Gérard, François

6 Pages 1573 Words

sibility for his youngest brother. He urgently needed to earn a living and worked for the publisher Pierre Didot the elder illustrating luxury folio editions of La Fontaine’s Les Amours de Psyché et de Cupidon (1797), the works of Virgil (1798) and Racine (1801) and Les Amours pastorales de Daphnis et Chloé (1800). He was greatly assisted financially by the miniature painter Jean-Baptiste Isabey who commissioned his Belisarius (ex-Duke of Leuchtenberg priv. col., Munich), which, having taken only 18 days to paint, brought him acclaim at the Salon of 1795. Immediately afterwards Isabey sold it to Caspar Meyer, Ambassador of the Batavian Republic, at a profit, which he donated to the artist. He also commissioned the superb portrait of himself and his four-year-old daughter (1795; Paris, Louvre; see fig.) which drew attention to Gérard at the Salon of 1796.
Gérard’s reputation and success were based on his work as a portrait painter. Isabey and his Daughter was widely praised for its superb naturalism, rivalled only by David...