Jacques-Louis David (August 30, 1748 –
December 29 1825) was a highly influential French painter in the Neoclassical
style, considered to be the prominent painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of
history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward a classical austerity and severity, chiming with the moral climate of the final years of
the ancien régime.
David later became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of
Maximilien Robespierre, and was effectively a dictator of the arts under the
French Republic. Imprisoned after Robespierre's fall from power, he aligned himself with yet
another political regime upon his release, that of Napoleon I. It was at this time
that he developed his 'Empire style', notable for its use of warm Venetian colours. David had a
huge number of pupils, making him the strongest influence in French art of the 19th
century, especially academic Salon painting.
Early life
Jacques-Louis David was born into a prosperous family in Paris on
August 30, 1748. When he was about nine his father was killed in
a duel and his mother left him with his prosperous architect uncles. They saw to it that he received an excellent education at
the Collège des Quatre-Nations, but he was never a good student: he had a
tumor that impeded his speech, and he was always preoccupied with drawing. He covered his notebooks with drawings, and he once
said, "I was always hiding behind the instructor’s chair, drawing for the duration of the class". Soon, he desired to be a
painter, but his uncles and mother wanted him to be an architect. He overcame the opposition, and went to learn from
François Boucher, the leading painter of the time, who was also a distant relative.
Boucher was a Rococo painter, but tastes were changing, and the fashion for Rococo was giving way
to a more classical style. Boucher decided that instead of taking over David’s tutelage, he would send David to his friend
Joseph-Marie Vien, a mediocre painter, but one who embraced the classical reaction to
Rococo. There David attended the Royal Academy, based in what is
now the Louvre.
David attempted to win the Prix de Rome, an art scholarship to the French
Academy in Rome, four times between 1770 and 1774; once, he lost according to legend because he had
not consulted Vien, one of the judges. Another time, he lost because a few other students had been competing for years, and Vien
felt David's education could wait for these other mediocre painters. In protest, he attempted to starve himself to death.
Finally, in 1774, David won the Prix de Rome. Normally, he would have had to attend another school before attending the Academy
in Rome, but Vien's influence kept him out of it. He went to Italy with Vien in 1775, as Vien had been appointed director of the
French Academy at Rome. While in Italy, David observed the Italian masterpieces
and the ruins of ancient Rome. David filled twelve sketchbooks with material that he would derive from for the rest of his life.
While in Rome, he studied great masters, and came to favor above all others Raphael. In 1779,
David was able to see the ruins of Pompeii, and was filled with wonder. After this, he sought to
revolutionize the art world with the "eternal" concepts of classicism.
Early work
David's fellow students at the academy found him difficult to get along with, but they recognized his genius. David was
allowed to stay at the French Academy in Rome for an extra year, but after 5 years in Rome, he returned to Paris. There, he found
people ready to use their influence for him, and he was made a member of the Royal Academy. He sent the Academy two paintings,
and both were included in the Salon of 1781, a high honor. He was praised by his famous
contemporary painters, but the administration of the Royal Academy was very hostile to this young upstart. After the Salon, the
King granted David lodging in the Louvre, an ancient and much desired privilege of great artists. When the contractor of the
King's buildings, M. Pecol, was arranging with David, he asked the artist to marry his daughter, Marguerite Charlotte. This
marriage brought him money and eventually four children. David had his own pupils, about 40 to 50, and was commissioned by the
government to paint "Horace defended by his Father", but Jacques soon decided, "Only in Rome can I paint Romans." His father in
law provided the money he needed for the trip, and David headed for Rome with his wife and three of his students, one of whom,
Jean-Germain Drouais, was the Prix de Rome winner of that year.
In Rome, David painted his famous Oath of the Horatii. The themes and
motifs would carry on into his later works Oath of the Tennis Court and
Distribution of Eagles. While Oath of the Horatii
and Oath of the Tennis Court stress the importance of masculine self-sacrifice for one's country and patriotism, the
Distribution of Eagles would ask for self-sacrifice for one's Emperor (Napoleon) and the importance of battlefield glory.
