Antoine Jean Gros (1771-1835), though a classicist by training, was forced by circumstances, and by the patronage of Napoleon who ennobled him, to devote his brush to an important phase of contemporary life—the glorification of his hero’s warlike achievements. He was by no means a realist; and although he followed Napoleon on many of his campaigns and presumably brought back with him rich material in sketches and vivid recollections, his forceful compositions accentuate the heroic aspect and the imaginative appeal of warfare, and are not spontaneous glimpses of actuality. The whole glamour of the Napoleonic legend is expressed in the group of wounded soldiers who, oblivious of their suffering, cheer their great captain in _Napoleon at the Battle of Eylau_ (No. 389). The sense of the heroic is as pronounced in the large painting, _Napoleon visiting the Plague-stricken at Jaffa_ (No. 388), in the _Bonaparte at Arcole_ (No. 391), and even in the impressive _Portrait of Lieutenant-General Fournier-Sarlovèze_ (No. 392A), silhouetted against a smoke-filled battlefield. A careful inspection of this large canvas shows _pentimenti_ in the painting of the legs, of which the General seems now to have two pair! Gros’s weakness, like that of all David’s pupils, was his neglect of colour. His popularity waned rapidly after the fall of Napoleon. He became a victim to melancholia, and drowned himself in the Seine in 1835. PIERRE PRUD’HON Though not entirely detached from the ruling school of the period, Pierre Prud’hon (1758-1823) occupies a unique position among his contemporaries. Having absolved his preliminary studies at Dijon, he became the pupil of the old masters—of Correggio and Leonardo—first in Paris and then in Rome, where he worked for seven years before definitely settling at Paris in 1789. To his sympathy with the Italian masters he owed that mellowness of colour and understanding of chiaroscuro which escaped the grasp of the Davidists. He was a real _painter_ as distinguished from the classicist _draughtsmen_ of the official school. Even if it is impossible to share to-day the enthusiasm at one time evoked by the somewhat grotesque allegory, _Justice and Divine Vengeance pursuing Crime_ (No. 747), this picture, which was intended for the Palais de Justice, rises immeasurably above the average of the “imaginative” paintings produced by Prud’hon’s contemporaries.