Antoine-Jean Gros

In 1810, Gros exhibited a massive painting of Napoleon at the 1798 Battle of the Pyramids, one of the rare French triumphs in the failed campaign to conquer Egypt (1789-1801). After Napoleon first fell from power in 1814, the painting went into storage, until the new king Louis-Philippe chose to resurrect it for a history museum in Paris. However, perhaps to diminish Napoleon's significance, the government asked Gros to amplify the original with an addition at each end. This painting incorporates General Kléber, a famously successful military leader who had been excluded from the original painting.

Gros's studio, Paris, 14, rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie. (mid-July 1835, according to Tripier le Franc 1880, 632).

Colmar, Musée d'Unterlinden. (1920-55). Long-term loan.

Paris, Petit Palais. Gros, ses amis, ses élèves (1936), no. 57.

New York, Jacques Seligmann &amp; Co.; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; cma. Baron Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835), Painter of Battles, the First Romantic Painter (1955-56), no. 2, pls. 2a-b, private collection, Paris.

A vertically oriented oil painting is composed of loose, brushy layers of muted browns and blues. In the center, a man with a medium-dark skin tone, gray beard, and white head covering wears a dark blue tunic. He rests his hands on a light-skinned woman to our right and a crouching youth with a medium skin tone to our left. Sketched military figures fill the background beneath a hazy, cloudy sky.

J.-B. Delestre, Paris. His sale, Drouot, 13-14 October 1871 (lot 1), Les deux esquisses pour les pendentifs de droite et de gauche, surajoutés au tableau de la Bataille des Pyramides, ff 500 to M. Couvreur (perhaps sold to J. Arnous de Rivière, directeur de Revue illustrée, bought for ff 700 at Delestre sale, through 1880; Tripier le Franc 1880, 500). Gustave Rothan, Château de Luttenbach, (near Munster, Alsace). By descent after his death in 1890 to his daughter, Christa Anna Maria Rothan (in 1895, Baronne Pierre de Coubertin) until after 1917, Lausanne. By 1955, Jacques Seligmann & Co, New York, 1955. Purchased by the CMA in 1972.

Egyptian Family (Sketch for "The Battle of the Pyramids")

Antoine-Jean Gros

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Egyptian Family (Sketch for "The Battle of the Pyramids")

Antoine-Jean Gros

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Egyptian Family (Sketch for "The Battle of the Pyramids")

Antoine-Jean Gros

Description

Egyptian Family (Sketch for "The Battle of the Pyramids")

Antoine-Jean Gros

See Also

Visually Similar by AI

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