# François-René de Chateaubriand [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [GIRODET DE ROUCY-TRIOSON, Anne-Louis]() - Date: 1801-1850 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 120 x 96 cm ## Commentary François-René de Chateaubriand \(1768-3848\) was a French author, a representative of the reaction against the ideas of the French Revolution, and the most conspicuous figure in French literature during the First Empire. There is an air of intense introspection in the portrait that Anne-Louis Girodet painted of him in 1809, meditating on the ruins of Rome. In the still Italian air, Chateaubriand's hair is windswept \(Napoleon mischievously said the portrait looked like that of a conspirator who had come down a chimney\), hinting at the storms and passions that had lashed his best-known creation. \(Chateaubriand wrote René, a fictional self-portrait in 1802 in London.\) ## Related artworks - [Benoît-Agnes Trioson]() - [La Caucasienne]() - [Mademoiselle Lange as Danaë]() - [Mademoiselle Lange as Venus]() - [Ossian Receiving the Ghosts of French Heroes]() - [Portrait of J. B. Belley, Deputy for Saint-Domingue]() - [Portrait of Jacques-Joseph de Cathelineau]() - [Portrait of Joachim Murat]() - [Portrait of Queen Hortense]() - [Scene of the Flood]() - [Self-Portrait]() - [The Entombment of Atala]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()