GÉRARD, François

The story of Belisarius was that of a loyal and successful general in the service of the Byzantine emperor Justinian. He had won major victories against the Vandals, Goths and Bulgarians, but he then became implicated in political intrigues, was accused of treason and disgraced. He became an outcast and was even reduced to begging; one version of the story also said that his eyes were put out.

Belisarius was G�rard’s first great success. Pressured by his friends to exhibit at the Salon of 1795, the artist chose as his subject one that his master David had painted fifteen years earlier, but in a very different mood. Painted in six weeks, the Belisarius met with critical acclaim and eclipsed the paintings of his contemporaries.

The present painting is a smaller version, produced in 1797 in response to the criticism of commentators on the 1795 Salon. While Belisarius was typically depicted in the act of begging, G�rard shows him standing and erect, his muscular form in sharp contrast to his guide’s weakening body. The prominent helmet hanging from Belisarius’s belt emphasizes the general’s heroic past and underscores the injustice of his fall from favour.

In 1819 Madame R�camier received as a gift from Prince Augustus of Prussia a picture by G�rard, an affecting realization of Madame de Staël as Corinne, set like Sappho on the wild shore of Cape Miseno and pausing in her recitation of an ode when interrupted by her infatuated admirer, Lord Nelvil. Corinne looks up heavenwards in her confusion.

G�rard was commissioned to paint Corinne, the heroine of Madame de Stael’s 1807 novel of the same name, on quite a few occasions. The present version depicts Corinne the moment after she relates the stories of the famous Cape Miseno in the Bay of Naples, shown here in the background. In a moment of great nostalgia and sadness, the poetess, dressed as a muse a l’antique, sits on a ruined column, her eyes averted to the sky.

The second generation of the Neoclassical style cultivated an aestheticism of beautiful physique that seemed to be trying to discover the limits of what was feasible. The new intention was already evident in G�rard’s Cupid and Psyche, which was shown in the Salon of 1798. The intention was to take physical beauty, line, composition, colour and delicacy of the handling of flesh to perfection.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 4 minutes):

Francesco Gasparini: The Meddlesome Cupid, aria

This is a case where a comparison will give a good idea of how differently the same subject was handled by Jacques-Louis David and one of his numerous pupils. David started the portrait of Madame R�camier in 1800 which was never finished. (However, incidentally, this portrait helped a contemporary item of furniture to become known under her name.) When the master learned that the lady had also commissioned his pupil G�rard to paint her, he is said to have refused any further service.

In David’s portrait, noble simplicity, expressed by the simple dress and the Spartan decoration, is also eloquent in the open face. This might well appear more to the modern viewer than G�rard’s version, which was judged to be more representative and flattering at the time. And comparisons with portraits of Madame R�camier by other artists suggest that G�rard had achieved a better likeness than David. The Spartan severity of David’s composition, the Neoclassical sparseness of the arrangement, the cool handling of the room, the distanced pose, with the lady turning her shoulder to the viewer, were all elements with which Neoclassicism had operated for long enough.

G�rard, by contrast, sets the lady in a noble park loggia, where she seems to be inviting to conversation. Her low-cut bodice is seductive, the red curtain flatters the subject and gives the flesh a rosy tint. Where David gave the beautiful woman a rather severe touch around the mouth, G�rard embellishes her features with the hint of a gentle smile, making her look younger. By contrast, David’s portrait in the antique manner looks rather forced. Perhaps these were the reasons why his painting was never finished. Madame R�camier gave G�rard’s portrait of her to her admirer Prince Augustus of Prussia, a nephew of Frederick II, who had met the French beauty at the salon of Madame de Staël. For state reasons a marriage was impossible, but in the painting Madame R�camier was ever present in the palace which Schinkel furnished for the Prince in 1817.

After the death of the Prince the portrait was returned to Madame R�camier.

