AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF EUROPE 
by William M. Brinton 

Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825)

Wincently Aleksander Gosiewski (Lithuania-Poland, 1650)
Daniel Schultz the Younger
Art in Poland, p. 99

Jacques-Louis David, French painter, who introduced the neoclassical style (see Neoclassical Art and Architecture) in France. David was born in Paris and was strongly influenced by classical art and 17th-century French painter Nicolas Poussin. David developed an individual neoclassical style, using ancient subjects and basing his form and gesture on Roman sculpture. His famous Oath of the Horatii (1784-1785, Louvre, Paris) emphasized dramatic lighting, ideal forms, and gestural clarity. It became the principal model for noble and heroic historical painting of the next two decades.

After 1789, David adopted a realistic style to depict contemporary scenes of the French Revolution (1789-1799), as in the dramatic Death of Marat (1793, MusČes Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium). In his later years he returned to mythological subjects and painted in a more theatrical manner. David's portraits, such as the famous Madame Récamier (1800, Louvre), show great technical mastery and understanding of character.

The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons (Paris 1789) Oil on canvas (323 x 422 cm) Musee du Louvre, Paris

He had his first training with Boucher, a distant relative, but Boucher realized that their temperaments were opposed and sent David to Vien. David went to Italy with the latter in 1776, Vien having been appointed director of the French Academy at Rome, David having won the Prix de Rome. In Italy, David was able to indulge his bent for the antique and came into contact with the initiators of the new Classical revival, including Gavin Hamilton. In 1780 he returned to Paris, and in the 1780s his position was firmly established as the embodiment of the social and moral reaction from the frivolity of the Rococo. His uncompromising subordination of color to drawing and his economy of statement were in keeping with the new severity of taste. His themes gave expression to the new cult of the civic virtues of stoical self-sacrifice, devotion to duty, honesty, and austerity. Seldom have paintings so completely typified the sentiment of an age as David's The Oath of the Horatii (Louvre, Paris, 1784), Brutus and his Dead Sons (Louvre, 1789), and The Death of Socrates (Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1787). They were received with acclamation by critics and public alike. Reynolds compared the Socrates with Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling and Raphael's Stanze, and after ten visits to the Salon described it as `in every sense perfect'.

David was in active sympathy with the Revolution, becoming a Deputy and voting for the execution of Louis XVI. His position was unchallenged as the painter of the Revolution. His three paintings of `martyrs of the Revolution', though conceived as portraits, raised portraiture into the domain of universal tragedy. They were: The Death of Lepeletier (now known only from an engraving), The Death of Marat (MusČes Royaux, Brussels, 1793), and The Death of Bara (MusČe Calvet, Avignon, unfinished). After the fall of Robespierre (1794), however, he was imprisoned, but was released on the plea of his wife, who had previously divorced him because of his Revolutionary sympathies (she was a royalist). They were remarried in 1796, and David's Intervention of the Sabine Women (Louvre, 1794-99), begun while he was in prison, is said to have been painted to honor her, its theme being one of love prevailing over conflict. It was also interpreted at the time, however, as a plea for conciliation in the civil strife that France suffered after the Revolution and it was the work that re-established David's fortunes and brought him to the attention of Napoleon, who appointed him his official painter.

The Sabine Women Enforcing Peace by Running Between the Combatants [detail] (1794-99) David became an ardent supporter of Napoleon and retained under him the dominant social and artistic position which he had previously held. Between 1802 and 1807 he painted a series of pictures glorifying the exploits of the Emperor, among them the enormous Coronation of Napoleon (Louvre, 1805-07). These works show a change both in technique and in feeling from the earlier Republican works. The cold colors and severe compositions of the heroic paintings gave place to a new feeling for pageantry which had something in common with Romantic painting, although he always remained opposed to the Romantic school. Napoleon in His Study 1812 Oil on canvas, (203.9 x 125.1 cm) The National Gallery o Art, Washington, DC Napoleon at St. Bernard (1800)

With the fall of Napoleon, David went into exile in Brussels, and his work weakened as the possibility of exerting a moral and social influence receded. (Until recently his late history paintings were generally scorned by critics, but their sensuous qualities are now winning them a more appreciative audience.) He continued to be an outstanding portraitist, but he never surpassed such earlier achievements as the great Napoleon Crossing the Alps (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1800, one of four versions) or the cooly erotic Madame RČcamier (Louvre, 1800).

