Napoleon and history painting
Subtitle: Antoine-Jean Gros's La Bataille d'Eylau
By: Christopher Prendergast.
Publisher: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 223
Subjects: Gros, Antoine-Jean, baron, 1771-1835.; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821 -- Portraits.; Gros, Antoine-Jean, baron, 1771-1835 -- Criticism and interpretation.; History in art.; Battles in art.; Apotheosis in art.
Description: Christopher Prendergast's study is an inquiry into the fortunes, in both theory and practice, of the idea of history painting during the Napoleonic period. His main argument is that under Napoleon, French history painting, especially battle painting, encountered a series of questions as to its nature and function. These questions arose in part from the (often contradictory) demands of a propaanda - machine operating within a post-revolutionary crisis of political legitimation, but also from changes in artistic taste which both retained and re-directed an earlier notion of the civic responsibilities of the history painter.

This is a resolutely interdisciplinary book: drawing on perspectives from political thought and history, military theory and practice, and art history, it centres on the work of the painter, Antoine-Jean Gros, and his controversial painting, La Bataille d'Eylau.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [208]-215) and index.