Antoine-Jean Gros, called Baron Gros

Sale of the artist' studio, 23 November 1835, probably lot 122 (titled Dessin à la plume pour une composition des révoltés du Caire); 

Collection Jean-Baptiste Delestre; 

Collection Jules Boilly;

His sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 19-20 March 1869, lot 140;

Collection of Comte de Reiset; 

His sales, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 30 January-3 February 1922, lot 18;

Collection Louis Deglatigny, Rouen;

His sale, M^e Ader, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 5 February 1951, lot 77; 

Collection Gaston Delestre;

By descent until the sale;

Sale Collection Gaston Delestre, Artcurial, Paris, 22 March 2017, lot 14;

Where acquired by the present owner.

J.-B. Delestre, Gros et ses ouvrages, Paris 1845, pp. 62-64;

L'Autographe, 1 December 1864, no. 25, p. 216, repr. ;

J.-B. Delestre, Gros, sa vie et ses ouvrages, Paris 1867, pp. 68-72, fig. 22 and 23, and p. 373;

J. Tripier Le Franc, Histoire de la vie et de la mort du Baron Gros, Paris 1880, pp. 203-204 and p. 680;

G. Dargenty, Le Baron Gros, Paris-London 1887, p. 31, repr.;

P. Lelièvre, ‘Gros, peintre d'histoire’, in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, May 1936, pp. 300-301, fig. 8 and 9;

G. Delestre, Antoine-Jean Gros, Paris 1951 and 1954, fig. 29 (recto);

F. Daulte, Le dessin français de David à Courbet, Lausanne 1953, p. IX, repr. pl. 4 and 5, pp. 50-51;

A. Fyjis-Walker, ‘A recently discovered drawing by Antoine-Jean Gros’, in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 127, no. 990, September 1985, p. 621 and fig. 69 (verso);

Napoléon, l'Empereur sous la verrière du Grand Palais : La collection Pierre-Jean Chalençon, cat. exh. Grand Palais, Paris 2018, p. 25.

Geneva, musée d'Art et d'Histoire, De Watteau à Cézanne, July-September 1951, no. 140;

Paris, musée Carnavalet, Chefs-d'œuvre des collections parisiennes. Peintures et dessins de l'Ecole française du XIX^e siècle, December 1952-February 1953, no. 146, repr. pl. XXIV (titled Orientaux implorant la clémence de Bonaparte);

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Gros, Géricault, Delacroix, January-March 1954, no. 20;

Paris, Grand Palais, Napoléon, June-December 1969, no. 69.

On the recto, Napoleon on horseback towers over a group of prostrate Egyptians, extending his arm in a sign of pardon. The more detailed verso shows the same Cairenes surrounded by other figures, including a young mother and a man in chains (see exh. cat. Napoléon, 1969, p. 21, op. cit.).

This magnificent recto-verso sheet, drawn with a free and rapid line, was a preparatory work for an ambitious composition illustrating an episode of the Revolt of Cairo. The chosen moment is not the violence of the fighting itself, which Girodet would illustrate in his 1810 masterpiece The Cairo Rebels (Musée National du Château de Versailles), but the subsequent reconciliation, showing the future Emperor’s clemency and his desire for peace. The project was abandoned when Gros was commissioned to paint the Plague Victims of Jaffa (exhibited in the 1804 Salon; Musée du Louvre).

The subject refers to one of the bloodiest episodes of the Egyptian expedition led by General Bonaparte in 1798–1799. Arriving in Cairo after the victory at the Battle of the Pyramids in July 1798 (see lot 1), Napoleon introduced a series of reforms that angered the people of Cairo. A revolt flared up on 21 October, but was savagely repressed and crushed by the French army the next day.

Tripier-Lefranc (1880, p. 674; op. cit.) refers to a sketch for the painting, apparently the subject of an engraving.

Other artists tackled the same theme, firstly Michele Rigo, HM the Emperor showing mercy to the Divan, in Egypt (1806 Salon), then Pierre-Narcisse Guérin with Bonaparte pardoning the Cairo rebels (1808 Salon; Musée National du Château de Versailles). These works have a more conventional and static composition than was envisaged by Gros, based on the present drawing, brought to vigorous life by the various spontaneous poses of the figures.