His work had a resounding influence on the development of French — and indeed European — painting, and his many pupils included GČrard, Gros, and Ingres.

© 22 Jun 1996, Nicolas Pioch David, Jacques-Louis (1748-1825) French painter, one of the central figures of Neoclassicism. Webmuseum, Paris http://metalab.unc.edu/wm/paint/auth/david/ http://sunsite.auc.dk/cgfa/jdavid/jdavid_bio.htm

Jacques-Louis David was born into a prosperous middle-class family in Paris on August 30, 1748. In 1757 his mother left him to be raised by his uncles after his father was killed.

He was never a good student in school- in his own words, "I was always hiding behind the instructors chair, drawing for the duration of the class".

When David was 16 he began studying art at the AcadČmie Royale under the rococo painter J. M. Vien. After many unsuccessful attempts, he finally won the Prix de Rome in 1774, and on the ensuing trip to Italy he was strongly influenced by classical art and by the classically inspired work of the 17th-century painter Nicolas Poussin. David quickly evolved his own individual neoclassical style, drawing subject matter from ancient sources and basing form and gesture on Roman sculpture. His famous "Oath of the Horatii" was consciously intended as a proclamation of the new neoclassical style in which dramatic lighting, ideal forms, and gestural clarity are emphasized. Presenting a lofty moralistic (and by implication patriotic) theme, the work became the principal model for noble and heroic historical painting of the next two decades. It also launched his popularity and awarded him the right to take on his own students.

After 1789, David adopted a realistic rather than neoclassical painting style in order to record scenes of the French Revolution (1789-1799). David was very active in the Revolution, being elected a deputy to the National Convention on September 17, 1792. He took his place with the extremists known as the Montagnards- along with Marat, Danton, and Robespierre.

During this time he had produced deeds both positive and negative: On the positive side he proposed the establishment of an inventory of all national treasures- making him one of the founders of France's museums. In fact, he played an active role in the organization of the future Louvre, Paris.

On the negative side, his radicalism during the Revolution bred within him a certain madness. He was appointed to the Committee of General Security in 1793 — which gave him the power to sign nearly 300 arrested individuals to be guillotined. After the end of the Revolution, imprisoned because of his actions during the Reign of Terror, he wrote a letter to a friend stating, "I believed, in accepting the post of legislator — an honorable post, but one very difficult to fulfill — that an upright heart would suffice, but I was lacking in the second quality, by which mean insight." A delegation of his students demanded his release, and he was freed on December 28, 1794.

Near the end of 1797 he met Napoleon Bonaparte. From 1799 to 1815 he was Napoleon's official painter, chronicling the reign of Napoleon I in huge works such as "The Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine". Following Napoleon's downfall in 1815, David was exiled to Brussels, where he returned to mythological subjects drawn from the Greek and Roman past. He stayed there until his death on 29, 1825.

David, throughout his career, was also a prolific portraitist. Smaller in scale and more intimately human than his larger works, his portraits, such as the famous "Madame RČcamier", show great technical mastery and understanding of character. Many modern critics consider them his best work, especially because they are free from the moralizing messages and sometimes stilted technique of his neoclassical works.

David's career represents the transition from the rococo of the 18th century to the realism of the 19th. His cool studied neoclassicism strongly influenced his pupils Antoine Jean Gros and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and his patriotic and heroic themes paved the way for the romantics.

