George P. A. Healy: In the Atelier of Baron Gros

"Plague at Jaffa" by Antoine-Jean Gros

"Everything in France amused and delighted me - the peasant women in their white caps, the noisy marketplaces, the little urchins who in the streets called out to each other in French, that mysterious tongue! I was soon in Paris, looking about me.

I at once entered the atelier of Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, and went to work with a will, doing my best to understand my master and my comrades, and quickly catching up enough French to make my way. Gros was then a very fine-looking man of sixty-three. His career had been a most brilliant one, and yet he was far from happy. Highly sensitive, almost morbidly so, he suffered pangs from things that a stronger man would have despised.

He had painted in the early years of the century his magnificent picture of the 'Plague at Jaffa,' now in the Louvre. He was recognized as one of the first among the French artists of his day. When the Bourbons once more returned to power, the painter of Napoleon's campaigns, instead of being out of favor, received important commissions and the title of baron. When I entered his atelier, he was still highly respected, but he was a saddened and almost despairing man. 

The influence of his master David was so strong upon him that, instead of following his own inspiration and painting spirited pictures of contemporary life, he endeavored to return to the old classical compositions, freezingly correct, such as he had admired in his youth. In this attempt he failed, and his later pictures are very inferior to those of his prime. Then he was a retiring man, or rather, perhaps, he cared but little for the society which others courted, was rarely seen outside of his studio, and was not even sociable, it is said, in his own family. Once when Gros received one of his intimate friends, he said to him bitterly, 'Ah! you have come to see the dead man in his tomb.'

On the 25th of June, 1835, Gros went to Bas Meudon, a little outside of Paris, and stretched himself on the sandy bed of the Seine, where there was but a depth of about three feet of water. Such was the miserable end of a man who had had, one might say, more than his share of success and glory. He had outlived his popularity and his heart was broken."

To be continue

(Excerpts from "Reminiscences of a Painter" by G.P.A. Healy.)