1771-1835 French Baron Antoine-Jean Gros Galleries The son of a painter, Antoine Jean Gros was born in Paris on March 16, 1771. At the age of 14 he entered the studio of Jacques Louis David, the acknowledged leader of the classical revival. Although his own work became radically different from David's, he maintained a lifelong respect for his teacher and envisioned himself as the upholder of the Davidian tradition. In 1787 Gros entered the Acad??mie de Peinture, and when the Acad??mie dissolved in 1793 (a result of the French Revolution) he went to Italy. He met Josephine Bonaparte in Genoa in 1796, and she introduced him to Napoleonic society. Gros entered Napoleon's immediate entourage and accompanied him on several north Italian campaigns. Gros also became involved with Napoleon's program of confiscating Italian art for removal to France. Gros returned to Paris in 1800 and began to show his Napoleonic paintings in the annual Salons. The most famous of these are the Pesthouse at Jaffa (1804) and Napoleon at Eylau (1808). These works served to deify Napoleon, showing him engaged in acts of heroism and mercy. Stylistically, the paintings were revolutionary:their exotic settings, rich color, agitated space, and general penchant for showing the gruesome specifics of war and suffering differed radically from the cool generalizations of Davidian classicism that Gros had learned as a student. The presentation of contemporary historical events was also new, a harbinger of the realism that developed steadily during the first half of the 19th century in French, American, and English painting. Finally, the emphatic emotionalism of Gros's art established the foundation of romantic painting that Th??odore G??ricault and Eug??ne Delacroix developed after him. Unlike that of some of his countrymen (David is a case in point), Gros's position did not suffer after the fall of Napoleon. Gros painted for the restored monarchy, for instance, Louis XVIII Leaving the Tuileries (1817), and he decorated the dome of the Panth??on in Paris with scenes of French history (1814-1824). For this Charles X made him a baron in 1824. But these works lack the zest and commitment of Gros's Napoleonic period, perhaps because they were not based on the immediate kinds of historical experiences that had inspired the earlier paintings. Although marked by considerable public success, Gros's later career was in many ways acutely troubled. Basically, he could not resolve his personal esthetic theories with his own painting or with the work of his younger contemporaries. To the end Gros wished to propagate the classicism of David, and he took over David's studio when the master was exiled in 1816. By the 1820s, however, the revolutionary romanticism of G??ricault and Delacroix, among others, had clearly begun to eclipse classicism, and Gros found himself fighting a lonely and losing battle for conservatism. Ironically, he was fighting a trend that his own best work had helped to originate. As he persisted, moreover, his own painting began to show a diffident mixture of classic and romantic attitudes. Thus, while he was inherently a romantic, he tragically came to doubt himself. Gros died on June 26, 1835, apparently a suicide.  Related Paintings of Baron Antoine-Jean Gros :. | Portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte | le lieutenont legrand | Battle of the Pyramids | Napoleon at the Battlefield of Eylau | The Battle of Abukir |
Related Artists:
Henry Wyatt
(1460-1537) was an English courtier. A Lancastrian supporter against Richard III, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. On the accession of Henry VII, he was released and assumed high places at court. He acted as Henry's agent in Scotland. He was admitted to the privy council, and remained high in the royal favour. He was one of Henry VII's executors, and one of Henry VIII's guardians. He was admitted to the privy council of the new king in April 1509, and became a knight of the Bath on 23 July of the same year. In 1511 he was made jointly with Sir Thomas Boleyn constable of Norwich Castle, and on 29 July of the same year was granted an estate, Maidencote, at Estgarstone in Berkshire. At the battle of the Spurs he served in the vanguard (16 August 1513).
BEER, Jan de
Netherlandish Painter, ca.1475-1528 South Netherlandish painter and draughtsman. He is first mentioned in 1490 in the register of the Antwerp Guild of St Luke, apprenticed to the painter Gillis van Everen ( fl 1477-1513). In 1504 de Beer became a master. He subsequently served as alderman of the guild in 1509 and dean in 1515, although he found himself temperamentally unsuited to the position of dean, as is known from a lawsuit he filed in 1519 regarding guild administration. This document also reveals that de Beer participated in the preparations for Charles V's 'Joyous Entry' into Antwerp in 1515 and for the Antwerp Society of Rhetoricians' entry that year in the Malines landjuweel (regional competition of the rhetoricians). In 1510 and 1513 de Beer enrolled apprentices; his son Aert de Beer (c. 1509-before 6 Aug 1540) became an Antwerp master in 1529. The artist is undocumented between 1519 and 1528, by which date he was dead. In 1567 Guicciardini included de Beer in his list of famous Netherlandish painters.
karl isakson
Karl Isakson, född 1878, död 1922, konstnär. Karl Isakson växte upp i Stockholm, han och systern Ester uppfostrades av en religiös ensamstående mor, då fadern tidigt gått bort.