In 1787, David did not become the Director of the French Academy in Rome, a position he wanted dearly. The Count in charge of
the appointments said David was too young, but said he would support him in 6 to 12 years. This situation would be one of many
that would cause him to lash out at the Academy in years to come.
The Death of Socrates (
1787)
For the salon of 1787, David exhibited his famous Death of Socrates. "Condemned to death, Socrates, strong, calm and at
peace, discusses the immortality of the soul. Surrounded by Crito, his grieving friends and students, he is teaching,
philosophizing, and in fact, thanking the God of Health, Asclepius, for the hemlock brew which
will ensure a peaceful death… The wife of Socrates can be seen grieving alone outside the chamber, dismissed for her weakness.
Plato (not present when Socrates died) is depicted as an old man seated at the end of the bed." Critics compared the Socrates
with Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling and Raphael's
Stanze, and one, after ten visits to the Salon, described it as "in every sense perfect". Denis
Diderot said it looked like he copied it from some ancient bas-relief. The painting
was very much in tune with the political climate at the time. For this painting, David was not honored by a royal "works of
encouragement".
The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons (
1789)
For his next painting, David painted The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His
Sons. The work had tremendous appeal for the time. Before the opening of the Salon, the French Revolution had begun. The National
Assembly had been established, and the Bastille had fallen. The royal court did not want
propaganda agitating the people, so all paintings had to be checked before being hung. Some portraits of famous people were
banned, like the portrait of a chemist who happened to be a member of an ill-favored party. When the newspapers reported that the
government had not allowed the showing of The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, the people were outraged,
and the royals gave in. The painting was hung in the exhibition, protected by art students. The painting depicts Lucius Junius Brutus, the Roman leader, grieving for his sons. Brutus's sons had attempted to
overthrow the government and restore the monarchy, so the father ordered their death to maintain the republic. Thus, Brutus was
the heroic defender of the republic, at the cost of his own family. On the right, the Mother holds her two daughters, and the
grandmother is seen on the far right, in anguish. Brutus sits on the left, alone, brooding, but knowing what he did was best for
his country. The whole painting was a Republican symbol, and obviously had immense meaning during these times in France.
The Revolution
In the beginning, David was a supporter of the Revolution, a friend of Robespierre and a member of the Jacobin Club. While others
were leaving the country for new and greater opportunities, David stayed to help destroy the old order; he was a regicider who
voted in the National Assembly for the Execution of Louis XVI. It is uncertain why
he did this, as there were many more opportunities for him under the King than the new order; some people suggest David's love
for the classical made him embrace everything about that period, including a republican government.
Others believed that they found the key to the artist's revolutionary career in his personality. Undoubtedly, David's artistic
sensibility, mercurial temperament, volatile emotions, ardent enthusiasm, and fierce independence might have been expected to
help turn him against the established order but they did not fully explain his devotion to the republican regime. Nor did the
vague statements of those who insisted upon his "powerful ambition. . . and unusual energy of will” actually account for his
revolutionary connections. Those who knew him maintained that "generous ardor", high-minded idealism and well meaning, though
sometimes fanatical, enthusiasm rather than selfishness and jealousy, motivated his activities during this period.
Soon, David turned his critical sights on Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. This attack was probably caused primarily
by the hypocrisy of the organization and their personal opposition against his work, as seen in previous episodes in David’s
life. The Royal Academy was chock full of royalists, and David’s attempt to reform it did not go over well with the members.
However, the deck was stacked against this symbol of the old regime, and the National Assembly ordered it to make changes to
conform to the new constitution.
