Portal:Jacques-Louis David
Portal maintenance status: (October 2018)
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Introduction
Jacques-Louis David (French: [ʒaklwi david]; 30 August 1748 – 29 December 1825) was a French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward classical austerity and severity and heightened feeling, harmonizing 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 (1758–1794), 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, The First Consul of France. At this time he developed his Empire style, notable for its use of warm Venetian colours. After Napoleon's fall from Imperial power and the Bourbon revival, David exiled himself to Brussels, then in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, where he remained until his death. David had, making him the strongest influence in French art of the early 19th century, especially academic Salon painting.
Selected general articles
Charlotte David or Marguerite-Charlotte Pécoul (1764 – 1826) was the French wife of the painter Jacques-Louis David.
David-Pécoul was born in Paris as the daughter of the superintendent of Royal buildings, and was roughly half the age of her husband when she married on 16 May 1782. They had four children; Charles Louis Jules David born 19 February 1783, François Eugène David born 27 April 1784, and the twin daughters Laure Émilie Félicité David and Pauline Jeanne David, born 26 October 1786. In 1784 her husband David painted pendant portraits of his parents-in-law. By that time David-Pécoul's birth mother Marie-Louise, née l'Alouette had died and her father Charles-Pierre Pécoul had married his second wife Geneviève Jacqueline, née Potain, who was the sister of the architect Nicolas Marie Potain. The portraits were possibly painted on the occasion of this second marriage: Read more...
Napoleon in Imperial Costume was an 1805 portrait of Napoleon I in his coronation robes. Originally intended for the Tribuna in Genoa, Napoleon was unhappy with it and it was left incomplete. It is known via a small oil sketch now in the Palais des beaux-arts de Lille.
Another version of the same subject was meant for Napoleon's brother Jérôme Bonaparte, king of Westphalia. It is now lost, but known via a copy attributed to Rouget now in the Fogg Art Museum, an incomplete canvas attributed to Sebastian Weygandt in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Kassel and a head study in the bibliothèque Thiers. Read more...
The Last Moments of Michel Lepeletier, The Death of Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau or Lepeletier on his Deathbed was a 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David.
Now lost, it showed député Louis-Michel Lepeletier de Saint-Fargeau on his deathbed following his assassination for voting in favour of the execution of Louis XVI and formed a diptych with The Death of Marat for the meeting hall of the National Convention. Those two paintings and The Death of Young Bara formed a series devoted to martyrs of the French Revolution. Read more...
The Portrait of Count Stanislas Potocki is a 1781 equestrian portrait of the Polish patron, politician, writer and Prime Minister of Poland Stanisław Kostka Potocki by the French painter Jacques-Louis David. It was painted in Rome when the artist and subject met during David's stay at the Villa Medici after winning the first prize for painting in the Prix de Rome, and chronologically after his Saint Roch interceding with the Virgin for the Plague-Stricken and before Belisarius begging for alms. Its equestrian format is owed to influences from Rubens.
Potocki, the subject of the painting, displayed it at Wilanów Palace, his residence near Warsaw. Ownership passed to the Branicki family in 1892. During the Second World War it was looted by the German forces, then passed into Soviet Russian hands after the war, before being repatriated to Poland in 1956. It is now on show in the Museum of King John III's Palace at Wilanów. Read more...
Psyche Abandoned is a c.1795 painting by Jacques-Louis David, and is now in a private collection. It shows Psyche abandoned by Cupid as a crouching female nude in profile against a blue sky and a hill in the background. Vertical in format, it represents David's early style and shows his approach to the female nude to be different from the academic canons.
"A painted study of Psyche" appears on three of David's lists of his own work as a pendant to The Vestal Virgin. Long thought lost, it was rediscovered in 1991 and exhibited in the 2010 Louvre exhibition L’Antiquité rêvée. Read more...- The Portrait of François Buron is a 1769 painting by Jacques-Louis David. It dates from his period of training and is one of his earliest known works. It shows his uncle, François Buron, and remained with his descendants until the death of his final descendant, A Baudry, in 1903. It was sold at the Regnault sale on 22 June 1905 for 6,000 francs. It then passed to Drouot at the Victor Gay sale on 23 April 1909 for 1,500 francs. It was sold anonymously on 15 December 1937 and later formed part of the collections of Robert Lebel and Madame Gas. It was sold to the Wildenstein galerie and then to its present private owner in New York City in 1985. Read more...
