Home Online catalogues True to Nature. Open-air Painting 1780-1870 30. Baron François Gérard Rome 1770 – 1837 Paris A Study of Waves Breaking against Rocks at Sunset Known by his contemporaries as “the painter of kings and king of painters”, Baron Gérard achieved international renown as court portraitist to both the French Imperial family and the restored King Louis XVIII. A pupil of David, he executed some important history paintings, as well as decorations for Versailles and the Panthéon. His work in landscape, however, is extremely rare. This study of breaking waves, with its freedom of touch and bold use of colour, is far removed from the neoclassicism of his official portraits and shows a more Romantic sensibility to the elemental forces of nature. The stormy sea, crashing violently against the rocks, is rendered with vigorous impasto brushwork and illuminated by the fiery colours of the setting sun, reflected on the surface of the water and the wet sand. Though clearly painted quickly, it was not executed before the motif. The provenance of this study, which remained with the artist’s family for generations, identifies it as part of a group of sea studies described as painted from memory – peintes de souvenir – following Gérard’s repeated visits to Boulogne-sur-Mer, Dieppe and Le Havre at the end of the 1820s.
Known by his contemporaries as “the painter of kings and king of painters”, Baron Gérard achieved international renown as court portraitist to both the French Imperial family and the restored King Louis XVIII. A pupil of David, he executed some important history paintings, as well as decorations for Versailles and the Panthéon. His work in landscape, however, is extremely rare. This study of breaking waves, with its freedom of touch and bold use of colour, is far removed from the neoclassicism of his official portraits and shows a more Romantic sensibility to the elemental forces of nature. The stormy sea, crashing violently against the rocks, is rendered with vigorous impasto brushwork and illuminated by the fiery colours of the setting sun, reflected on the surface of the water and the wet sand. Though clearly painted quickly, it was not executed before the motif. The provenance of this study, which remained with the artist’s family for generations, identifies it as part of a group of sea studies described as painted from memory – peintes de souvenir – following Gérard’s repeated visits to Boulogne-sur-Mer, Dieppe and Le Havre at the end of the 1820s.