Antoine-Jean Gros
(born March 16, 1771, Paris, Fr. — died June 26, 1835, Paris) French painter. He was trained by his father, a painter of miniatures, and later by
Jacques-Louis David in Paris. In the 1790s he accompanied
Napoleon on his campaigns as his official battle painter. The dramatic power of such paintings as
Napoleon Visiting the Pesthouse at Jaffa (1804) influenced
Théodore Géricault and
Eugène Delacroix. When David went into exile after Napoleon's defeat, Gros took over his studio and tried to work in the
Neoclassical style. His best works after 1815 were portraits. Haunted by a sense of failure, he drowned himself in the Seine. He was a leading figure in the development of
Romanticism.
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