General Count François Fournier-Sarlovèze (1773-1827)

Look at the sheets of paper lying at the general's feet. The writing on one of them is badly faded, but the Louvre reads it as a demand to give up the town or be put to the sword. In 1809 François Fournier-Sarlovèze was holding the town of Lugo in Galicia, in north-western Spain, against Spanish insurgents, and the picture shows him sending back the envoy who had brought him that demand. Gros paints him at full length in the red and gold of a hussar, sabre in his right hand, and signed the canvas at the lower left. It was shown at the Paris Salon of 1812.

Fournier had another reputation. He was a famous duellist, and his long run of duels with a fellow officer named Dupont gave Joseph Conrad the idea for his story The Duel, which Ridley Scott later filmed as The Duellists.

His nephew gave the portrait to the Louvre in 1854. In 1939 it was lent to an exhibition of French painting in Buenos Aires, and the Second World War kept it there. In 1942 it was moved to Washington, and it came back to the Louvre only in 1946.