Jacques-Louis David

French painter

• Born: August 30, 1748
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: December 29, 1825
• Place of death: Brussels, Belgium

David was the founder of nineteenth century neoclassicism. His participation in the political events of his time directed not only the course of his own art but that of European painting as well.

Early Life

Jacques-Louis David’s birth on August 30, 1748, coincided with the beginning of many profound political, social, and aesthetic changes in France. He was born in Paris into the merchant-and-artisan middle class, although his grandmother was the cousin of François Boucher, first painter to the king. During his early schooling, David was by all accounts an indifferent student who preferred drawing to any of his other studies. In 1764, at the age of sixteen, having declared his firm resolve to become a painter, David sought the help of Boucher.

Although no longer accepting students himself, Boucher saw promise in the young David and advised that he study with Joseph Vien, a professor at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Vien was, according to Boucher, a good painter and teacher, but somewhat cold. He advocated a return to classical antiquity as a source of moral as well as artistic inspiration; his own work, however, consisted mostly of superficial borrowings of classical motifs that lacked understanding of the true meaning of the classical spirit.

After two years in Vien’s studio, David entered the academy as a student. In the light of his subsequent actions against the academy, it is important to note that at this time David did not question the academy’s control over the arts in France. Accepting the academy’s hierarchy of categories in painting, he aspired to the highest—that of history painting—and was determined to win the coveted Prix de Rome, which would allow him three years of study at the academy’s branch in Rome and almost certainly guarantee his eventual membership in the academy. As an academician, eligible for the best royal commissions and allowed to exhibit his work at the Salon, he would be assured of a successful career.

After three unsuccessful attempts to win the Prix de Rome, David contemplated suicide. Even though he finally won the competition in 1774 with his Antiochus and Stratonice , he now harbored a bitter resentment of the academy’s earlier rejections of his work, never forgiving the academicians for their failure to recognize the talent he was certain he possessed. In fact, his style at this time was fragmented, reflecting the many currents in French painting during the early 1770’s—he painted classical themes with something of Vien’s sense of theatricality and exaggerated dramatic effect, while his use of light and brushwork came from the rococo tradition.

While studying in Italy from 1778 to 1780, David was influenced by Greco-Roman classicism, the masters of the High Renaissance, and the early Baroque works of Caravaggio and the Carracci family. He went to Rome determined not to be seduced by classical antiquity, believing it to be lifeless and static. After studying classical sculpture and the Pompeian frescoes, however, he realized that he had based his work on a false principle. He sensed that he would have to repudiate everything he had once thought about art. The qualities of virtue, austerity, and moral strength that he saw in ancient classical art reinforced his own desires for simplicity and strength. His work soon began to evidence the characteristics that would mark his mature style: solidity of drawing, clarity of form and narrative structure, and a Caravaggesque realism of light and texture.

Life’s Work

David’s first public acclaim came with the exhibition of twelve paintings in the Salon of 1781, the most popular of which was Belisarius —the story of false accusation and unjust punishment in a past age, which viewers equated with a contemporary general falsely accused and executed for treason. In the next few years, David’s reputation increased—he was praised by the encyclopedist Denis Diderot for his creation of a noble, didactic art, and he attained academy membership.

David’s involvement with the political events of his day began with The Oath of the Horatii of 1785. This painting, with its theme of self-sacrifice for a noble cause, was perceived by viewers as a pictorial call to arms for the revolutionary sentiments rapidly gaining momentum in France. Just as he had done in Belisarius, David created a parallel between contemporary events and ancient history with this theme of the three Horatii who, united by a strict patriotic discipline of body and soul, swear an oath to fight to the death for their country, while the tragic personal loss that always accompanies heroic military feats is evidenced by the group of mourning wives and children who witness the oath. Then, with the exhibition of The Death of Socrates in 1787 and Brutus Receiving the Bodies of His Sons in 1789—both of which portray the same message of self-sacrifice for a greater good—David’s reputation as a prophet of the revolution was firmly established in the minds of the French public.

Now a fervent Jacobin and friend of Robespierre, David took a more active role in revolutionary events after the fall of the Bastille. He became the director of all revolutionary festivals. He was elected as a deputy to the National Convention, during which time he voted for the execution of the king in 1793, signed hundreds of arrest warrants during the Reign of Terror, and proposed the creation of national museums that he also helped to organize. In 1790, he had avenged himself upon the academicians by organizing other dissident artists into the Commune des Arts, and, in 1793, he persuaded the convention to abolish the academy, replacing it with a jury to supervise the awarding of Salon prizes. As the principal juror, David had become the virtual dictator of the arts in France. Always a reformer, he freed French art from some of the old academic constraints while he led the way toward a new academicism.

David’s political activities continued to give direction to his painting. The prophet of the revolution became the chronicler of the historic events of the present. His works of this period range from The Oath of the Tennis Court (1791)—commemorating the deputies of the Third Estate’s writing of a new constitution—to his apotheosis of such slain republican heroes as Jean-Paul Marat, Vicomte Paul François Barras, and Paul Michel Lepeletier.

