He urgently needed to earn a living and worked for the publisher Pierre Didot the elder illustrating luxury folio editions of La Fontaine's Les Amours de Psyché et de Cupidon (1797), the works of Virgil (1798) and Racine (1801) and Les Amours pastorales de Daphnis et Chloé (1800). He was greatly assisted financially by the miniature painter Jean-Baptiste Isabey who commissioned his Belisarius (ex-Duke of Leuchtenberg priv. col., Munich), which, having taken only 18 days to paint, brought him acclaim at the Salon of 1795. Immediately afterwards Isabey sold it to Caspar Meyer, Ambassador of the Batavian Republic, at a profit, which he donated to the artist. He also commissioned the superb portrait of himself and his four-year-old daughter (1795; Paris, Louvre; see fig.) which drew attention to Gérard at the Salon of 1796.
Gérard's reputation and success were based on his work as a portrait painter. Isabey and his Daughter was widely praised for its superb naturalism, rivalled only by David's Mme Sériziat and her Son (exh. Salon 1795; Paris, Louvre). There followed Larevelliere-Lépeaux (1797; Angers, Mus. B.-A.) and Comtesse Regnault de Saint-Jean-d'Angély (exh. Salon 1799; Paris, Louvre), in which personal expressiveness was couched in precise definition of form and soft yet subtle colour. These portraits met with almost universal approval and led in turn to commissions from Bonaparte, his family and entourage, culminating in the official Napoleon in his Imperial Robes (Versailles, Chteau, incl. other versions) and Mme Récamier (Paris, Carnavalet), both completed in 1805. On the strength of these, Gérard became the most fashionable portrait painter of his day, surpassing even David. His productivity at this time was phenomenal: between 1800 and 1815 he produced approximately fifty full-length and forty bust-length portraits.
Gérard did not forsake history painting.
