Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy and Racine (1801–1805). Fifty-four of his designs for the works of he ancient Greek poet Anacreon were engraved by M.  Châtillon. Girodet used much of his time on literary composition. His poem Le Peintre (rather a string of commonplaces), together with poor imitations of classical poets, and essays on Le Génie and La Grâce, were published posthumously in 1829, with a biographical notice by his friend Coupin de la Couperie. Delecluze, in his Louis David et son temps, has also a brief life of Girodet.
Girodet: Romantic Rebel at the Art Institute of Chicago (2006) was the first retrospective in the United States devoted to the works of Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson. The exhibition assembled more than 100 seminal works (about 60 paintings and 40 drawings) that demonstrated the artist's range as a painter as well as a draftsman.
The peculiarities which mark Girodet's position as the herald of the romantic movement are already evident in his Sleep of Endymion (1791, also called Effet de lune or "effect of the Moon"). He has a decided inclination to the ancient style, and a statuary expression is very perceptible in his works, but they are also distinguished for life, nature and beauty. His drawing is correct, and of great precision; his colouring is rich, transparent and harmonious. He works with equal care and genius. He loves to produce effect by strong lights which are nevertheless mostly in unison with the spirit of the pieces.
The same incongruity of classic and romantic elements marks Girodet's Danae (1799) and his Quatre Saisons, executed for the king of Spain (repeated for Compiègne), and shows itself to a ludicrous extent in his Fingal (Leuchtenberg collection, St. Petersburg), executed for Napoleon in 1802. This work unites the defects of the classic and romantic schools, for Girodet's imagination ardently and exclusively pursued the ideas excited by the varied reading of both classic and modern literature, and the impressions he received from the external world afforded him little stimulus or check; he consequently retained the mannerisms of his master's practice whilst rejecting all restraint on choice of subject.

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