Général Étienne-Maurice Gérard (1773-1852), maréchal de France

After Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Jacques-Louis David, who had voted for the king's execution during the Revolution and then served the emperor, was pushed into exile and settled in Brussels among other French émigrés. This portrait, from 1816, is one of the first he made there. Its subject, General Étienne-Maurice Gérard, had a career as changeable as David's own, fighting for the Revolution, the republics and Napoleon in turn and decorated by each. David gives him a brilliant red uniform and a steady, commanding gaze, with none of the caution you might expect from a disgraced court painter. It is one of only two full-length portraits David painted in his years away from France.