{{Short description|French painter of historical subjects (1771–1835)}} {{for|the 19th-century French diplomat known as Baron Gros|Jean-Baptiste Louis Gros}} {{Use dmy dates|date=March 2021}} {{Infobox artist | name = Antoine-Jean Gros | image = Antoine Jean Gros par Gerard.jpg | caption = Portrait of Gros at age 20 by François Gérard, {{circa|1791}} | birth_date = {{birth date text|16 March 1771}} | birth_place = Paris, France | death_date = {{death-date and age|25 June 1835|16 March 1771}} | death_place = near Meudon, France | resting_place = Père Lachaise Cemetery | known_for = History painting | education = Collège Mazarin }}
'''Antoine-Jean Gros''' ({{IPA|fr|ɑ̃twanʒɑ̃ gʁo}}; 16 March 1771{{snd}}25 June 1835) was a French painter of historical subjects. He was granted the title of '''Baron Gros''' in 1824.<ref name=baron>{{cite web |url=https://www.19thcenturyart-facos.com/artist/antoine-jean-gros |title=Antoine-Jean Gros | An Introduction to 19th Century Art |access-date=12 June 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.culture.gouv.fr/LH/LH083/PG/FRDAFAN83_OL1206051V001.htm |title=Ministère de la culture – Baron Gros |access-date=12 June 2017}}</ref>
Gros studied under Jacques-Louis David in Paris and began an independent artistic career during the French Revolution. Forced to leave France, Gros moved to Genoa. His portrait of French commander Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Arcole in 1796 brought Gros to public attention and gained the patronage of Napoleon.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Jordan |first=David P. |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/TK35B6LV1vEC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP1 |title=Napoleon and the Revolution |year=2012 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-0-230-36281-9 |pages=153 |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Gueniffey |first=Patrice |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J9noCAAAQBAJ |title=Bonaparte: 1769–1802 |date=2015 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-36835-4 |pages=288 |language=en}}</ref> After traveling with Napoleon's army for several years, he returned to Paris in 1799. In addition to producing several large paintings of battles and other events in Napoleon's life, Gros was a successful portraitist.
==Early life and training== Born in Paris, Gros began learning to draw at the age of six from his father, Jean-Antoine Gros,<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/miscellaneous/c_gros.htm |title=The Napoleon Series |access-date=23 July 2016 |archive-date=30 March 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170330194014/http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/miscellaneous/c_gros.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> who was a miniature painter, and showed himself to be a gifted artist. His mother, Pierrette-Madeleine-Cécile Durand, was also a painter.<ref>[http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/GrosM.pdf Profile of Pierrette-Madeleine-Cécile Durand] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170810091947/http://www.pastellists.com/Articles/GrosM.pdf |date=10 August 2017 }} at the ''Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800''.</ref> 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.<ref name="EB1911">{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=Gros, Antoine Jean, Baron|volume=12|page=615}}</ref>
The death of his father, whose circumstances had been embarrassed by the French Revolution, threw Gros upon his own resources in 1791. He now devoted himself wholly to his profession, and he competed (unsuccessfully) in 1792 for the ''grand prix''. Around this time, however, on the recommendation of the École des Beaux Arts, he painted portraits of the members of the National Convention, but as the Revolution developed, Gros left France in 1793 for Italy.<ref name="EB1911"/>
==Genoa and Bonaparte== [[File:1801 Antoine-Jean Gros - Bonaparte on the Bridge at Arcole.jpg|thumb|right|200px|''Bonaparte at the Pont d'Arcole'' (1796), Palace of Versailles]] Gros supported himself in Genoa as a portraitist. He visited Florence and returned to Genoa, where he met Joséphine de Beauharnais. Following her to Milan, Gros was well received by her husband, Napoleon Bonaparte.<ref name="EB1911"/>
