Gallery Label Both Gros and Gérard were favored students in the rough and tumble fraternity that was the atelier of Jacques Louis David. Intense friendships and near-fatal rivalries developed in the heady environment that mixed revolutionary politics with cut-throat professional competition. In the late 1780s, Gros and Gérard were close friends; later, in the early nineteenth century, Gérard would become court portraitist to Napoleon and Josephine while Gros would become the chief propagandist of the Empire's military exploits. But the friendship was broken in January 1793 when Gérard denounced Gros for contemplating emigration, an accusation that could result in trial for treason.
Provenance the sitter, baron François-Pascal-Simon Gérard, Paris (1790–d. 1837); his nephew, Henri-Alexandre Gérard, later baron Gérard (by 1848–d. 1882; inherited directly from the sitter or from the sitter's widow, Mme Marguerite-Françoise Gérard, d. 1848); his son, Maurice-Henri-François Gérard, Maisons, Calvados; his son, François Gérard, Maisons; his daughter, the duchesse François-Charles-Jean-Marie d'Harcourt; her sister, the comtesse Élie-Marie-Gabriel Dor de Lastours; [Eric Turquin, Paris, by November 1997]; [Marlborough Fine Art, London; until 1998; sold to Wrightsman]; Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, London and New York (1998–2002)
Exhibition History Paris. Palais du Trocadéro. "Première exposition française des portraits nationaux [Exposition universelle de 1878]," 1878, no. 662 (as "François, baron Gérard, à vingt ans," lent by M. baron Gérard, Paris).
Paris. École des Beaux-Arts. "Portraits du siècle (1783–1883)," 1883, no. 120 [see Ref. Dickinson 1998].
Paris. location unknown. "Exposition de tableaux de maîtres anciens au profit des inondés du midi," [1886 or 1887], no. 64 (lent by M. baron Gérard).
Paris. Galerie des Champs-Élysées. "Exposition historique et militaire de la révolution et de l'empire," 1895, no. 774 (lent by M. le baron Gérard).
Paris. Palais des Beaux-Arts. "David et ses élèves," April 7–June 9, 1913, no. 169 (lent by M. le baron Gérard).
Paris. Maison de Victor Hugo. "La jeunesse des romantiques," May 18–June 30, 1927, no. 1064 (lent by collection du baron Gérard).
Paris. Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux Arts de la Ville de Paris. "Gros: Ses amis, ses élèves," May–July 1936, no. 3 (lent by baron Gérard).
References H.[enri] G.[érard]. "Gravures à l'eau-forte. Collection des 83 portraits historiques en pied." Œuvre du baron François Gérard, 1789–1836 . 1, Paris, 1852–53, unpaginated, ill. (engraving by Vallot).Œuvre du baron François Gérard . 3, Paris, 1857, unpaginated.Histoire de la vie et de la mort du Baron Gros, le grand peintre . Paris, 1880, p. 608.Bulletin de la société de l'histoire de l'art français (1911), pp. 209–12, ill. opp. p. 212.Gros: Ses amis et ses élèves . Paris, 1936, pl. 9.in 1789: French Art During the Revolution . Exh. cat., Colnaghi. New York, 1989, pp. 217–18 n. 8, fig. 2.in Romanticism & the School of Nature: Nineteenth-Century Drawings and Paintings from the Karen B. Cohen Collection . Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2000, p. 16 n. 2.Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 61 (Fall 2003), pp. 28–29, ill. (color).in The Wrightsman Pictures . New York, 2005, pp. 268–71, ill. (color).Jean-Baptiste Wicar et son temps: 1762–1834 . Villeneuve d'Ascq, 2007, pp. 414–15, 425 n. 22, fig. 4.
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