GROS, Antoine-Jean

Gros was filled with enthusiasm for the events of the Napoleonic era, for he was just 18 when the revolution broke out. This and Bonaparte’s rise to imperial power were to be the formative influences on his work. In 1797, when Napoleon was still a general, he gave the young Gros his first commission. It was Bonaparte on the Bridge at Arcole. On 17 November 1796 Napoleon led his troops in the battle at Arcole and he won in three days.

In the dynamic handling of the subject, all traces of David’s Neoclassicism have gone. Seeing himself depicted as full of stormy energy, but determined and controlled as well, Napoleon must have felt flattered.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 38 minutes):

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony in C Major (Jupiter-Symphony) K 551

Among the major names in French painting in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Gros was probably the only one who remained loyal to the national school’s traditional values, seen in the work’s dense structures and elaborate colour scheme. Thanks to these qualities, the conventional heroic portrait acquires an emotional charge that foreshadows Romanticism. The work’s persuasiveness is heightened because Gros witnessed the event when while accompanying Napoleon during his Italian campaign in 1796.

Refugee in Italy during the Revolution, Gros painted several portraits, mainly in Genoa in 1795-96. This early work of the artist reflects the spirit of the 18th century.

Gros was only fourteen when he became a pupil of Jaques-Louis David, after having received instruction from his father, a miniature painter. In 1793, accused of royalist tendencies, he had to flee to Italy, where he lived mainly in Florence and Genoa, making a living from miniatures and portraits. After returning to France in 1799, Gros painted colossal and highly acclaimed battle scenes to celebrate Napoleon’s martial prowess, including Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-Stricken at Jaffa and Napoleon on the Battlefield at Eylau.

This vast scene, full of warmth and lyricism, is a good example of the interest in the Orient instigated by Napoleon’s battle campaigns. The subject-matter is actually little more than political propaganda, but its execution and the strong emotional appeal achieved by the simple treatment of the victims’ fevered rapture, renders this canvas the first great success of Romanticism in painting.

The battle of Eylau (8 February 1807) in Poland, in which the Russian army was defeated by the French during the fourth coalition, was an extremely bloody engagement, resulting in 25,000 dead and wounded. Napoleon wished to commemorate the victory, and had it made the subject of a competition; but he wanted his humanity to be emphasized, rather than his war-like qualities. The day after the battle, he had toured the battlefield, and was struck with pity at the sight of so much carnage. ‘If all the kings on earth could see this sight’, he said, ‘they would be less greedy for wars and conquests.’ This was the moment selected to appear on the official programme of the competition by Vivant-Denon, the Director of the Mus�e Napoleon. Gros, who only competed because he was pressed to do so by Vivant-Denon, was chosen in preference to twenty-five other painters. He received 16,000 francs for the picture, which was exhibited in the Salon of 1808.

The Emperor, advancing towards the right, is mounted on a light bay horse, and surrounded by his staff; the cloak and hat which he wore at Eylau were handed to Gros, who kept them till his death. Napoleon is speaking to a wounded Lithuanian, who is moved by the humanity of the victor, and is credited with saying: ‘Caesar has granted me life; I will serve you faithfully, as I have served Alexander.’ Opposite Napoleon, on a prancing charger, is Murat, whose epic charges transformed an undecided battle into victory; between Murat and Napoleon can be seen Marshal Berthier, Marshal Bessi�res and General Caulaincourt; the young Lithuanian soldier who stretches his arms towards Napoleon is supported by Baron Percy, Surgeon-in-Chief to the Grande Arm�e.

In this work, Gros has entirely forsaken classical composition; he has grouped his figures in masses and put striking close-ups of bleeding corpses in the foreground. Although he had never been far east, he has successfully rendered the melancholy of the great wintry plain, the sky leaden with smoke from the burning village.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 51 minutes):

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 3 (Eroica) in E Flat major op. 55 (1803)

This painting is an autograph second version of the portrait of Fran�oise Simonnier and her daughter which is now in the collection of the Wallraf-Richarz Museum, Cologne.

Fran�oise Simonnier was a laundress and the mistress of Gros, with whom she had a daughter in 1827. Gros depicts her as a radiant young woman holding their child on her lap; the girl pulls gently at the bodice of her mother’s dress revealing her breast. Both sitters engage the viewer directly, drawing them into this intimate moment.

Charles Legrand was killed on 1 May 1801 in Madrid, when rebelling peasants attacked a regiment of Napoleon’s cuirassiers on the Puerta del Sol, tore the men from their horses, and knifed them. Legrand was the son of a French general. In his memory his parents commissioned Gros to execute a life-size portrait.

The young Gros moved his Salon audience in 1801, with his unearthly Sappho at Leucate, in which the poetess, in agonies of rejection, casts herself into the sea. Touched by the moonlight shimmering through her transparent veil, Sappho seems poised between two worlds; behind her on the cliffs stands a sacrificial altar.

Gros was the forerunner of the later Romantic school, but he forced himself to sustain David’s heritage and counter the Romantics, although he had himself inspired them. The comparison of works depicting a large number of figures by David (e.g. The Intervention of the Sabine Women), by Delacroix (e.g. The Massacre of Chios) and by Gros’ The Battle of Abukir demonstrates that Gros led the Romantic movement.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 12 minutes):

Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber: The Battle, suite