American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
Indefatigable as a worker during her long career, she produced an
immense number of portraits; and while she painted comparatively few
subject pictures, she arranged her models in so picturesque a fashion
that, as in the example here given, her portraits have great charm of
composition. With a virile grasp of form, tempered though it be with
grace, Madame Lebrun offers an interesting example of woman's work
in art; and, while she has nothing to concede to the painters of her
time, is no less interesting as showing that by force of native
talent the woman of the early part of the century had in her power the
conquest of nearly all the desired rights of the New Woman. She has
left extremely interesting memoirs of her life, written in her old
age, and there are many anecdotes bearing testimony to her wit. One of
these goes back to the time when Louis XVIII., then a youth, enlivened
the sittings for his portrait by singing, quite out of tune. "How do
you think I sing?" inquired he. "Like a prince," responded the amiable
artist.
With Antoine Jean Gros we come to the last and the greatest of the
pupils of David. Born in Paris March 16, 1771, he competed but once,
in 1792, for the Prix de Rome, was unsuccessful, but undertook the
voyage thither on his own slender resources the next year. Italy was
in a troubled state--he who troubled all Europe in the early years
of the century being there at the head of his army; and in 1796, at
Genoa, Gros attracted the attention of Madame Bonaparte. It was she
who proposed that Gros should paint Napoleon; and Gros consequently
went to Milan, and after the battle of Arcole painted the hero
carrying the tricolor across the bridge at the head of his grenadiers.
The picture pleased Bonaparte, who had it engraved, and gave Gros a
commission to collect for the Louvre the chief artistic treasures of
Italy. These functions occupied him until 1801, during which period,
however, he executed a number of successful portraits.
Returning to Paris after nine years, he painted the Hospital at
Jaffa, representing Napoleon visiting the fever-stricken soldiers.
The success of this picture, exhibited in 1804, was very great; and
it remains Gros's best title to remembrance. In it is something of
the reality poetized and seen through the eyes of an artist which
characterizes the work of Eugene Delacroix.
The force of David, however, was too great for Gros; at fifty years of
age we find him demanding counsel of the master, who sternly bids him
leave his "futile subjects," and devote his time to great historical
epochs of the past. When David was sent into exile in 1816, it was to
Gros that he confided the direction of his school; and this task, and
the production of immense canvases like the Battle of the Pyramids,
filled his life. The picture here reproduced, the Visit of Charles the
Fifth and Francis the First to the Tombs of the Kings in the Cathedral
of St. Denis, was painted in 1812.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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