Gros, Antoine-Jean

Gros, Antoine-Jean

(born March 16, 1771, Paris, Fr.—died June 26, 1835, Paris) French painter. He was trained by his father, a painter of miniatures, and later byJacques-Louis David in Paris. In the 1790s he accompanied Napoleon on his campaigns as his official battle painter. The dramatic power of such paintings as Napoleon Visiting the Pesthouse at Jaffa (1804) influenced Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix. When David went into exile after Napoleon's defeat, Gros took over his studio and tried to work in the Neoclassical style. His best works after 1815 were portraits. Haunted by a sense of failure, he drowned himself in the Seine. He was a leading figure in the development of Romanticism.