François Gérard (1770–1837), later Baron Gérard

This beautifully preserved portrait by Gros of the young François Gérard is reproduced in Henri Gérard’s catalogue of Gérard’s works; the engraving is inscribed "Peint par Gros 1791" and "Gravé par Vallot 1853."[1] Elsewhere in the text, Henri Gérard, the sitter’s nephew and sole heir, who owned the portrait, assigns it to the year 1790. It was certainly painted in David’s studio, where the two artists became friends in 1786, and it must date before January 1793, when Gros left for Italy. Presumed to have been the gift of Gros, the picture would have been in Gérard’s possession at his death as it formed part of his inheritance. Further confirmation of the sitter’s identity, if any is necessary, takes the form of an engraving that Gérard made after a lost portrait of himself by Girodet dating to 1789. The long nose and prominent rounded chin, the thick, wavy, shoulder-length and slightly disordered hair, and the serious expression are strikingly similar. Gérard’s elegant costume is typical of the moment. The characterization is exceptionally sympathetic, suggesting the intimacy that existed at the time between artist and sitter.

Gérard was born in Rome in 1770 to a French father and an Italian mother. In Paris he studied with Augustin Pajou and Nicolas Guy Brenet before joining David’s atelier. The corps of gifted students to which he belonged included François Xavier Fabre and Anne Louis Girodet as well as Gros, who was a year younger than Gérard but arrived a little earlier in David’s studio.[2] In 1787 the Prix de Rome went to Fabre, and he departed for Rome and a stay of decades in Italy. Girodet, the winner in 1789, set off in 1790; he remained in Italy until the autumn of 1795. In the 1789 concours Gérard placed second, but neither he nor Gros ever won the much coveted prize. François Gérard was able to revisit Rome briefly after his father’s death in the summer of 1790, when he assumed responsibility for his family’s affairs.[3] He returned to Paris the following spring. Conditions in David’s studio were chaotic during the Revolution, and disorder and violent outbursts were not uncommon.[4] There would have been few opportunities for commissioned portraits or any other paid work, and most of David’s pupils were poor, cast on their own devices. They posed for each other, some in the nude and others for head studies. The neutrally toned and apparently unfinished backgrounds of many of the portraits are typical of David and of works from his studio painted at the time. A possible date range for this painting is 1790–92.

Gérard was appointed to the Revolutionary Tribunal (of which he was a dilatory member), while Gros remained intent upon studying abroad. According to a story that was first told in 1863 and may be apocryphal, it was at this time that Gérard, meeting Gros in a Paris café, condemned and threatened him for preparing to emigrate. David assured the authorities that Gros was going to Italy temporarily to improve his skills and secured his passport so that he could leave France quickly in January 1793. The supposed encounter, although unsupported by contemporary evidence, is often invoked in considering our picture and the others that may be related.

Three portraits of Gros are more or less contemporary with the present painting: a finished work of similar size and format, in which the sitter wears a black hat, a related oil sketch, and a replica or copy at Versailles.[5] After the death of Gros and in accordance with the artist’s wishes, the finished painting was bequeathed by his widow to the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse. Madame Gros called it a self-portrait, and it was catalogued as such until 1911, when Gaston Brire attributed it instead to Gérard. Although there is no firm evidence, Brire’s reasoning and his conviction that a mutual exchange of portraits had been intended were widely accepted until 2007, when Valérie Bajou argued once again for the attribution to Gros of the Toulouse picture.[6] It seems that Gros was the more gifted when the two were young and, judging from photographs, the portraits of Gros and Gérard look similar in handling. On the other hand, the sketch, in the opinion of Bajou, is by Gérard. The circumstances that would yield such a result are difficult to imagine. In Genoa in 1795, after a long separation, Girodet and Gros met and again became intimate friends. They exchanged self-portraits in classicizing costume, though this has limited bearing in the present case.

[adapted from Baetjer 2019]

[1] Gérard 1852–53, vol. 1, frontis.
[2] Etienne Jean Delécluze, Louis David, son école et son temps, Paris, 1983, pp. 251, 272–76, 287–88, provides short biographies; for a chronology of the arrivals and departures of students in David’s studio, see Arlette Sérullaz. Gérard, Girodet, Gros: David’s Studio, exh. cat., Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2005, pp. 14–15.
[3] Gérard’s father died in June 1790. He may have arrived in Rome in October 1790 for a stay of about six months. See Girodet’s letters to him in Correspondance de François Gérard, peintre d’histoire, ed. Henri Gérard, Paris, 1867, pp. 52–55, 63–64.
[4] Delécluze 1983, pp. 52–53.
[5] Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, MV 4643.
[6] Further to Brire’s line of reasoning, see the entry on the oil sketch relating to the portrait of Gros in Wintermute 1989, pp. 214–18. Brire saw neither the portrait of Gérard by Gros nor the oil sketch for the portrait of Gros in Toulouse. These arguments have more recently been reviewed in Salmon 2014, pp. 38–41, no. 4, ill. (color) and figs. 1, 2 (color).

the sitter (until d. 1837); his widow, Marguerite-Françoise Gérard, baronne Gérard (1837–d. 1848); their nephew, Henri-Alexandre Gérard, baron Gérard, Paris and Calvados (1848–d. 1903); Maurice-Henri-François Gérard, baron Gérard, Paris and Calvados (1903–d. 1924); François Gérard, baron Gérard, Paris and Calvados (1924–d. 1929; ?his estate, until at least 1936); ?his sister, Marguerite, comtesse Dors de Lastours (after 1936); his daughter, Antoinette, duchesse d'Harcourt-Beuvron (until d. 1958); François-Charles d'Harcourt, duc d'Harcourt-Beuvron (1958–d. 1997); [Eric Turquin, Paris, by November 1997]; [Simon C. Dickinson, London, and Marlborough, London, until 1998; sold to Wrightsman]; Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, London and New York (1998–2002)

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. Ecole des Beaux-Arts. "Portraits du siècle (1783–1883)," April 25–?, 1883, no. 120 (as "Gérard," lent by baron Gérard).

