Baron Antoine-Jean Gros (Paris 1771-1835 Meudon, Hauts-de-Seine)

The sitter was born into a family of royal civil servants; his father, Jean Louis Ségoing, was Seigneur de La Borde et de Fortemaison and his uncle, Michel Constantin Ségoing, an accountant attached to the royal tax bureau. As a young man, Ségoing served in the royal military and the army's military police (the Gendarmes Bourguignons), and in 1789, joined the Paris National Guard. In 1793, he served in the revolutionary army as post-orderly on the Atlantic coast near Cherbourg and two years later, was a second lieutenant in the army corps protecting the coastal regions of the départment of Calvados. By 1797, he was appointed adjutant lieutenant of the troops stationed in Paris and five years later, was promoted to lieutenant captain. Ségoing was awarded the Imperial order of the Legion of Honour on 20 November 1808. He was promoted to adjutant commander in 1812 and the following year was created Baron of the Empire by Napoleon. Placed in charge of the military police at the headquarters of the first division, he sought retirement after the fall of Napoleon. This portrait is likely to date to circa 1814.