The Portrait of Madame Marie-Louise Trudaine is an unfinished 1791–1792 portrait of Marie-Louise Trudaine by the French painter Jacques-Louis David. It was commissioned from David by her brothers-in-law, the Trudaine brothers (the Trudaine family had provided France with major civil servants such as Daniel-Charles Trudaine since the 17th century) who welcomed David, the poet André Chénier, and other major artists of the time to their Parisian salon at place des Vosges. It shows her seated on a simple chaise, with her hands crossed on her lap and wearing a sober dress, a blue waist-sash and a white collar. Her expression is worried and reinforced by the tormented background and her unkempt hair.
David became radicalized at the time of the French Revolution in 1792, was elected a deputy to the National Convention, and became an extremist—unlike the Trudaine family, who opted for obscurity. David left the portrait unfinished. Read more...
The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons (French: Les licteurs rapportent à Brutus les corps de ses fils) is a work in oils by the French artist Jacques-Louis David. On a canvas of 146 square feet, this painting was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1789. The subject is the Roman leader Lucius Junius Brutus, founder of the Roman Republic, contemplating the fate of his sons. They had conspired to overthrow the republic and restore the monarchy, and Brutus himself was compelled to order their deaths. In doing so, Brutus became the heroic defender of the republic, at the cost of his own family. The painting was a bold allegory of civic virtue with immense resonance for the growing cause of republicanism. Its themes of virtue, sacrifice, and devotion to the nation sparked much controversy when it was unveiled in the politically charged era of the French Revolution. Read more...
The Anger of Achilles is an 1819 painting by Jacques-Louis David, now in the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.
One of the last of David's history paintings, it shows the moment in Greek myth when Agamemnon reveals to Achilles that he has not actually brought his daughter Iphigenia to him as a bride, but rather intends to sacrifice her in order to appease the goddess Artemis. Achilles begins to draw his sword in anger upon hearing this, while Agamemnon's wife, Clytemnestra, looks on in grief and sadness with her hand on her daughter's shoulder. Read more...
The Portrait of Pope Pius VII is an 1805 portrait of Pope Pius VII by the French painter Jacques-Louis David to thank the pope for assisting at the coronation of Napoleon I of France. Pope Pius appears in David's The Coronation of Napoleon, depicted as blessing the emperor, when in fact he was merely a spectator, assisting at the ceremony with a resigned expression throughout. Read more...
The Intervention of the Sabine Women is a 1799 painting by the French painter Jacques-Louis David, showing a legendary episode following the abduction of the Sabine women by the founding generation of Rome.
David began planning the work while he was imprisoned in the Luxembourg Palace in 1795. France was at war with other European nations after a period of civil conflict culminating in the Reign of Terror and the Thermidorian Reaction, during which David had been imprisoned as a supporter of Robespierre. David hesitated between representing either this subject or that of Homer reciting his verses to his fellow Greeks. He finally chose to make a canvas representing the Sabine women interposing themselves to separate the Romans and Sabines, as a 'sequel' to Poussin's The Rape of the Sabine Women. Read more...
The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries is an 1812 painting by Jacques-Louis David. It shows French Emperor Napoleon I in uniform in his study at the Tuileries Palace. Despite the detail, it is unlikely that Napoleon posed for the portrait.
It was a private commission from the Scottish nobleman and admirer of Napoleon, Alexander Hamilton, 10th Duke of Hamilton in 1811 and completed in 1812. Originally shown at Hamilton Palace, it was sold to Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery in 1882, from whom it was bought by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in 1954, which deposited it in Washington D.C.'s National Gallery of Art, where it now hangs. Read more...
The Loves of Paris and Helen is a 1788 painting by Jacques-Louis David, showing Helen of Troy and Paris from Homer's Iliad. It is now in the Louvre Museum.
It was the result of a commission from the comte d'Artois. It shows David in his 'galante' phase and was interpreted as a satire on the manners of the comte d'Artois. The caryatids in the background are copies of those by Jean Goujon in the Louvre. Read more...