The Oath of the Horatii (Rome, 1784) Jacques-Louis David Oil on canvas (10' 9 7/8" x 13' 11 1/4") MusČe du Louvre, Paris

This painting occupies an extremely important place in the body of David's work and in the history of French painting. The story was taken from Titus-Livy. We are in the period of the wars between Rome and Alba, in 669 B.C. It has been decided that the dispute between the two cities must be settled by an unusual form of combat to be fought by two groups of three champions each. The two groups are the three Horatii brothers and the three Curiatii brothers. The drama lay in the fact that one of the sisters of the Curiatii, Sabina, is married to one of the Horatii, while one of the sisters of the Horatii, Camilla, is betrothed to one of the Curiatii. Despite the ties between the two families, the Horatii's father exhorts his sons to fight the Curiatii and they obey, despite the lamentations of the women.

David succeeded in ennobling these passions and transforming these virtues into something sublime. Thus had Corneille and Poussin also done. Moreover, David himself stated: "If I owe my subject to Corneille, I owe my painting to Poussin." However, unlike Corneille, David finally decided to treat the beginning, rather than the denouement of the action, seeing that initial moment as being charged with greater intensity and imbued with more grandeur. And, it was he who chose the idea of the oath (it is not mentioned in the historical accounts), transforming the event into a solemn act that bound the wills of different individuals in a single, creative gesture. He was not the first painter to do so, but certainly the first to do it in such a stirring manner.

If he was thus paying homage to the spirit of Poussin, from whose Rape of the Sabine Women he also borrowed the figure of the lictor for his drawing of the youngest Horatius, his conception was nonetheless much more sober and innovative. Instead of following a tight order, David disposed the figures in a spacious and rhythmical series. They stand out against something that resembles not so much an antique-style frieze as a three-dimensional proscenium, forcefully asserting their autonomy.

In addition, the viewer's eye is spontaneously able to grasp only two superimposed orders- that of the figures and that of the decor. The first is striking because it is organized into three different groups, each with a different purpose. To the appeal of the elder Horatius in the center, the reply on the left is the spontaneous vigor of the oath, upheld loudly and with a show of strength, while on the right it is a tearful anguish, movement turned in upon itself, compressed into emotion. The distance between the figures accentuates this contrast. To the heroic determination of the men the canvas opposes the devastated grief of the women and the troubled innocence of the children.

The decor is reduced to a more abstract order, that of architectural space — massive columns, equally massive arches, opening out onto a majestic shadow. The three archways loosely correspond to the three groups.

The contemplative atmosphere is softened by shades of green, brown, pink, and red, all very discreet. Instead of opening his painting out onto a landscape or an expanse of sky, David closes it off to the outside, bathes it in shadow. As a result, the light in this setting takes on a brick-toned reflection, which encircles his figures with a mysterious halo.

Through David's rigorous and efficient arrangement, the superior harmony of the colors, and the spiritual density of the figures, this sacrifice, transfigured by the oath, becomes the founding act of a new aesthetic and moral order.

Mars Disarmed by Venus and the Three Graces (Brussels, 1822-24) Jacques-Louis David Oil on canvas (10'1 1/8" x 8' 7 1/8") MusČes Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

This is the last great picture David painted. He began work on it in 1822 and completed it 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 Creek mythology. Mars and Venus were the names given by the Romans to Ares and Aphrodite, the god of war and the goddess of love. The legend of their love affair corresponds to the charming idea that Beauty seduces and disarms Force. Aphrodite had a child, Eros, also called Cupid, and then had three girls, the Graces-Euphrosyne, Thalia, and Aglaia. The attributes of Mars were the lance and the sword, while Venus was represented by the turtledove, among other attributes. The three Graces were traditionally portrayed nude, entwined, or holding each other by the hand and dancing.

David was faithful to the legend, even down to these details, but his primary intention was to compose a sort of allegorical apotheosis. The scene takes place in a celestial Olympus, high above the famous mountain, in the midst of clouds. The faces are graceful and the feminine bodies very beautiful, especially that of Venus, which might be considered the most exquisite female nude ever painted by David. Mars looks very much like Leonidas, although his pose is much less contemplative.

