page_title: Marguerite Gérard
section_title: Art production
hierarchical_section_title: Marguerite Gérard / Art production
context_page_description: Marguerite Gérard was a successful French painter and print-maker working in the Rococo style. She was the daughter of Marie Gilette and perfumer Claude Gérard. At eight years old she became the sister-in-law of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and when she was 14, she went to live with him. She was also the aunt of the artist Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard. Gérard became Fragonard's pupil in the mid-1770s and studied painting, drawing and printmaking under his tutelage. Gérard and Fragonard created nine etchings in 1778. Historians currently believe Gérard was the sole artist of five of these etchings since many have a duplicate created by her tutor Fragonard. More than 300 genre paintings, 80 portraits, and several miniatures have been documented to Gérard. One of her paintings, The Clemency of Napoleon, was purchased by Napoleon in 1808.
context_section_description: Gérard became interested in art while living with her sister, Marie-Anne Fragonard, and brother-in-law, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, in Paris. She aspired to become an artist like her sister, a painter of miniatures, and her brother-in-law encouraged her ambitions. She began training with Fragonard at the age of 16. She became an unofficial apprentice of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, working from his drawings to create her first pieces of work; soon after, she began to create her own genre paintings. The depiction of everyday life closely resembles the style of Gerard Ter Borch and Gabriël Metsu, Dutch artists from the seventeenth century. Much like these Dutch artists, Gérard painted meticulous details using finely blended brushstrokes. Her unpretentious paintings represented the major underground current in the art of the early 1800s. Depicting the minor domestic dramas in the homes of the rich middle class, Marguerite Gérard not only paved the way for other women artists, but also men of the next generation, including her nephew Alexandre Evariste, to whom she tried to be what Fragonard had been to her.
caption: The Clemency of Napoleon (1806)
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