David then began work on something that would later hound him: propaganda for the new republic. David’s painting of Brutus was
shown during the play Brutus, by the famous Frenchman, Voltaire. The people responded in
an uproar of approval. On June 20 1790, the anniversary of the
first act of defiance against the King, the oath of the tennis court was celebrated. David was there Wanting to commemorate the
event in a painting, the Jacobins, revolutionaries that had taken to meeting in the Jacobin Monastery, decided that they would
choose the painter whose "genius anticipated the revolution". David accepted, and began work on a mammoth canvas. The picture was
never fully completed, because of its immense size (35ft. by 36ft.) and because people that needed to sit for it disappeared in
the Reign of Terror, but several finished drawings exist and parts of the original
canvas also exist showing nude figures with fully painted heads.
When Voltaire died in 1778, the church denied him a church burial, and his body was interred near a monastery. A year later,
Voltaire’s old friends began a campaign to have his body buried in the Panthéon, as
church property had been confiscated by the French Government. In 1791 David was appointed to head the organizing committee for
the ceremony, a parade through the streets of Paris to the Panthéon. Despite rain, and opposition from conservatives based on the
amount of money that was being spent, the procession went ahead. Up to 100,000 people watched the "Father of the Revolution" be
carried to his resting place. This was the first of many large festivals organized by David for the republic. He went on to
organize festivals for martyrs that died fighting royalists. These funerals echoed the religious festivals of the pagan Greeks
and Romans and are seen by many as Saturnalian.
In 1791, the King attempted to flee the country and was within 30 miles of the Swiss border when he had a hunger attack that
led to his arrest and eventual execution. Louis XVI had made secret requests to Emperor Joseph II of Austria, Marie-Antoinette's
brother, to restore him to his throne. This was granted and Austria threatened France if a the royal couple were hurt. In
reaction, the people arrested the King. This lead to an Invasion after the trials and execution of Louis and Marie-Antoinette.
The Bourbon monarchy was destroyed by the French people in 1792—it would be restored after Napoleon, then destroyed again with
the Restoration of the House of Bonaparte. When the new National Convention held its first meeting, David was sitting with his
friends Jean-Paul Marat and Robespierre. In the Convention, David soon earned a nickname
"ferocious terrorist". Soon, Robespierre’s agents discovered a secret vault of the king’s proving he was trying to overthrow the
government, and demanded his execution. The National Convention held the trial of Louis
XVI and David voted for the death of the King, which caused his wife, a royalist, to divorce him.
When Louis XVI was executed on January 21 1793, another man
had already died as well — Louis Michel Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau. Le Peletier was killed on
the preceding day by a royal bodyguard, in revenge for having voted the death of the King. David was called upon to organize a
funeral, and he painted Le Peletier Assassinated. In it the assassin’s sword was seen hanging by a single strand of
horsehair above Le Peletier's body, a concept inspired by the proverbial ancient tale of the sword of Damocles, which illustrated
the insecurity of power and position. This underscored the courage displayed by Le Peletier and his companions in routing an
oppressive king. The sword pierces a piece of paper on which is written ‘I vote the death of the tyrant’, and as a tribute at the
bottom right of the picture David placed the inscription ‘David to Le Peletier. 20 January
1793’. The painting was later destroyed by Le Peletier's royalist daughter, and is known only by a
drawing, an engraving, and contemporary accounts. Nevertheless, this work was important in David's career, because it was the
first completed painting of the French Revolution, made in less then three months, and a work through which he initiated the
regeneration process that would continue with The Death of Marat, David's
masterpiece.
