_Antoine Jean Gros_ was one of David's pupils, and stood out among his fellows as the one most submissively devoted to his master; yet it was he who, without wishing it or knowing of it, was preparing the way for the overthrow of David's school. He was born 17th March 1771, at Paris, where his father was a miniature painter. His vocation was determined in the studio of Mme. Vigée-Lebrun, who was a friend of his parents. In the Salon of 1785, which contained David's "Andromache beside the Body of Hector," he chose his instructor. He was then the handsome youth of fifteen represented in his portrait of himself at Versailles, with delicate features, full of feeling, on which lies an amiable, gentle cast of sentimentality. Two large, dark-brown eyes look out upon the world astonished and inquiring, dark hair surrounds the quiet, fresh face, and over it is cocked a broad-brimmed felt hat. In this picture we see a fine-strung, sensitive nature, a soul which would be plunged by bitter experiences into depths of despair, in proportion as success would raise it to heights of ecstasy. In 1792 he competed unsuccessfully for the Prix de Rome, and this failure was the making of him. [Illustration: PRUDHON. LA NUIT.] He went to Italy on his own account, and was an eye-witness of the war which Napoleon was there waging. There he beheld scenes in which archæology had no part. For when Augereau's foot-soldiers carried the bridge of Arcola by assault, they had little thought of imitating an antique bas-relief. Gros observed armies on the march, and saw their triumphant entry into festally decorated cities. He learnt his lesson on the field of battle, and on his return placed on record what he had himself gone through. In Italy he caught the poetry of modern life, and at the same time was enabled as a painter to supplement David's lectures with the teaching of another surpassing master. It was in Genoa that he became acquainted with Rubens. As Prudhon's originality consisted in the fact that he was the first of that period again to stand dreaming before Leonardo and Correggio, so did Gros' lie in this, that he studied Rubens at a time when the Antwerp master was also completely out of fashion. His instinct as a painter had at the very commencement guided him to Rubens' "St. Ignatius," which in his letters he described as a "sublime and magnificent work." When he was subsequently appointed a member of the Commission charged with the transference of works of art to Paris, he had abundant opportunities of admiring critically the works of the sixteenth and seventeenth century masters. The two impressions thus received had a decisive effect upon his life. Gros became the great colourist of the Classical school, the singer of the Napoleonic epos. Compared with David's marmoreal Græco-Romans, Gros' figures seem to belong to another world; his pictures speak, both in purport and in technique, a language which must more than once have astonished his master.