Gérard

Baron Francois Gerard was one of the great official artists from the time if the directorate up to that of Louis Philippe. He was a pupil of David, knight of the Legion of Honor (Bonaparte), baron (Louis XVIII), chief painter to Josephine, then to the king.

Francois Gerard, son of the steward of Cardinal de Bernis, French ambassador to the Holy See, spent his early years in Rome. The family returned to France in 1780. Thanks to the protection of M. de Breteuil, minister to the kinmg's household, in whose service his father then was, Francois Gerard was admitted to the king's pension, a small establishment founded by M. de Marigny to accommodate twelve young artists.

Subsequently he entered the studios of the sculptor Pajou and that of the painter Brenet before entering that of David in 1786. In 1789 he won the second place Prix de Rome with Joseph Making Himself Known to his Brothers (Angers), while Girodet won the first prize. In April of 1791 he left for Italy with his mother and brothers and remained there until 1793.

On his return to Rome he obtained lodgings and a studio in the Louvre. With intervention by David he escaped being drafted into the army. In the Salon of 1795 he made himself noticed with his Belisarius, painted in hardly eighteen days. He knew hard times and survived thanks to the order David obtained for him for illustrations for Freres Didot editions of Vergil and Racine.

Gerard began to make a name for himself as a portrait painter with his portrait of Isabey, painted in 1796 (Louvre) and that of Countess Regnault de Saint Jean of Angely, much admired in the Salon of 1799 (Louvre).

The great success which his Psyche and Cupid met with in 1798 assured the success of the artist who in 1800 received orders from Bonaparte, official portraits and decorations of Ossian for Malmaison. Busied with innumerable portrait of the imperial family and the great dignitaries of the empire, Gerard hardly found time to work with other sorts of pictures. It was that way with the original version of Napoleon I in the dress for the Consecration, ordered for the offices of the minister of foreign relations.

The artist knew how to portray the imperial dignity and majesty. He was ordered to make innumerable replicas of it to decorate the state rooms of consular and diplomatic residences in foreign countries. In 1809 some of them were presented to great princely dignitaries of the empire.

In 1810, however, he was able to display The Battle of Austerlitz (Versailles). In 1814 he chose the Bourbons and, protected by Talleyrand, entered the service of Louis XVIII. He showed in the Salon a portrait of the king on foot (Versailles) and received the order for The Entry of Henry IV into Paris (Versailles), a monumental canvas which appeared in the Salon of 1817. In 1819 he painted for Augustus of Prussia a Corinne at Cape Misenum (Lyon) and copied it for Mme du Cayla, a favorite of Louis XVIII (Salon of 1822). In 1824 he displayed Daphnis and Chloe (Louvre), and in 1827 he began the Consecration of Charles X, an enormous composition which he finished in 1829 (Versailles).

Covered with honors, a member of most of the academies of Europe, he had then an immense reputation. Knight of the Legion of Honor since 1802, first painter to Empress Josephine in 1806, professor at the School of Fine Arts in 1811, member of the Institute the following year, he was named first painter to the king in 1817 and baron in 1819.

Baron Gerard continued his activities under the July monarchy. In 1831 he painted King Louis Philippe. In 1832 he delivered colossal allegories for the histoy gallery of Versailles: Warlike Courage, Clemency, Constancy. In 1836 he finally completed the decoration of the four pendentives in the cupola of the Pantheon which had been ordered from him in 1820.

Assisted by numerous collaborators, Gerard left behind him an abundance which includes about thirty historical paintings, innumerable portraits including eighty seven full length ones. The influence of David which is evident in his historic paintings is, however, tempered in his portraits by a certain sensuality characteristic of the artist, one of the most brilliant portrait painters of his generation.