After Gros painted the scene ''Bonaparte at the Pont d'Arcole'', Bonaparte gave him the post of ''inspecteur aux revues'', which allowed Gros to follow the army. In 1797, Gros was charged with selecting the spoils for the Louvre.<ref name="EB1911"/>
==Paris== In 1799, Gros left Genoa and made his way to Paris. In the beginning of 1801, he took up his quarters in the Capucins. His study for the painting of the Battle of Nazareth, now in the Musée d'Arts de Nantes, gained the prize offered in 1802 by the consuls, but the project was not carried out, owing, it is said,<ref>{{Cite book|last=Fontainas |first=André |year=1906 |title=Histoire de la peinture française au XIXme siècle (1801–1900) |edition=second |language=fr |location=Paris |publisher=Société du Mercure de France |page=[https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/paBLAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA28 28] |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=paBLAAAAMAAJ |oclc=431638175 }}</ref> to Napoleon's jealousy of Jean-Andoche Junot, the general in the painting. Gros was commissioned to paint ''Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa'', which is now in the Louvre. This was followed in 1806 by Gros's ''Bataille d’Aboukir, 25 Juillet 1799'' (Joachim Murat at the Battle of Abukir) now at Versailles;<ref>{{Cite web|title=Colonial History: The Battle of Aboukir |work=Art History for Filmmakers |date=20 July 2020 |url=http://arthistoryfilm.org/a-famous-painting-of-colonial-history-the-battle-of-aboukir }}</ref> and in 1808 by his ''Napoléon sur le champ de bataille d'Eylau, le 9 février 1807'' (Napoleon at the battlefield after the Battle of Eylau) now in the Louvre.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Napoleon on the Battlefield of Eylau |publisher=Department of Paintings, The Louvre |language=en |url=https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/napoleon-battlefield-eylau }}</ref><ref name="PrendergastC-1997">Prendergast, Christopher. (1997). ''Napoleon and History Painting: Antoine-Jean Gros's La Bataille d'Eylau''. Oxford: Clarendon Press. {{ISBN|0-19-817402-0}}</ref>
==Salon of 1804 and later life== [[File:Antoine-Jean Gros - Bonaparte visitant les pestiférés de Jaffa.jpg|thumb|''Napoleon Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa'' (1804), Louvre]] [[File:Gros Jean Antoine Portrait of Mademoiselle Recamier.jpg|thumb|''Portrait of Madame Récamier'' (1825), Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters]] [[File:Antoine-Jean, baron GROS - Hercule et Diomède - Musée des Augustins - RO 112.jpg|thumb|''Hercules and Diomedes'' (1835), Musée des Augustins]] At the Salon of 1804, Gros debuted his painting ''Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa''. The painting launched his career as a successful painter. It depicts Bonaparte in Jaffa visiting soldiers infected with the bubonic plague. He is portrayed reaching out to one of the sick, unfazed by the illness. According to P. Jill Morse, Napoleon commissioned Gros to paint the scene to neutralize British propaganda. The propaganda focused on two episodes of Napoleon's Egyptian campaign (1798–1800). First when he ordered the massacre of Turkish prisoners. Second, when he ordered the death by poison of French soldiers suffering from the plague. The painting showed a compassionate Napoleon visiting the sick at the plague hospital. Morse adds that Gros was probably using the disease as a metaphor for the vanity of Napoleon and his First Empire.<ref>P. Jill Morse, "The Medics in A. J. Gros's 'Bonaparte At The Pest House At Jaffa.'" ''Consortium on Revolutionary Europe 1750–1850: Selected Papers'' (2000), pp 147–164.</ref>
While Bonaparte did actually visit the pesthouse, later, as his army prepared to withdraw from Syria, he ordered the poisoning (with laudanum) of about fifty of his plague-infected men.<ref>Peterson, Robert K. D.; "Insects, Disease, and Military History: The Napoleonic Campaigns and Historical Perception"; ''American Entomologist'' 41:147–160. (1995) {{cite web|url=http://entomology.montana.edu/historybug/napoleon/plague_syria.htm |title=Plague and the Syrian Campaign |access-date=26 March 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303182459/http://entomology.montana.edu/historybug/napoleon/plague_syria.htm |archive-date=3 March 2016}} retvd 3 26 15</ref>
In 1810, his ''Madrid'' and ''Napoleon at the Pyramids'' (Versailles) show that Napoleon had deserted him. His Francis I and Charles V, 1812 (Louvre), had considerable success.