The commission for this painting was given to G�rard in 1801 for the decoration of the small palace of Malmaison, which Napoleon was having furnished for his own use. Two paintings on the subject of Ossian were to flank the chimney breast in the reception room. The other was to be painted by Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson. They were the only two paintings to praised by the owner of the palace, and not without reason. Napoleon was also seized by the current wave of enthusiasm for the prose epics of the legendary Gaelic poet Ossian.

Ossian purports to be a translation of an epic cycle of Scottish poems from the early dark ages. Ossian, a blind bard, sings of the life and battles of Fingal, a Scotch warrior. Ossian caused a sensation when it was published on the cusp of the era of revolutions, and had a massive cultural impact during the 18th and 19th centuries. Napoleon carried a copy into battle; Goethe translated parts of it; the city of Selma, Alabama was named after the home of Fingal, and one of Ingres’ most romantic and moody paintings, the Dream of Ossian was based on it. The originator of the “unearthed, old Irish fragments” Fingal and Temora, published in 1762 and 1763, was a Scot, James Macpherson (1736-1796). Ten years after Macpherson’s death it was discovered that the poems were forgeries, written by Macpherson himself from fragments of sagas.

There are at least four versions of G�rard’s painting. The Ossian Awakening the Spirits on the Banks of the Lora with the Sound of his Harp in Hamburg came from Malmaison. The blind singer is engrossed in his song, his pale hair tousled and his head bent. His fingers grip the strings, and in the moonlight the dream figures appear, the heroes of his song: on his throne Fingal, who is Ossian’s father, beside him Malwina, and behind them the train of warriors.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 4 minutes):

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: The Hebrides Overture (‘Fingals Cave’)

One of the most fashionable portraitists of the Napoleonic era, G�rard had a fine feeling for artistic trends. Here he successfully combines a refined classical composition, the imperial taste, and a light palette. G�rard worked as a decorator at Malmaison, among other places, and this painting depicts Josephine Beauharnais, the mistress of the château and wife of the future French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte.

This painting is one of the three compositional versions of the portrait which G�rard painted of Napoleon’s mother, Maria-Letizia Ramolino. The large scale portrait was commissioned by Napoleon when he was First Consul. As Emperor, Napoleon bestowed on his mother the title of “Son Altesse Imp�riale, Madame M�re de l’Empereur” (Her Imperial Highness, Mother of the Emperor).

In 1819 Chateaubriand’s wife conceived the idea of a charitable asylum for distressed noblewomen and priests fallen on hard times. It was christened the Infirmerie Marie-Therese, after the wife of the future Charles X. It was adame R�camier who took the lead in commissioning David’s pupil G�rard to paint the princess’s patron saint, Theresa of �vila - most famous for her concept of ‘mystic marriage’ with God — and presented the picture to the new chapel.

The painting was shown in the salon before being installed in the chapel. With its beautiful saint kneeling in rapt devotion, the work soon became as defining work of Romanticism as Delacroix’s Sardanapalus, seen in the same exhibition.

This is a case where a comparison will give a good idea of how differently the same subject was handled by Jacques-Louis David and one of his numerous pupils. The pupil was Fran�ois G�rard who was also commissioned to paint a coronation, that of Charles X in 1827. The heavy draperies of the baldachin (brocade canopy), the costumes and the sweeping gestures look back to the Baroque, as might be expected at the Restauration. It is significant that the centre of the painting is not occupied by the act of coronation but by the bishop, who is standing with his back to the king, his eyes raised in suppliance to heaven.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 11 minutes):

Modest Mussorgsky: Boris Godunov, Coronation Scene

This is an unfinished study for a large painting representing La Patrie en Danger painted by the artist on the commission of King Louis Philippe in 1832. The composition was ordered for the Salle de Sept Chemin�es in the Louvre as a pendant to another grand painting of more recent history: the Lecture de la D�claration des d�pute�s proclamant le duc d’Orleans lieutenant g�neral du royaume, 21 juillet 1830. The final painting, which is now in the deposits of Versailles, has not been shown for many years, and was left unfinished at the artist’s death.