Gros, Antoine-Jean (1771-1835)
Autoportrait (Self-Portrait)
c.1790
Oil on canvas, 27.3 × 21.9 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Gros trained with Jacques Louis David, leader of the most prominent atelier in Paris during a tumultuous period marked by Revolution and Empire. Gros gained renown by propagandizing France’s battlefield triumphs but was also a gifted portraitist. This self-portrait, executed when he was around twenty, is remarkable for its immediacy, the result of fluid brushwork betraying no signs of hesitation or correction. At The Met it joins Gros’s portrait of his compatriot and fellow David pupil, François Gérard, executed about the same time. (MET)