ON SHIFTING GROUND: THE REVOLUTIONARY CAREER OF FRANÇOIS GÉRARD BY JENNIFER MARIE LANGWORTHY DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor David O’Brien, Chair Associate Professor Lisa Rosenthal Associate Professor Oscar Vázquez Assistant Professor Jennifer Greenhill ii ii Abstract This dissertation examines the career of François-Pascal-Simon Gérard (1770- 1837) from its beginnings in the mid-1780s through the end of the French Revolution and provides a more complete understanding of Gérard as a key artist of the Revolutionary decade. A goal of this study is to set aside long-standing assumptions concerning Gérard’s political convictions and doubts about his artistic originality in order to shed light on Gérard’s critical contributions to Revolutionary art, and in particular, to the Davidian school. I demonstrate that, in the 1790s, Gérard moved away from the subjects and styles forged in Jacques-Louis David’s (1748-1825) studio. Most significantly, he reinvented classicism as a vehicle for moderate political themes, he reintroduced apolitical, sexualized imagery into classicism, and he established an artistic practice in which the serious business of the history painter was thoroughly integrated with that of the high-society portraitist. To do this, Gérard developed new modes of classicism, experimented with the emergent subject matter of Romanticism, and and explored issues of gender and sexuality in uncommon ways. During the tumultuous decade of the Revolution, when political consensus was at best fleeting and the traditional institutions of the French art world faltered, Gérard’s political and artistic flexibility allowed him not only to escape many of the consequences suffered by politically committed artists, but also eventually to thrive as a leading painter of the society of the late Directory. His career provides an alternative case for understanding the interplay of art, politics, and patronage in late-eighteenth century France. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………….……1 CHAPTER 1: IN THE SHADOW OF DAVID: BECOMING AN ARTIST IN REVOLUTIONARY PARIS………………………………………………….………..13 CHAPTER 2: NEO-CLASSICISM, POLITICS, AND SEXUALITY; THE AENEID ILLUSTRATIONS OF GÉRARD AND GIRODET…………………….…..………..62 CHAPTER 3: STEPPING OUT OF THE SHADOW: GÉRARD’S FIRST OFFICIAL SUCCESS AT THE CONCOURS DE L’AN II……………………....………………123 CHAPTER 4: RETELLINGS: GÉRARD’S MARIUS AND BELISARIUS...........................176 CHAPTER 5: A NEW DIRECTION: GÉRARD AND THE THEME OF CUPID AND PSYCHE DURING THE DIRECTORY………………………..……211 CHAPTER 6: BECOMING A SOCIETY PORTRAITIST: GÉRARD’S PORTRAITS FROM THE END OF THERMIDOR THROUGH THE DIRECTORY…….......…268 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………..324 ILLUSTRATIONS………………………………………...…………………………………..336 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………...…443 1 Introduction In 1829, art critic Auguste Jal proclaimed, “Glory be to Gérard, who is a Baron and the first painter to the King! What matter that he is a Baron? He is Gérard! What matter that he is the first painter to the King? He is the King of first painters.”1 From 1795 until the early 1830s, critics hailed François-Pascal-Simon Gérard (1770-1837) as one of the leading artists of his generation. He began his career under the tutelage of Jacques-Louis David (1748-1829), painting critical sections of some of David’s key Revolutionary paintings while producing copies of others. Despite struggling in the early years of the French Revolution to make a name for himself, Gérard won the concours de l’an II on 14 Fructidor an III (31 August 1795) thereby securing a major government commission at a time when such opportunities were scant. In the Salons from 1795 until the end of the Directory on 4 Brumaire an IV (26 October 1795), Gérard’s innovative history paintings and portraits received high critical praise and proved his ability to adapt to the continually changing politics and society of Revolutionary France. From the 1790s until well after the turn-of-the-century, he also designed numerous illustrations for one of the foremost Parisian publishers, Pierre Didot (1760-1853). Throughout Napoleon Bonaparte’s reign as First Consul and then Emperor (1799-1811), Gérard was prolific and lauded. He exhibited numerous large-scale portraits of 1 The quotation is found in a pamphlet Jal dedicated to Gérard’s 1827 painting, The Coronation of Charles X. Le Peuple au Sacré: critiques, observations, causeries, faites devant le tableau de M. le baron Gérard, premier peintre du Roi (Paris: A. J. Dénain, 1829), 31. “Gloire à Gérard qui est baron et premier peintre du Roi! Qu’importe qu’il soit baron? Il est GÉRARD! Qu’importe qu’il soit premier peintre du Roi? Il es le roi des premier peintres!” 2 Napoleon’s family and of the European courts and nobility, and history paintings for Napoleon including Ossian Summoning the Spirits (1801) as well as a painting to commemorate Napoleon’s victory over Russia and Austria at the Battle of Austerlitz in December 1805. He also earned prestigious titles: Knight of the Order of the Legion of Honor (1802), First Painter to the Empress Josephine (1806), and Professor at the École des Beaux Arts (1811). After the fall of Napoleon, Gérard once again easily navigated the changing of regimes, maintaining his position as a portraitist to the courts of Europe and eventually producing more history paintings than he did during the Napoleonic years. Honors continued to be conferred upon him: member of l’Institut (1812), First Painter to king Louis XVIII (1817), Baron (1819), and elevation to the rank of Officer in the Order of the Legion of Honor (1824). Despite Gérard’s presence as one of the leading figures of the Parisian art world for more than five decades, the only monographic study of his life and career to date remains Charles Lenormant’s Essai de biographie et de critique sur François Gérard, peintre d’histoire, published in 1846.2 For the majority of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Gérard’s oeuvre went largely unnoticed by scholars, and he was never the focus of a 2 Prior to this publication, a chapter is devoted to an overview of Gérard’s career in A.C. Quatremère de Quincy, “Notice historique sur la vie et les ouvrages de M. Gérard,” Suite du recueil de notice historiques lues dans les séance publique de l’Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts à l’Institut (Paris: 1837), 197-238. Gérard’s career is also discussed in Etienne-Jean Delécluze, Louis David, son école & son temps (Paris: Didier, 1855) new edition with preface and notes by Jean-Pierre Mouilleseaux (Paris: Macula, 1983) and Henri Delaborde, “La peinture de portrait en France: François Gérard,” Revue des Deux Mondes, #5 (October 15, 1856): 770-801. The other nineteenth-century sources are the lists of Gérard’s oeuvre and the collections of some of his letters published by Henri Gérard, the artist’s nephew. These are: Oeuvre du Baron François Gérard, 1789-1836 3 vols. (Paris: 1857); Correspondance de François Gérard, peintre d’histoire (Paris: 1867); and, Lettres Adressés au Baron François Gérard, peintre d’histoire 2nd. ed. 2 vols. (Paris: 1886). 3 major exhibition.3 The first American dissertation to accord Gérard’s career a central place was Carol Margot Osborne’s “Pierre Didot the Elder and French Book Illustration, 1789-1822,” completed in 1979. As her title suggests, Osborne evaluated Gérard’s illustrative work within the context of Didot’s major editions.4 Until the late 1980s, scholars produced only a handful of articles devoted to a few of Gérard’s works.5 The years surrounding the bicentennial of the French Revolution witnessed a spate of rigorous scholarship that profoundly revised our understanding of virtually every aspect of the Revolutionary decade. Pioneering scholars provided substantial and much-needed reassessments of the careers of David and many of his students, and a 3 His better known paintings have, of course, been on view at Louvre and in several museums across the world. The largest single collection of his works, held at Versailles, are in non-public rooms. Only two exhibitions of a fairly substantial number of his works have been held. The earliest is Gros, ses amis, ses élèves held in Paris in 1936. The other was not until 1992, when a larger group of Gérard’s works was featured in Baron François Gérard (1770-1837), an exhibition and sale of his drawings and paintings held at Jill Newhouse Gallery in New York. This show, however, only included two portraits and primarily featured painted sketches and drawings. 4 Osborne completed her dissertation at Stanford University in 1979. Garland Publishing published it in 1985. Prior to Osborne’s study, French scholar Alain Latreille completed a “Catalogue raisonné des portraits peints par le Baron François Gérard” as a mémoire at the Ecole du Louvre in 1973. Latreille listed the portraits in chronological order with relevant factual information for each one, including its dimensions, location, provenance, exhibition history, and bibliography. 5 These include Gaston Brière, “Notes sur des portraits de Gros, Girodet et Gérard,” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’art français année 1911 (1911): 209-216; G. Hubert, “L’Ossian de François Gérard et ses variants,” Revue du Louvre #4-5 (1967): 239- 248; James Henry Rubin, “New Documents on the Méditateurs: Baron Gérard, Mantegna, and French Romanticism circa 1800,” Burlington Magazine CXVII (December 1975): 785-90; Ruth Kaufmann, “François Gerard’s ‘Entry of Henry IV into Paris’: The Iconography of Constitutional Monarchy,” Burlington Magazine CXVII (December 1975): 790-802; Monique Moulin, “François Gérard, peintre du 10 août, 1792,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (May-June 1983): 197-202. 4 profusion of major exhibitions drew renewed attention to the Davidian school.6 Yet the innovative studies of this period did not produce a fuller understanding or reevaluation of Gérard’s career.