Gérard, François Pascal (1770-1837)

Cupid and Psyche (1798), by the French neoclassical painter François Gérard (1770-1837). Cupid (or Eros) was a popular subject in mythological and sentimental works of art, where he is often portrayed as a winged child with a bow and arrows, which he shoots through the hearts of men and women, causing them to fall in love. He fell in love with Psyche, a Greek nymph who personified the soul.

French painter. He was a successful portrait painter both in the Napoleonic period and during the Restoration, painting about 300 portraits of celebrities, including those of Napoleon, the politician Talleyrand, the sculptor Antonio Canova, the writer Madame de Staël, and the socialite Madame Récamier.

Gérard was a pupil of the sculptor Pajou and later of Jacques Louis David. Unlike David, he took no part in the French Revolution and avoided serving on the Revolutionary tribunal, to which he was assigned at David's wish, on the plea of illness.

His finest work includes the portrait Jean-Baptiste Isabey and his Daughter and Psyché et l'Amour/Amor and Psyche (both Louvre, Paris).