A sheet of studies of cavalry, horses and two heads

After training with the greatest artists of his era, Jacques-Louis David, Anne-Louis Girodet, and François Gérard, Baron Gros left for Italy in 1793, having won the second place in the Prix de Rome. Quickly drawn sketches like the present sheet are typical of the artist’s mature period after his return from Italy. This drawing comes from one of the many albums disbound after the sale of the contents of the artist’s studio in 1835. While often these kinds of sketches are not related to specific painted works, the head of a helmeted soldier in profile in red chalk, at top left, is similar to one of the figures in the painting Eleazar choosing death instead of violating the law by eating the forbidden meats, executed in 1792 for the Prix de Rome and now at the Saint-Lô Museum of Fine Arts (D. O’Brien, After the Revolution. Antoine-Jean Gros: Paintings and Propaganda under Napoleon, University Park, 2006, p. 22, fig. 9).

Drawings combining brown ink and red chalk as the present one are rather rare in the graphic work of Baron Gros; one other example is the sheet with a Seated woman wearing a veil, in the Louvre (inv. RF 54925, 127 (folio 88v°); L. Angelucci, Antoine Jean Gros (1771-1835). Inventaire général des dessins. Ecole Française, Paris, 2019, no. 355).