contemporaries.
In 1810, his "Madrid" and "Napoleon at the Pyramids" (Versailles) show that his star had deserted him. His Francis I and Charles V, 1812 (Louvre), had considerable success; but the decoration of the dome of St. Genevieve (begun in 1811 and completed in 1824) is the only work of Gros's later years which shows his early force and vigour, as well as his skill. The "Departure of Louis XVIII." (Versailles), the Embarkation of Madame d'Angoulême (Bordeaux), the plafond of the Egyptian room in the Louvre, and finally his Hercules and Diomedes, exhibited in 1835, testify only that Gros's efforts—in accordance with the frequent counsels of his old master David – to stem the rising tide of Romanticism only damaged his once brilliant reputation.
Again citing Britannica, "Exasperated by criticism and the consciousness of failure, Gros sought refuge in the grosser pleasures of life." On 25 June 1835 he was found drowned on the shores of the Seine at Meudon, near Sèvres. From a paper which he had placed in his hat it became known that "tired of life, and betrayed by last faculties which rendered it bearable, he had resolved to end it."
The number of Gros's pupils was very great, and was considerably augmented when, in 1815, David quit Paris and gave over his own classes to him. Gros was decorated and named baron of the empire by Napoleon, after the Salon of 1808, at which he had exhibited the Battle of Eylau.[1] Under the Restoration he became a member of the Institute, professor at the École des Beaux Arts, and was named chevalier of the Order of Saint Michael.
M. Delcluze gives a brief notice of his life in Louis David et son temps ("Louis David and his Times"), and Julius Meyer's Geschichte der modernen französischen Malerei ("History of Modern French Painting") contains what Britannica cites as an excellent criticism on his works.
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Antoine-Jean Gros |
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
 | Antonin-Marie Moine (art) |
| Charles Philipon (art) |
| Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet (art) |
 | What does 'gros bisous' mean? Read answer... |
| Norman place names gros? Read answer... |
| Who was Antoine Lavoisier? Read answer... |
Copyrights:
 |
 | Art Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more |
 |
| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Antoine-Jean Gros". Read more |
Mentioned in
