Portrait of a Woman

baron Antoine Jean Gros

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Baron Gros was a highly successful student of Neoclassical painter Jacques Louis David (French, 1748–1825). Gros received many commissions for large history paintings during the Napoleonic period, but eventually relied on portraiture to support himself. This signed pair of half-length portraits (see also 2014.271.1) offer few clues as to the sitters’ identities. Presumably a husband and wife, they sit in simple chairs against an unadorned background.Their frank and intimate expressions alone carry the force of expression.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art