In 1835, out of sympathy with the rising tide of Romanticism and after the failure of his ''Hercules and Diomedes'' at the Salon of 1835, Gros committed suicide by drowning.<ref>Jacobus, Lee A. ''Humanities: The Evolution of Values''. McGraw-Hill, 1986. p. 416</ref> ==Friendship with Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun== Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun formed an intimate friendship, Le Brun had known him since he was seven years old and had painted his portrait when he was at that age, during which she had noticed an artistic inclination in the child. Upon her return to France she was surprised to find Gros had become a successful and famous painter, head of his own school of art. Gros was socially reclusive, and often brusque to others, but he formed a close bond with Vigée Le Brun, who wrote: {{Blockquote |text="Gros was always a man of natural impulses. He was prone to feel the keenest sensations and would become equally passionate over a kind action or a beautiful work of art. He was ill at ease in society, rarely breaking the silence in a crowded place, but he listened attentively and replied with his gentle smile, or by a single word, always very apt. To appreciate Gros, one had to know him intimately. Then he would open up his heart, a kind and noble one at that; some people reproached him for having a certain brusqueness of tone, but this disappeared entirely in private. His conversation was even more fascinating because he never expressed himself in the same way as other men; always finding the most unusual and powerful images to convey a thought, you might almost say he painted with words."<ref>{{cite book |last=Vigée Le Brun |first=Élisabeth Louise |title=Memoirs of Madame Vigée Lebrun |translator=Lionel Strachey |publisher=Doubleday, Page & Company |location=New York |year=1903
}}</ref> }}
She was greatly affected by his suicide in 1835; she had met him the day before and noted him brooding over criticism he had received over one of his paintings ''Hercules and Diomedes''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Nolhac |first=Pierre de |title=Madame Vigée-Le Brun |publisher=Librairie Hachette et Cie |location=Paris |year=1910 |url=https://www.mediterranee-antique.fr/Fichiers_PdF/MNO/Nolhac/Vigee_Le_Brun.pdf |page=7 |language=fr |access-date=2026-03-17 }}</ref>
==Fame== Gros was made a member of the Legion of Honour on 22 October 1808 by Napoleon,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.culture.gouv.fr/LH/LH083/PG/FRDAFAN83_OL1206051V002.htm |title=Ministère de la culture – Base Léonore |access-date=12 June 2017}}</ref> after the Salon of 1808, where he had exhibited the ''Battle of Eylau''.<ref name="PrendergastC-1997" /> Gros had many pupils and gained considerably more after David left Paris in 1815.<ref name="EB1911"/>
Under the Bourbon Restoration, Gros became a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.culture.gouv.fr/LH/LH083/PG/FRDAFAN83_OL1206051V004.htm |title=Ministère de la culture |access-date=12 June 2017}}</ref> a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts, and a member of the Order of Saint Michael.{{Citation needed|date=April 2022}} He was granted the title of baron in 1824 by King Charles X of France.<ref name=baron/>
Gros inspired Eugène Delacroix, especially with his work in lithography. The two both worked during the same time period, and both did portraits of Napoleon. However, at one point, Gros had referred to Delacroix's ''Chios and Missolonghi'' as "a massacre of art".{{Citation needed|date=April 2022}}
G. Dargenty produced a book on the subject entitled ''Les Artistes célèbres. Le Bon Gros'' (1887).<ref>[https://www.idref.fr/074336932 IdRef - Identifiants et Référentiels pour l'ESR.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221030210228/https://www.idref.fr/074336932 |date=30 October 2022 }} Detailed record: [http://ark.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb30867198h Notice bibliographique].</ref>
M. Delcluze gave 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.<ref name="EB1911"/>
==Iconography== {| class="wikitable sortable" |- ! scope="col" | Image ! scope="col" | Title ! scope="col" | Date ! scope="col" | Dimensions ! scope="col" | Collection |- | frameless|upright || ''Autoportrait'' || 1795 || || Palace of Versailles |- | frameless|upright || ''Madame Pasteur'' || 1795–1796 || || [http://cartelfr.louvre.fr/cartelfr/visite?srv=car_not_frame&idNotice=18872 The Louvre] |- | || ''Portrait of Madame Bruyere'' || 1796 || 79 × 65 cm || Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery |- | frameless|upright || ''Bonaparte at the Pont d'Arcole'' || 1796 || 130 × 94 cm || Palace of Versailles |- | frameless|upright || ''Portrait of the Maistre Sisters'' || 1796|| 43.2 x 31.2|| Art Institute of Chicago || |- | || ''The Death of Timophanes'' || 1798 || 44.4 × 57.6 cm || [http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/death-timophanes The Louvre] |- | frameless|upright || ''Portrait of Christine Boyer'' || c. 1800 || 214 × 134 cm || The Louvre |- | frameless|upright || ''The Battle of Nazareth'' || 1801 || 136.1 x 196.4 cm || Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes |- | frameless|upright || ''Sappho at Leucate'' || 1801 || 122 × 100 cm || Musée Baron Gérard, Bayeux |- | frameless|upright || ''Bonaparte, First Consul'' || 1802 || 205 × 127 cm || Musée de la Légion d'honneur |- | frameless|upright || ''Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa'' || 1804 || 715 × 523 cm || [http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/napoleon-bonaparte-visiting-plague-stricken-jaffa