Christine Boyer

Christine Boyer from 1800, now in the Louvre, depicts Lucien Bonaparte's first wife, who died of tuberculosis in 1800 at the age of twenty-two. Gros's intimate knowledge of the Bonaparte family through his role as Napoleon's painter gave him access to paint family members at moments of personal as well as public significance, and this portrait of the doomed young woman carries a poignancy that his official imperial commissions typically lacked. Christine Boyer's early death left Lucien a widower at twenty-five, and the portrait was made very close to or shortly after her death — the date 1800 suggests it may be a posthumous likeness created from earlier sketches or other sources. Gros's warm, luminous palette creates an image of fragile beauty that embodies the Romantic fascination with beautiful young women cut down in their prime — a theme that would recur throughout early 19th-century European painting and literature. The Louvre portrait is among Gros's most purely tender works, free of the martial energy that animates his battle canvases and capturing instead a quality of delicate, transient life that his richly colored technique renders with exceptional feeling.

The portrait renders the young woman with a poignant beauty enhanced by the knowledge of her early death. Gros’s warm, luminous palette creates an image of fragile loveliness that transcends conventional portraiture.