1835
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
General Jean-Baptiste Kléber (Sketch for "The Battle of the Pyramids") is a 1835 unspecified by Antoine-Jean Gros, a French Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a man on horseback, General Jean-Baptiste Kléber. He's dressed in old-style military clothes. The story behind this painting is interesting - it was made for a bigger work about a battle in Egypt. The painting has a lot of detail in the man's uniform. It was created near the end of the artist's life. You can learn more about this style by looking into the technique of chiaroscuro.
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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