1835
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Egyptian Family (Sketch for "The Battle of the Pyramids") is a 1835 unspecified by Antoine-Jean Gros, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This is a quick sketch by Antoine-Jean Gros. It shows a man, woman, and child sitting close together under a tree. The lines are loose, like he was testing shapes before a bigger painting. Gros painted this while working on a huge Napoleon scene. The family looks calm, but Gros knew fighting was near — he’d been in Egypt with the army years earlier. His later work got darker. See how he often mixed war with quiet family scenes. Check out Gros’s painting *Napoleon at the Battle of the Pyramids* at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
In 1810, Gros exhibited a massive painting of Napoleon at the 1798 Battle of the Pyramids, one of the rare French triumphs in the failed campaign to conquer Egypt (1789-1801). After Napoleon first fell from power in 1814, the painting went into storage, until the new king Louis-Philippe chose to resurrect it for a history museum in Paris. However, perhaps to diminish Napoleon's significance, the government asked Gros to amplify the original with an addition at each end. This painting incorporates General Kléber, a famously successful military leader who had been excluded from the original…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Antoine-Jean Gros (French pronunciation: ; 16 March 1771 – 25 June 1835) was a French painter of historical subjects.
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