Portrait of a Man and His Children

Around 1800 Jacques-Louis David was the most powerful painter in France, the man who had put the Revolution and then Napoleon on canvas, so when this sober family group came to light art historians were quick to hand it to him. Charles Saunier announced it as a David in 1903, and others agreed. That attribution has since fallen away, because the brushwork does not match David in these years, and names like Martin Drolling have been floated instead without sticking. The sitter is just as uncertain. An old tradition calls him Michel Gérard, a plain-spoken farmer who sat in the revolutionary Convention and was nicknamed Père Gérard, shown here among his grown children. Today the museum in Le Mans lets the picture stay anonymous.