Political involvement, however, almost cost David his life. After the execution of Robespierre in 1794, David was arrested and, although his enemies demanded his death, he was imprisoned instead. An amnesty in 1795 set him free. While in prison, David—having vowed at his trial that he would henceforth attach himself to principles and not to men—began planning his next great classical painting, The Battle of the Romans and Sabines (1794-1799), a work that restored his artistic reputation.

David’s determination to avoid political involvements was quickly forgotten when, in 1797, he acquired a new patron and hero, Napoleon Bonaparte—then first consul and later emperor of France. David became his court painter, documenting all the military splendor and pageantry of Napoleon’s reign in portraits, in depictions of Napoleon leading his armies to victory, and finally in the coronation itself. David, who had earlier used history and mythology to refer to contemporary events, now turned contemporary events into new historical myths. His neoclassicism influenced everything from painting and sculpture to fashion and furniture design, and some of his most important works date from this period.

Unfortunately, David’s political activities again proved to be his undoing. Napoleon’s abdication and the First Bourbon Restoration of 1814 found David stubbornly maintaining his allegiance to the emperor, believing perhaps that his international reputation as an artist would protect him. During the Hundred Days , in fact, he met with Napoleon, who made him a Commander of the Legion of Honor, and he rashly signed the Acte additionnel (1815), again repudiating the rule of the Bourbon kings of France. The Second Restoration, however, saw the enactment of a law banishing all who had signed the Acte additionnel, and David, at the age of sixty-seven, went into exile in Brussels.

Despite some attempts at reprisal by his enemies in France, David’s last years in Brussels were happy and productive. Sale of his works brought him financial security, and he enjoyed a position of prominence within the artistic community. He painted continually, concentrating on portraits and mythological subjects such as Cupid and Psyche (1817) and Telemachus and Eucharis (1818)—themes that were less dangerous, perhaps, than the real or legendary histories of Greece and Rome that had served him so well during the politically active years of the revolution, the republic, and the empire. He died peacefully at his home in Brussels on December 29, 1825, at the age of seventy-seven.

Significance

Jacques-Louis David’s art, like his personality, was extremely complex. Friends described him as intense and dogmatic, sensitive and spartan—an assessment of character substantiated by the severe, doctrinaire classicism of his prerevolutionary works, all of which are remarkable for their stoicism and their sense of emotion held in check by icy control. David eventually realized that the success of these heroically ethical creations—which had proclaimed a new aesthetic and moral order—could not be repeated indefinitely, even by him. In 1808, he declared that the direction he had set for art was too severe to please for very long in France.

A different facet of David’s personality was reflected in his attempt to separate artistic activity from the demands of morality by concentrating on purely aesthetic problems in The Battle of the Romans and Sabines—a work in which he modified the severity of his Roman classicism for a more Greek and abstract refinement. In his paintings of contemporary events during the Napoleonic era and in many of his portraits, David proved himself an acute observer of nature and a realist.

As the different goals and interests embodied in later nineteenth century movements such as Romanticism and Impressionism led artists to turn away from classicism, David’s principles and his art were shunned, and his reputation went into an eclipse that lasted until 1913. At that time, an exhibition in Paris prompted an interest in his work that has continued to grow, and today he is acknowledged as the true founder of nineteenth century European neoclassicism.

Bibliography

Brookner, Anita. Jacques-Louis David. New York: Harper & Row, 1980. One of the most complete biographies, this book contains important documentation, never before published in English, of David’s artistic sources and his political activities. Also contains an extensive catalog of paintings and drawings, although most plates are monochrome.

French Painting, 1774-1830: The Age of Revolution. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975. Catalog of a French-American exhibition of paintings from the age of revolution. Excellent essays by foremost Davidian scholars discuss the artistic disunity of the era and analyze David’s contribution to mainstream trends. Includes brief biographies of all exhibitors.

Friedlaender, Walter. David to Delacroix. Translated by Robert Goldwater. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952. Emphasizes the historical structure of French painting by studying the sources of various stylistic and intellectual currents of the period. Discusses classicism and other trends in David’s art and the transformation of his principles by his followers.

Lee, Simon. David. London: Phaidon Press, 1999. Comprehensive biography. Lee argues that David was the most important European painter of his age, creating a dramatic and noble style that matched the contemporary desire for heroic and morally elevating images.

Nanteuil, Luc de. Jacques-Louis David. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1985. Detailed account of David’s development from early through mature styles. Clear, concise discussion of political events that shaped his thinking. Excellent color plates of most significant works, with analysis of the formalistic elements of each.

Roberts, Warren. Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Louis Prieur: Revolutionary Artists—The Public, the Populace, and Images of the French Revolution. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. Compares the careers of David and Prieur, a popular illustrator of his times. Tracks the political careers of both artists, describing the relationship between their art and the politics of the French Revolution.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Jacques-Louis David, Revolutionary Artist: Art, Politics, and the French Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Popular biography, accessible to general readers with no prior knowledge of art or French history. Roberts describes the relationship of David’s art to his personality and participation in the French Revolution.

Rosenblum, Robert, and H. W. Janson. Nineteenth Century Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1984. A perceptive analysis of David’s style through the Napoleonic era, contrasting his use of classical sources to that of his contemporaries. Provides detailed accounts of David’s followers and their efforts to maintain the neoclassical style in spite of the growth of Romanticism.