Arabe du Desert
Medium
Lithograph
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1922
Accession Number
22.56.3
Tags
Art Historical Context
Baron Antoine-Jean Gros created *Arabe du Desert* in 1817 as a lithograph, an innovative printmaking technique invented in the 1790s that allowed artists to draw directly onto stone for rich, tonal effects. Gros, a leading figure in French Romanticism and former pupil of Jacques-Louis David, turned to this medium during the Bourbon Restoration, when many artists explored new ways to reach wider audiences beyond the traditional Salon paintings. The work reflects the era’s growing fascination with Orientalist subjects, portraying a solitary Arab figure with horses in a desert setting. Such imag...
About the Artist
baron Antoine Jean Gros · 1771–1835
Baron Antoine-Jean Gros (1771–1835) was born in Paris to the miniature painter Jean-Antoine Gros and the artist Pierrette-Madeleine-Cécile Durand. Displaying prodigious talent from childhood, he began drawing under his father's tutelage at age six. In 1785, at just fourteen, Gros entered the studio of Jacques-Louis David, the preeminent Neoclassical master, while attending classes at the Collège M...