[1][2] Gros studied under Jacques-Louis David in Paris and began an independent artistic career during the French Revolution.

In addition to producing several large paintings of battles and other events in Napoleon's life, Gros was a successful portraitist.

[6] Towards the close of 1785, Gros, by his own choice, entered the studio of Jacques-Louis David, which he frequented assiduously, continuing at the same time to follow the classes of the Collège Mazarin.

Around this time, however, on the recommendation of the École des Beaux Arts, he painted portraits of the members of the National Convention, but as the Revolution developed, Gros left France in 1793 for Italy.

This was followed in 1806 by Gros's Bataille d’Aboukir, 25 Juillet 1799 (Joachim Murat at the Battle of Abukir) now at Versailles;[9] and in 1808 by his Napoléon sur le champ de bataille d'Eylau, le 9 février 1807 (Napoleon at the battlefield after the Battle of Eylau) now in the Louvre.

[12] While Bonaparte did actually visit the pesthouse, later, as his army prepared to withdraw from Syria, he ordered the poisoning (with laudanum) of about fifty of his plague-infected men.

In 1835, out of sympathy with the rising tide of Romanticism and after the failure of his Hercules and Diomedes at the Salon of 1835, Gros committed suicide by drowning.

[14] Gros was made a member of the Legion of Honour on 22 October 1808 by Napoleon,[15] after the Salon of 1808, where he had exhibited the Battle of Eylau.

[17] M. Delcluze gave a brief notice of his life in Louis David et son temps ("Louis David and his times"), and Julius Meyer's Geschichte der modernen französischen Malerei ("History of Modern French Painting") contains what Britannica cites as an excellent criticism on his works.