Paris. Ecole des Beaux-Arts. "Exposition de tableaux de maîtres anciens au profit des inondés du Midi," 1887, no. 64 (lent by M. le baron Gérard).

Paris. Galerie des Champs-Elysées. "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. "Gros: Ses amis, ses élèves," May–July 1936, no. 3 (lent by baron Gérard).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "In Miniature," August 29–December 28, 2014, no catalogue.

THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT, BY TERMS OF ITS ACQUISITION BY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART.

H[enri]. G[érard]. Œuvre du baron François Gérard, 1789–1836. Vol. 1, Gravures à l'eau-forte: Collection des 83 portraits historiques en pied. Paris, 1852–53, unpaginated, ill. (frontispiece, etching by Vallot, 1853, of Gros's portrait of Gérard), dates Gros's portrait 1791.

H[enri]. G[érard]. Œuvre du baron François Gérard. Vol. 3, Esquisses peintes, tableaux ébauchés. Paris, 1857, unpaginated, dates it 1790.

J[ustin]. Tripier le Franc. Histoire de la vie et de la mort du Baron Gros le grand peintre. Paris, 1880, p. 608, dates it to 1790, when the two artists were studio companions.

[Gaston Brière]. "Note sur des portraits de Gros, Girodet et Gérard." Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de l'Art Français (1911), pp. 209–12, ill. opp. p. 212, states that the portrait was immediately given to the sitter; quotes Mlle Godefroy, writing in 1837: "D'après le visage et le costume de ton oncle dans ce portrait, je pense qu'il devait avoir dix-neuf ou vingt ans"; states that a portrait of Gros that he attributes to Gérard (Musée de Augustins, Toulouse) was to be given in exchange but remained in Gérard's studio.

Raymond Escholier. Gros: Ses amis et ses élèves. Paris, 1936, pl. 9.

Raymond Escholier. La peinture française, XIXe siècle. Vol. 1, De David à Géricault. Paris, 1941, ill. p. 67.

Alan Wintermute in 1789: French Art During the Revolution. Ed. Alan Wintermute. Exh. cat., Colnaghi. New York, 1989, pp. 217–18 n. 8, fig. 2.

Colta Ives with Elizabeth E. Barker 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.

Gary Tinterow. "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 2002–2003." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 61 (Fall 2003), pp. 28–29, ill. (color), as probably painted in Paris before Gérard departed for Rome in 1790.

Gary Tinterow in The Wrightsman Pictures. Ed. Everett Fahy. New York, 2005, pp. 268–71, ill. (color), cites David's self-portrait in the Uffizi, Florence, as a prototype for the informal portrait heads exchanged among his students, including this picture.

Valérie Bajou. "Visages de Gros. A propos de quelques portraits d'artistes de l'époque révolutionnaire." Jean-Baptiste Wicar et son temps: 1762–1834. Ed. Maria Teresa Caracciolo and Gennaro Toscano. Villeneuve d'Ascq, 2007, pp. 414–15, 425 n. 22, fig. 4, notes its resemblance to portraits of Gérard by Girodet and Isabey, known from engravings; discusses the similarity in technique and emphasis on individuality in this portrait and that which she identifies as a self-portrait by Gros (Musée des Augustins, Toulouse).

Kathryn Calley Galitz. "François Gérard: Portraiture, Scandal, and the Art of Power in Napoleonic France." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 71 (Summer 2013), p. 15, fig. 9 (color).

Xavier Salmon. Peintre des rois, roi des peintres: François Gérard (1770–1837), portraitiste. Exh. cat., Château de Fontainebleau. Paris, 2014, pp. 27, 38, 41, 231, fig. 5 (color).

Katharine Baetjer. French Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Early Eighteenth Century through the Revolution. New York, 2019, pp. 366–69, no. 122, ill. (color).

Etienne Bréton and Pascal Zuber. Louis-Léopold Boilly (1761–1845): Le peintre de la société parisienne de Louis XVI à Louis-Philippe. Paris, 2019, vol. 2, p. 530, under no. 281 D.

Philippe Bordes. Les "Amours" de François Gérard pour Madame Tallien: Une redécouverte. Paris, 2021, p. 6, fig. 1 (color).

The frame is from France and dates to about 1785–90 (see figs. 1–4 above). This unusual unaltered Louis XVI frame is made of oak and its mitred corners are secured with tapered splines. The carved lotus leaf sight edge rises to a flat fillet. The center hollow is ornamented with running stop flutes punctuated with husks and has acanthus leaves at the corners. The flat fillet at the top edge has a perimeter of carved pearls and stick ornament and the straight sides kick out before the vertical back edge. This type of ornament is more typically used on menuiserie such as chairs, pedestals, and consoles. The frame retains its original burnished and matte water gilding on a red bole ground, with some minor restoration along the base.

Timothy Newbery with Cynthia Moyer 2017; further information on this frame can be found in the Department of European Paintings files

This work may not be lent, by terms of its acquisition by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.