On the 13th of July 1793, David's friend Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday
with a knife she had hidden in her clothing. She gained entrance to Marat's house on the pretense of presenting him a list of
people who should be executed as enemies of France. Marat thanked her and said that they would be guillotined next week upon
which Charlotte immediately fatally stabbed him. Charlotte was guillotined shortly thereafter. Charlotte was of an opposing
political party, whose name can be seen in the note Marat holds in David's subsequent painting, The Death of Marat. Marat, a member of the National Assembly and a journalist responsible for the
deaths of many people who were innocent, had a skin disease that caused him to itch horribly. The only relief he could get was in
his bath over which he improvised a desk to write his poisonous list of names of people to be executed for supposed crimes
against the state. David once again organized a spectacular funeral, and Marat was buried in the Panthéon. Marat died in the
bathtub, writing. David wanted to have his body submerged in the bathtub during the funeral
procession, but the body had begun to putrefy. Instead, Marat’s body was periodically sprinkled with water as the people came to
see his corpse, complete with gaping wound. The Death of Marat, perhaps David's most famous painting, has been called the
Pietà of the revolution. Upon presenting the painting to the convention, he said "Citizens, the
people were again calling for their friend; their desolate voice was heard: David, take up your brushes.., avenge Marat... I
heard the voice of the people. I obeyed." David had to work quickly, but the result was a simple and powerful image.
After executing the King, war broke out between the new Republic and virtually every major power in Europe, and the wars
France fought went very poorly. The Committee of Public Safety was headed by
Robespierre, who came to be virtual dictator of the country, and set grain prices for Paris who set about a reign of Terror. The
committee was severe; Marie Antoinette went to the guillotine, an event
recorded in a famous sketch by David. Portable guillotines killed failed generals, aristocrats, priests and perceived enemies.
David organized his last festival: the festival of the Supreme Being. Robespierre had realized what a tremendous propaganda tool
these festivals were, and he decided to create a new religion, mixing moral ideas with the republic, based on the ideas of
Rousseau, with Robespierre as the new high priest. This process had already begun by confiscating church lands and requiring
priests to take an oath to the state. The festivals, called fêtes, would be the method of indoctrination. On the appointed day,
20 Prairial by the revolutionary calendar, Robespierre spoke, descended
steps, and with a torch presented to him by David, incinerated a cardboard image symbolizing atheism, revealing an image of
wisdom underneath. The festival hastened the "Incorruptible's" downfall. Later, some see David’s methods as being taken up by
Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler. These massive propaganda events brought the people together. France tried to have festivals in the
United States, but soon received word that "to tell the truth, these methods,
excellent in France where the mass of the people take part, have here only a shabby air."
Soon, the war began to go well; French troops marched across Belgium, and the emergency that
had placed the Committee of Public Safety in control was no more. Then, plotters seized Robespierre at the National Convention
and guillotined him which ended the reign of terror in which thousands of people had been innocently executed with little more
than a kangaroo court whose determination to execute the accused was a foregone conclusion even before the accused was brought
before them. During this seizure, David yelled to his friend "if you drink hemlock, I shall drink it with you." After this, he
supposedly fell ill, and did not attend the evening session because of "stomach pain", which saved him from being guillotined
along with Robespierre. David was arrested and placed in prison. There he painted his own portrait, showing him much younger then
he actually was, as well as that of his jailer.
Post Revolution
After David’s wife visited him in jail, he conceived the idea of telling the story of the Sabine
Women. The Sabine Women Enforcing Peace by Running between the Combatants, also called The Intervention of the
Sabine Women is said to have been painted to honor his wife, with the theme being love prevailing over conflict. The painting
was also seen as a plea for the people to reunite after the bloodshed of the revolution.
The Intervention of the Sabine Women (
1799)
This work also brought him to the attention of Napoleon. The story for the
painting is as follows: "The Romans have abducted the daughters of their neighbors, the Sabines. To avenge this abduction, the
Sabines attacked Rome, although not immediately—since Hersilia, the daughter of Tatius, the leader of the Sabines, had been
married to Romulus, the Roman leader, and then had two children by him in the interim.
Here we see Hersilia between her father and husband as she adjures the warriors on both sides not to take wives away from their
husbands or mothers away from their children. The other Sabine Women join in her exhortations." During this time, the martyrs of
the revolution were taken from the Pantheon and buried in common ground, and revolutionary statues were destroyed. When he was
finally released to the country, France had changed. His wife managed to get David released from prison, and he wrote letters to
his former wife, and told her he never ceased loving her. He remarried her in 1796. Finally, wholly restored to his position, he
retreated to his studio, took pupils and retired from politics.
