GIRODET DE ROUSSY, ANNE Lours, 1767-1824; betterknown as Girodet-Trioson. Ire lost his parents in early youth, and the care of his fortune and education fell to the lot of his guardian, M. Trioson, by whom he was in later life adopted. After some preliminary studies under a painter named Luquin, Girodet entered the school of David, and at the age of twenty.two he successfully competed for the Prix de Rome. At Rome he executed his " Hippocrate recusant les presents d'Artaxerxes," and •' Endymion .dormant," a work which was hailed with acclamation at the salon of 1792. The pecu liarities which mark Girodet's position as the herald of the romantic movement are .already evident in his " Endymion." The ffim-set forms, the gray, cold color, the hard ness of the execution are proper to one trained in the school of David, but these charac teristics harmonize ill with the literary, sentimental, and picturesque suggestions which the painter has sought to render. The same incongruity marks Girodet's " Danae," and and his " Quatre Saisons," executed for the king of Spain, and shows itself to a ludic roux extent in his executed for Napoleon I. in 1802. This work unites the defects of the classic antiromantic schools, for Girodet's imagination ardently and exclu sively pursued the ideas excited by varied reading both of classic and modern literature, and the impressions which he received from the external world afforded him little stim ulus or check; he consequently retained the mannerisms of his master's practice, whist rejecting all restraint on choice of subject. The credit lost by "Fingal" Girodet
regained in 1806, when he exhibited " SO.ne de Deluge," to which (in competition with the Sabines of David) was awarded the decennial prize. This success was followed up in 1808 by the production of the " Reddition de Vienne," and " Atala an Tombeau" —a work which went far to deserve its immense popularity, by a happy choice of sub ject, and remarkable freedom from the theatricality of Girodet's usual manner, which, however, soon came to the front amain in his " Revolte de Caire" (1810). His powers now began to fail, and his habit of working at night and other excesses told upon his .constitution; in We Won of 1812, he exhibited only a " Tete de Vierge;" in 1819, " Pyg malion et Galatee" showed a still further decline of strength; and in 1824—the year in. which he produced his portraits of Cathelineau and Bonchamps—Girodet died.