GERARD, FRANcOIS, BARON, one of the most distinguished painters of France, was born of a French father and Italian mother at Rome in 1770. He went early to Paris, and was first placed with the sculptor Pajou, and finally with David, as he found painting better suited to his taste than sculpture. Gerard's first work of note was the 'Blind Belisarius' carrying his dying guide in his arms, painted in 1795 ; it is now in tho Leuchtenberg Gallery at Munich, and is well known in prints. The next work which attracted notice was 'Psyche receiving the First Kies from Cupid,' which, though extremely elaborate in execution, is an inferior work to the Belisarius : its delicate execu tion and academical drawing are nearly its only merits; the figures are motionless and lifeless. Cupid and Psyche look like tinted statues. These however were not the works of the mature artist, and they were followed by many admirable pictures in history, poetry, and portrait.
Some of Gerard'a works are among the best and largest oil-paintings in existence. His entrance of Henry IV. into Paris (his masterpiece), painted in 1817, is, in more than one sense, a prodigious work : it is thirty French feet wide by fifteen high, and is almost one huge mass of life and character; the drawing is correct, vigorous, and varied, the colouring vivid, and it is a perfect school of costume for the period : it has been engraved by Toschi. This picture was painted for Louis XVIIL as a substitute for the 'Battle of Austerlitz,' painted by - Gerard in 1810, and it procured him his title of Baron. The 'Battle of Austerlitz,' and the Coronation of Charles X.; painted in 1827, are of the same vast proportionsas the Henry IV.,' but they are as inferior in execution a3 in eubject. The 'Battle of Austerlitz' is, like many other of the paintings of Napoleon's battles, little more than a display of uniforms, though it is superior to the majority of the works of its class, and is equal to its subject : there is an engraving of it by Godefroy. The Henry IV.' and the Battle of Austerlitz'
are at Versailles. The Coronation of Charles X.' was nearly destroyed in the revolution of 1830: but had it been entirely so, Gerard would probably have rather gained than lost in reputation ; a robe picture is however a poor subject for any painter, but particularly for a great painter.
Of Gerard's small pictures, the best is perhaps Thetis Bearing the Armour of Achilles,' painted its 1822, and purchased by Prince Pozzo di Borgo, of which there is an engraving by Richemine. Two such works as the 'Henry IV.' and the 'Thetis' display rare powers for the same painter ; and when we consider in addition that he was constantly engaged in portrait painting, in which he was unsurpassed in France in his own time, his title to the reputation of one of the great painters of recent times is manifest. A list of Gerard's portraits would almost amount to a list of the moat illustrious personages of his : Pierre Adam has etched a collection of eighty full-length portraits after him, seven inches and a half by five inches and a half, French—' Collection dts Portraits Historiques de M. Is Baron Gerard, premier peintre du Roi, graves he l'eau-forto par M. Pierre Adam, precedee d'uno Notice sur le Portrait Historique.' Gerard died January II, 1837: he was a member of the Institute of France ; a chevalier of the orders of St. Michel and the Legion d'Honnenr ; and member of the academies of Munich, Vienna, Berlin, Turin, Milan, and Rome.
There are many notices of Gerard in the French and German contemporary periodical press.