Napoleon
In one of history's great coincidences, David's close association with the Committee of Public Safety during the Terror
resulted in his signing of the death warrant for one Alexandre de Beauharnais, a minor noble. De Beauharnais's widow,
Rose-Marie Josephe de Tascher de Beauharnais would later be known to the world
as Josephine Bonaparte, Empress of the French. It was her coronation by her husband, Napoleon I, that David depicted so memorably
in the Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine, 2 December 1804.
David had been an admirer of Napoleon from their first meeting, struck by the then-General Bonaparte's classical features.
Requesting a sitting from the busy and impatient general, David was able to sketch Napoleon in 1797. David recorded the conqueror
of Italy's face, but the full composition of General Bonaparte holding the peace treaty with Austria remains unfinished. Napoleon
had high esteem for David, and asked him to accompany him to Egypt in 1798, but David refused,
claiming he was too old for adventuring and sending instead his student, Antoine-Jean
Gros.
After Napoleon's successful coup d'etat in 1799, as First Consul he commissioned David to
commemorate his daring crossing of the Alps. The crossing of the St. Bernard Pass had allowed the French to surprise the Austrian
army and win victory at the Battle of Marengo on June
14 1800. Although Napoleon had crossed the Alps on a mule, he requested that he be
"portrayed calm upon a fiery horse". David complied with Napoleon Crossing the Saint-Bernard. After the proclamation of
the Empire in 1804, David became the official court painter of the regime.
The Coronation of Napoleon, (
1806).
One of the works David was commissioned for was The Coronation of Napoleon in Notre Dame. David was permitted to watch
the event. He had plans of Notre Dame delivered and participants in the coronation
came to his studio to pose individually, though never the Emperor (the only time David obtained a sitting from Napoleon had been
in 1797). David did manage to get a private sitting with the Empress Josephine and Napoleon's sister, Caroline Murat, through the intervention of erstwhile art patron, Marshal Joachim Murat, the Emperor's brother-in-law. For his background, David had the choir of Notre Dame act as
his fill-in characters. The Pope came to sit for the painting, and actually blessed David. Napoleon came to see the painter,
stared at the canvas for an hour and said "David, I salute you". David had to redo several parts of the painting because of
Napoleon's various whims, and for this painting, David received only 24,000 Francs.
Exile
After the Bourbons returned to power, David was on the list of proscribed former
revolutionaries and Bonapartists, as he had voted for the execution of Louis XVI and probably had something to do with the death
of Louis XVII. Mistreated and starved, Louis XVII had been forced to confess to an
incestous relationship, while in prison, with his mother, Marie-Antoinette. (This allegation helped to guillotine her, but it was
a lie as Louis was separated from his mother and not allowed to see her.) The new Bourbon King, Louis XVIII, however, granted
David amnesty and even offered him a position as a court painter. David refused this offer, preferring instead to seek a
self-imposed exile in Brussels. There, he painted Cupid and Psyche and lived out the
last days of his life quietly with his wife, whom he had remarried. During this time, he largely devoted his efforts to
smaller-scale paintings of mythological scenes and to portraits of Bruxellois and Napoleonic emigres, such as the Baron
Gerard.
His last great work, Mars Disarmed by Venus and the Three Graces was begun in 1822 and was finished the year before his
death. "David wanted to outdo himself once more. In December 1823, he wrote: "This is the last picture I want to paint, but I
want to surpass myself in it. I will put the date of my 75 years on it and afterwards I will never again pick up my brush." The
subject is taken from Greek mythology…David was faithful to the legend… The coloring is translucent and pearly, like painting on
porcelain." The painting was first shown in Brussels and then was sent to Paris, where David's
former students flocked to see the painting. The exhibit managed to bring in after operating costs, 13,000 francs, meaning there
were more than 10,000 visitors, a huge amount for the time.
