The art of war: Antoine-Jean Gros and French military painting, 1795-1804.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the rise of large-scale paintings of military subjects in France during the period from 1795 to 1804. Special attention is paid to the early career of Antoine-Jean Gros and to government patronage policies established by Napoleon Bonaparte and his principal artistic advisor, Vivant Denon, during the Consulate (1799-1804). The first chapter describes how calls made by the public and the government for history paintings of contemporary events shifted to calls for specifically military subjects during the Directory (1795-99). Chapter Two makes use of a large unpublished correspondence to reveal the formative influence upon Gros of his early collaboration with Bonaparte and General Alexandre Berthier in Italy. Chapter Three explores the Consulate's efforts to direct the attention of history painters to the military exploits of Bonaparte and his generals. The failure of the government's major effect in this domain, the concours de Nazareth revealed a widespread distaste for the violence of battle painting and resistance, especially from critics and artists on the Left, to the emerging autocratic policies of Bonaparte's art administration. Chapter Four demonstrates that the two major government commissions for the Salon of 1804, Gros' Bonaparte Visiting the Pesthouse at Jaffa and Philippe-Auguste Hennequin's Battle of Quiberon, were part of a campaign to suggest to the French public that only hereditary Bonapartist rule could end the civil strife of the Revolution. 1804 was also a turning point in French art. Many artists chose to abandon a type of artistic identity that had gained wide currency during the Revolution: that of the heroic, public-minded artist who develops his art independently, hoping to win public acclaim and ensuing reward from the government. Instead they embraced the more subordinate role of the artist who unambiguously celebrates the achievements of the government and its leader. Thus, the Salon of 1804 reestablished the government's prerogative in determining the form and content of history painting.