Francois Gerard

François Gérard (1770-1837)

François-Pascal Simon, Baron Gérard (born March 12, 1770 in Rome - January 11, 1837 in Paris ) was a French portrait painter .

Gérard was the son of a Frenchman and an Italian and came to Paris as a child . There he was a student of the sculptor Augustin Pajou and the painter Jacques -Louis David , who hired him in 1791 as an assistant.

Politically flexible, Gérard arranged himself with all the rulers of the French Revolution (1789), Napoleon and the subsequent Bourbons . David got him a jury position in the Revolutionary Tribunal , which Gérard escaped by constant sick leave, however. In 1819 he was because of his picture of Henry IV's entry into Paris by King Louis XVIII. ennobled to the Baron . He received the post of Royal Court Painter and the Cross of the Legion of Honor . His friends included Honoré de Balzac.

Gérard painted mostly mythological and historical images, for which he took over the Neoclassic style of David, but this enriched by a dreamy touch. He was court painter to Napoleon and King Louis XVIII, portrait painter of the Bourbons and other princes. Many of his portraits also show friends and relatives. He can be described as the most popular portrait painter of the Empire .