Battlefield with Soldier on Horseback (Napoleon?)
ca.1810
Medium
Pen and black ink on beige antique laid paper
Dimensions
sheet: 7 3/8 x 13 1/2 in. (18.7 x 34.3 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Renée Sacks Bequest, 2008
Accession Number
2008.473
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
Art Historical Context
This evocative pen-and-ink drawing by Baron Antoine-Jean Gros captures the drama of a battlefield scene, likely from the Napoleonic era around 1810. Gros, a leading French artist of his time, frequently depicted the campaigns of Napoleon I, blending dynamic movement with emotional intensity. The small sheet, rendered in fluid black ink on antique laid paper, shows a mounted soldier—possibly Napoleon himself—amid the chaos of war, with rearing horses and scattered figures suggesting the heat of battle. As a preparatory study rather than a finished painting, the work highlights Gros’s masterful...
About the Artist
baron Antoine Jean Gros · 1771–1835
Baron Antoine-Jean Gros (1771–1835) was born in Paris to the miniature painter Jean-Antoine Gros and the artist Pierrette-Madeleine-Cécile Durand. Displaying prodigious talent from childhood, he began drawing under his father's tutelage at age six. In 1785, at just fourteen, Gros entered the studio of Jacques-Louis David, the preeminent Neoclassical master, while attending classes at the Collège M...