GROS, ANTOINE MAN. Baron, a French historical painter, was b. at Paris on Mar. 16, 1771, studied in the school of David, and first acquired celebrity by his pic ture of Bonaparte as the victor of Arcola. The latter was so much pleased with the work that he appointed Gros a member of the commission charged with collecting the objects of art which had been ceded to France by the of Tolentino. His first great achievement, however, was the "Pestiferes de Jaffa" (The Plague-smitten at Jaffa), which was executed at Versailles in 1804. It excited prodigious enthusiasm, the author being carried in triumph to the saloon of the Louvre, where the picture was crowned in his presence. Other important works executed by Gros during the consulate and the Empire are "Bonaparte aux Pyramides," "Le Combat d'Aboukir," "La Bataille de Wagram," " Charles-Quint recu a Saint-Denis par Francois Pr." After the return of the Bourbons Gros painted, among other pictures, "Le Depart Nocturne de Louis XVIII. au 20 Mars 1815," "La Duchesse d'Angouleme s'emharqnant a Pauillac," and " Charles X. au Camp de Reims." Besides these lie finished, in 1824, an immense
work for the cupola of the church of Saint-Genevieve in Paris, begun in 1811, to which, say his countrymen, "there is nothing comparable." It is not a fresco. but a painting executed in oil upon a peculiar kind of plaster, representing the four great dynasties of France doing homage to the tutelary genius of the nation. Charles X'. was so charmed with the work, that he raised Gros to the dignity of a baron, and doubled the sum which the painter had originally stipulated for. The rise of the romantic school bore away from him the tide of popularity, and Gros felt the ebbing of his fame so acutely, that it is suspected he committed suicide in a lit of profound chagrin. At all events, his body was drawn out of the Seine near Meudon, June 26, 1935. Gros's paintings are all marked by strength of effect, and dramatic movement in the scene; they are, however, deficient in delicacy and sentiment, and exhibit a very ordinary power of imagination.