The coloring is translucent and pearly, like painting on porcelain. The attitudes are conventional, the setting elaborate.

It was first exhibited in Brussels and then sent to Paris. Thiers, a journalist at the time, praised the color which "astonishes by its brilliance." "Never," he wrote, "has colored fabric been so perfect, so finely executed." He also praised "the beautiful lines," but he wondered "if the painting did not mark the end of the path on which David had set out." He added that "if one does care for style to turn into academic pretentiousness, for drawing to turn into an imitation of statues, for color to be pushed to a tiresome clash of hues, to a studied transparency and the sheen of glass," then, "one will consider David's painting to contain some beautifully executed parts, but perhaps dangerous to propose as a model and, finally, the last word of a system that was good when it served as a corrective, which it can no longer be when it tends towards excesses that need to be corrected in turn."

But David's former pupils flocked to see the painting and were full of admiration. The exhibit brought in, after expenses, 13,000 francs, which means that there were more than 10,000 visitors, an enormous number for the time.

How could anyone not be moved by this famous old man's farewell to painting – this is an enchanted world dedicated to grace and beauty, to their supreme victory over matter and force. What does it matter if the composition is theatrical! The smiles are lighthearted, the attitudes graceful, the gestures exquisite – and the female nudes are quite simply sublime. The aging painter dreamt a final dream of beauty, more chaste than in his youth, but physically more perfect than ever, and this is how we shall remember him.

The Sabine Women (Paris, 1796-99) Jacques-Louis David Oil on canvas, (12' 8" x 17' 3/4") MusČe du Louvre, Paris

We are in the early days of Roman history. 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.

After many preliminary compositional sketches, which occupied him for some time, David chose to set out in a totally new direction, marking a turning point in his artistic development. He himself explained that, finally, he had wanted "to go back to the source" and "return art to the principles followed by the Greeks." It might surprise us that, in view of his intention to paint a picture that was "more Greek than the earlier ones," David chose a Roman subject. But the term "Greek Art" should be understood here in the ideal meaning of the term.

As in his previous history paintings, David strove simultaneously for truth and grandeur. His figures are at one and the same time human beings and heroes. He borrowed his attitudes from classical bas-reliefs and his figures from contemporary models.

The most striking thing about this painting is that the warriors are nude. David was inspired by the idea that the Greeks had represented their gods, athletes, and heroes in the nude. David was not seeking, as had Michelangelo, for example, to glorify masculine beauty, but rather to endow his heroes with a superior quality that, ultimately, was more moral than physical. With the exception of Romulus, these nude bodies are not Particularly muscular. David wanted to refine, to strip away anything that was unnecessary, to reduce everything to a supreme, heroic simplicity. The element that we probably find most seductive about this painting today is the way in which David has projected and controlled the tumultuous movement of all the figures, which he then brings to an abrupt halt. Hersilia and the other Sabine Women really seem to be bursting onto the scene, which they dominate. In contrast, the armies are only suggested, rather than represented, by a forest of lances, pikes, and standards; the leader of the cavalry puts his sword back in its sheath, the horses rear in a static, quivering motion; the two warriors who are about to clash are frozen in their attitudes, their furious precipitation arrested as they seem rooted to the spot. David has also tamed his colors. Of his earlier palette, he has retained only some of the vivid reds on the shoulder of Tatius, Romulus's helmet, and the robe of the woman behind Hersilia; elsewhere, the reds are shaded with brick-toned hues. Some yellows, not as bright as in earlier paintings, a bit of green on the old woman's robe, and a bit of blue near Tatius's foot recall the tones David had once preferred. In contrast, the nude bodies, the walls of Rome, the standards and the pikes, the horse's hide, and Hersilia's tunic make up a spectrum of clear bronzed tones under a slightly tinted sky.

He has totally abandoned any attempt at chiaroscuro or shadow effects. The light is everywhere. He wants to show the light as a triumphant but gentle mediatrix, like the Sabine Women.

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All contents © 1999 William M. Brinton