When David was leaving the theater, he was hit by a carriage and later died of deformations to the heart in December 29, 1825. After his death, some of his portrait paintings were sold
at auction in Paris, with his paintings going for very small sums. His famous painting of Marat was shown in a special secluded
room so as not to outrage the public. David’s body was not allowed to return to France, despite pleas of his family, because of
David's part in the execution of Louis XVI and was therefore buried in Brussels, but his heart was buried at Père Lachaise, Paris.
Gallery
References
- Dowd, David, Pageant-Master of the Republic, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, (1948)
- Lindsay, Jack, Death of the Hero, London, Studio Books (1960)
- Brookner, Anita, Jacques-Louis David, Chatto & Windus (1980)
- Leymarie, Jean, French Painting, the 19th century, Cleveland (1962)
- Schnapper, Antoine, David témoin de son temps, Office du Livre, Fribourg, (1980)
- Delécluze, E., Louis David, son école et son temps, Paris, (1855) re-edition Macula (1983)
- Sahut, Marie-Catherine & Régis Michel, David, l'art et le politique éditions Gallimard-Découvertes et RMN Paris
(1988)
- Bordes, Philippe, David, éd. Hazan, Paris (1988)
- Lévêque, Jean-Jacques, Jacques-Louis David édition Acr Paris (1989)
- Thévoz, Michel, Le théâtre du crime. Essai sur la peinture de David, éd. de Minuit, Paris (1989)
- Noël, Bernard, David, éd. Flammarion, Paris (1989)
- David contre David, actes du colloque au Louvre du 6-10 décembre 1989, éd. R. Michel, Paris (1993)
- Malvone, Laura, L'Évènement politique en peinture. A propos du Marat de David in Mélanges de l'Ecole française de
Rome. Italie et Méditerranée 106, 1 (1994)
- Chodorow, Stanley, et al. The Mainstream of Civilization. New York: The Harcourt Press (1994) pg. 594
- Crow, Thomas, Emulation. Making artists for Revolutionary France, ed. Yale University Press, New Haven London
(1995)
- Monneret, Sophie Monneret, David et le néoclassicisme, ed. Terrail, Paris (1998)
- Lajer-Burcharth, Ewa, Necklines. The art of Jacques-Louis David after the Terror, ed. Yale University Press, New Haven
London (1999)
- Lee, Simon, David, ed. Phaidon, London (1999)
- Jacques-Louis David’s Marat, edited by William Vaughan & Helen Weston, Cambridge (2000)
- Rosenberg, Pierre, Prat, Louis-Antoine, Jacques-Louis David 1748-1825. Catalogue raisonné des dessins, 2 volumes, éd.
Leonardo Arte, Milan (2002)
- Rosenberg, Pierre, Peronnet, Benjamin, Un album inédit de David in Revue de l'art, n°142 (2003-4), pp.45-83
(complete the previous reference)
- Vanden Berghe, Marc, Plesca, Ioana, Nouvelles perspectives sur la Mort de Marat: entre modèle jésuite et références
mythologiques, Bruxelles (2004) / New Perspectives on David's Death of Marat, Brussels (2004) - online on
www.art-chitecture.net/publications.php[1]
- Vanden Berghe, Marc, Plesca, Ioana, Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau sur son lit de mort par Jacques Louis-David: saint
Sébastien révolutionnaire, miroir multiréférencé de Rome, Brussels (2005) - online on
www.art-chitecture.net/publications.php[2]
- The Death of
Socrates, accessed 29 June 2005. New York Med.
- Jacques-Louis David, on An
Abridged History of Europe, accessed 29 June 2005
- J.L. David on CGFA, accessed
29 June 2005
- Sainte-Fare Garnot, N., Jacques-Louis David 1748-1825, Paris, Ed. Chaudun (2005)
- Johnson, Dorothy,Jacques-Louis David. New Perspectives, Newark (2006)
Filmography
Danton (A. Wajda, France, 1982) - Historical drama (many scenes including David as a silent character watching and
drawing. Focuses on the period of the Terror).
See also
External links
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