General Jean-Baptiste Kléber (Sketch for "The Battle of the Pyramids")
Antoine-Jean Gros (French, 1771–1835)
c. 1835
- Medium
- oil on linen
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 377.2 x 126 x 12 cm (148 1/2 x 49 5/8 x 4 3/4 in.); Unframed: 352.1 x 97.8 cm (138 5/8 x 38 1/2 in.); Former: 306 x 98 cm (120 1/2 x 38 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- France, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Adult profiles and older: its museum's description or title mentions violence, death or gore. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
In 1810, Gros exhibited a massive painting of Napoleon at the 1798 Battle of the Pyramids, one of the rare French triumphs in the failed campaign to conquer Egypt (1789-1801). After Napoleon first fell from power in 1814, the painting went into storage, until the new king Louis-Philippe chose to resurrect it for a history museum in Paris. However, perhaps to diminish Napoleon's significance, the government asked Gros to amplify the original with an addition at each end. This painting incorporates General Kléber, a famously successful military leader who had been excluded from the original painting.