The Louvre] |- | frameless|upright || ''Gérard-Christophe-Michel Duroc, duc de Frioul (1772–1813)'' || 1805 || 218 × 142 cm || Palace of Versailles |- | frameless|upright || ''Battle of Aboukir, 25 July 1799'' || 1806 || 578 × 968 cm || Palace of Versailles |- | frameless|upright || ''Battle of Eylau, 9 February 1807'' || 1807 || 104.9 × 145.1 cm || [http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/napoleon-battlefield-eylau The Louvre] |- | frameless|upright || ''General Lasalle at the Siege of Stettin'' || 1808 || 248 x 174 cm || Army Museum |- | frameless|upright || ''Impératrice Joséphine'' || 1808 || || [https://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=150233 Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice] |- | frameless|upright || ''Portrait of the French composer Pierre Zimmermann'' || 1808 || 118.5 × 91 cm || Palace of Versailles |- | frameless|upright || ''Equestrian portrait of Jérôme Bonaparte'' || c. 1808 || 321 × 265 cm || Palace of Versailles |- | frameless|upright || ''Equestrian portrait of Prince Boris Yusupov'' || 1809 || 321 × 266 cm || Pushkin Museum |- | frameless|upright || ''The Battle of the Pyramids'' || 1810 || 389 × 311 cm || Palace of Versailles |- | frameless|upright || ''Napoleon accepts the surrender of Madrid, 4 December 1808'' || 1810 || 361 × 500 cm || Musée de l'Histoire de France (Versailles) |- | frameless|upright || ''The Horse of Mustapha Pasha'' || c. 1810 || 89 × 175 cm || Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'archéologie de Besançon |- | frameless|upright || ''Portrait of General Claude Legrand'' || c. 1810 || 245 × 172 cm || Palace of Versailles |- | frameless|upright || ''Portrait of Second Lieutenant Charles Legrand'' || c. 1810 || 249 × 162 cm || Los Angeles County Museum of Art |- | frameless|upright || ''The Apotheosis of Saint Genevieve'' || 1811–1824 || || Panthéon de Paris |- | || ''François I and Charles V Visiting the Church of Saint-Denis'' || 1812 || || The Louvre |- | frameless|upright || ''Interview Between Napoleon and Francis II after the Battle of Austerlitz'' || 1812 || || Palace of Versailles |- | frameless|upright || ''Equestrian portrait of Joachim Murat'' || 1812 || 89 × 175 cm || Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'archéologie de Besançon |- | frameless|upright || ''General Baston de Lariboisière and his son Ferdinand'' || c. 1815 || || Musée de l'Armée |- | frameless|upright || ''Honoré-Charles Baston de Lariboisière'' || 1815 || 73 × 59 cm || Private collection |- | frameless|upright || ''Portrait of the Duchess of Angoulême'' || 1816 || 257 x 182 cm || Palace of Versailles |- |frameless|upright || ''The Departure of Louis XVIII from the Tuileries Palace'' || 1817 || 405 × 525 cm || Palace of Versailles |- | frameless|upright || ''The Embarkation of the Duchess of Angoulême at Pauillac'' || 1818 || 326 × 504 cm || Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux |- | frameless|upright || ''Bacchus and Ariadne'' || 1820 || 86 × 100.3 cm || Phoenix Art Museum |- | frameless|upright || ''Portrait of Jean-Antoine Chaptal'' || 1824 || || Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux |- | frameless|upright || ''Portrait of Madame Récamier'' || 1825 || 62.3 × 51.2 cm || Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters |- | frameless|upright || ''The Genius of France Giving Life to the Arts and Protecting Humanity'' || c. 1827 || || [http://cartelen.louvre.fr/cartelen/visite?srv=car_not_frame&idNotice=15758&langue=en The Louvre]
|- | frameless|upright || ''Hercules and Diomedes'' || 1835 || 426 × 324 cm || Musée des Augustins |- | frameless|upright || ''Portrait of Pierre Daru'' || 19th century || 216 × 142 cm || Palace of Versailles |}
==See also== * Félix Louis Leullier * Napoleon legacy and memory
==Notes== {{Reflist}}
==References== * Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate. (2006). ''Nineteenth-Century European Art''. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. pp. 126–127. {{ISBN|0-13-188643-6}}
==External links== {{Commons category|Antoine-Jean Gros}} * [https://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=723 Antoine-Jean Gros] – The J. Paul Getty Museum website * [https://www.paintingstar.com/artist-antoine-jean-gros-1.html Paintings by Antoine-Jean Gros] * [https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k96626619/f11 ''Histoire de la vie et de la mort du baron Gros, le grand peintre''], by J. Tripier Le Franc, 1880; includes an [https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k96626619/f616 annotated list of the students of Gros] and a [https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k96626619/f706 chronological catalogue of known works].
{{Antoine-Jean Gros}} {{Authority control (arts)}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gros, Antoine-Jean, Baron}} Category:1771 births Category:1835 deaths Category:French neoclassical painters Category:18th-century French painters Category:French male painters Category:19th-century French painters Category:19th-century painters of historical subjects Category:Painters from Paris Category:Artists who died by suicide Category:French barons Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery Category:Members of the Académie des beaux-arts Category:French Orientalist painters Category:Pupils of Jacques-Louis David *01 Category:Suicides by drowning in France Category:University of Paris alumni Category:1830s suicides Category:18th-century French male artists Category:19th-century French male artists Category:French history painters