  About the Artwork
  
  
  Antoine-Jean Gros, who came of age during the French Revolution, was fascinated by battle themes. Given permission, in the 1790s, to travel with Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, he spent several years producing large paintings celebrating the victories of the French army. In this violent depiction of the Battle of Abukir, near the coast of Egypt, Seid Mustafa Pasha’s troops are in disarray and the defeated Ottoman leader offers his sword to the French general Joachim Murat, who sits astride a rearing white horse. This quickly rendered painting is a preliminary oil sketch in which Gros worked out final details for a much larger, more finished work that is now in Versailles.
  
  
  Title
  Murat Defeating the Turkish Army at Aboukir
  
  
  Artwork Date
  ca. 1805
  
  Artist
  Antoine Jean Gros
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1771-1835
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  French
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on canvas, mounted on board
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 34 3/4 × 54 1/2 inches (88.3 × 138.4 cm)
  Framed: 44 3/4 × 64 3/4 × 3 3/8 inches (113.7 × 164.5 × 8.6 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  European Painting
  
  
  Credit
  Founders Society Purchase with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Edgar B. Whitcomb
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  49.337
  
  
  Copyright
  Public Domain
