Antoine-Jean Gros

Knight of the Légion d'Honneur

The man who was to become one of France's leading neoclassical painters was born in Paris on March 16, 1771.

He was introduced to painting by his father, a miniature painter, and entered Jacques-Louis David's studio at the age of fourteen.

In 1793, although protected by David, his royalist views put him in danger. He moved to Italy, where he stayed for eight years, living in Genoa, visiting Florence and meeting Joséphine de Beauharnais, whom he followed to Milan. His reputation as a miniaturist and portraitist began to take root.

Tradition, not to say legend, has it that on November 15, 1796, he was present at the Battle of Arcole, during which Bonaparte stormed the bridge with the tricolor flag. With a sense of observation and timing that would not be denied by today's war reporters-photographers, Gros immortalized the episode.

It's hardly surprising, then, that his work had followed in the footsteps of the epic of the century: the paintings Bonaparte visiting the plague-stricken of Jaffa, The Battle of Aboukir, The Battle of Eylau, The Battle of the Pyramids and The Battle of Austerlitz, epic realism at its best, helped to build the legend of Napoleon. In addition to these battle scenes, he also painted numerous portraits of Empire dignitaries.

He was awarded the Légion d'Honneur by the Emperor himself at the Salon du Louvre on October 22, 1808.

During the Restoration, he took over the studio of his master David, exiled in Brussels, and tried to have him return to Paris, without success. He was showered with honors (member of the Institut, professor at the École des Beaux-Arts, knight of the Order of Saint-Michel, title of baron in 1824), but most of his work was behind him.

His paintings were no longer successful; worse still, his last work, Hercules crushing Diomedes, was mocked by the critics. Abandoned by his pupils, out of fashion, unable to stem the rising tide of Romanticism, it was as a romantic that he left this world, throwing himself into the Seine on June 25, 1835.

Antoine-Jean Gros is buried in the 25th division of the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris .