General Étienne-Maurice Gérard

Jacques-Louis David, 1816
General Étienne-Maurice Gérard, Jacques-Louis David
General Étienne-Maurice Gérard, zoomed in
197.2 cmGeneral Étienne-Maurice Gérard scale comparison136.2 cm

General Étienne-Maurice Gérard is a Neoclassical Oil on Canvas Painting created by Jacques-Louis David in 1816. It lives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The image is in the Public Domain, and tagged Portraits and Military Artwork. DownloadSee General Étienne-Maurice Gérard in the Kaleidoscope

After the fall of Napoleon, Jacques-Louis David lost his exhaulted status as the “First Painter to the Emperor” and went into self-imposed exile in Brussels. One of his first portraits in Brussels was of Etienne-Maurice Gerard, a retired General in the French army. General Gerard had led a life as politically shifting as David himself, serving the monarchy, the revolutionary republics, and Napoleon. Valued by each government as a brave and skilled leader, he won distinction in dozens of conflicts, and was made a count by Napoleon after sustaining wounds in the battle of Leipzig.

David’s portrait was painted in Brussels in 1816, where General Gerard was spending a quiet retirement. But you can't keep a good soldier down, and only a year later Gerard returned to France, where he eventually participated in the July Revolution of 1830, and was appointed the extremely badass title, Minister of War.

Reed Enger, "General Étienne-Maurice Gérard," in Obelisk Art History, Published September 25, 2015; last modified May 05, 2021, http://www.arthistoryproject.com/artists/jacques-louis-david/general-etienne-maurice-gerard/.

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