The Distribution of the Eagle Standards is an 1810 painting by Jacques-Louis David depicting a ceremony arranged by Napoleon after his assumption of power as emperor. In it he sought to revive the military ethos of the Roman empire.
The event took place on December 5, 1804, three days after his coronation. Napoleon distributed "eagles" based on the Roman aquila of the legions of Rome. The standards represented the regiments raised by the various Departments of France, and were intended to institute feelings of pride and loyalty among the troops who would be the backbone of Napoleon's new regime. Napoleon gave an emotional speech in which he insisted that troops should defend the standards with their lives. In early sketches of the painting David included a winged figure of Nike, the goddess of victory, floating over the troops, but Napoleon objected to such an unrealistic feature. He also insisted that his wife Josephine be removed from the composition. He was preparing to divorce her, since she had failed to produce his heir. Read more...
Portrait of Alphonse Leroy is a 1783 portrait of doctor and man-midwife Alphonse Leroy by Jacques-Louis David, now in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier, which bought it in 1829.
It shows its subject looking towards the spectator and leaning on a closed copy of Hippocrates' Morbi mulierum, a work on women's illnesses. On the desk is a 'lampe à quinquet', invented by Leroy himself. Together the lamp and book make reference to Cesare Ripa's Iconologia, which states these are the attributes of a study. Read more...
The Tennis Court Oath (Le Serment du Jeu de paume) by David.
The Tennis Court Oath (French: Le Serment du Jeu de paume) is an incomplete painting by Jacques-Louis David, painted between 1790 and 1794 and showing the titular Tennis Court Oath at Versailles, one of the foundational events of the French Revolution.
Political reversals and financial difficulties meant that David was never able to finish the canvas, which measures 400 by 660 cm and is now in the Musée national du Château de Versailles. Read more...
Andromache Mourning Hector is a 1783 oil painting by Jacques-Louis David. The painting depicts an image from Homer's Iliad, showing Andromache, comforted by her son, Astyanax, mourning over her husband Hector, who has been killed by Achilles. This painting, presented on 23 August 1783, brought David election to the Académie Royale in 1784. Read more...
The Funeral Games of Patroclus is a 1778 fresco by Jacques-Louis David. It shows the funeral games for Patroclus during Trojan War, with his body and Achilles at the foot of the pyre and Hector resting on his chariot on the right. It was first exhibited at the Palazzo Mancini in Rome in September 1778, where it was a critical success. It was then lost until 1972, when it was acquired by the National Gallery of Ireland, its present home. Read more...
The Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his Wife is a double portrait of the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier and his wife and collaborator Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, commissioned from the French painter Jacques-Louis David in 1788 by Marie-Anne (who had been taught drawing by David). It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Read more...
Portrait of Philippe-Laurent de Joubert is a painting by Jacques-Louis David. Its date is unknown, but Antoine Schnapper argues that it was between 1790 and 1792, since the subject died on 30 March 1792. It was left incomplete like his portraits of Madame Trudaine and Madame Pastoret. It is now in the Musée Fabre in Montpellier. Read more...
Oath of the Horatii (French: Le Serment des Horaces), is a large painting by the French artist Jacques-Louis David painted in 1784 and now on display in the Louvre in Paris. The painting immediately became a huge success with critics and the public, and remains one of the best known paintings in the Neoclassical style.
It depicts a scene from a Roman legend about a dispute between two warring cities, Rome and Alba Longa, and stresses the importance of patriotism and masculine self-sacrifice for one's country. Instead of the two cities sending their armies to war, they agree to choose three men from each city; the victor in that fight will be the victorious city. From Rome, three brothers from a Roman family, the Horatii, agree to end the war by fighting three brothers from a family of Alba Longa, the Curiatii. The three brothers, all of whom appear willing to sacrifice their lives for the good of Rome, are shown saluting their father who holds their swords out for them. Of the three Horatii brothers, only one shall survive the confrontation. However, it is the surviving brother who is able to kill the other three fighters from Alba Longa: he allows the three fighters to chase him, causing them to separate from each other, and then, in turn, kills each Curiatii brother. Aside from the three brothers depicted, David also represents, in the bottom right corner, a woman crying whilst sitting down. She is Camilla, a sister of the Horatii brothers, who is also betrothed to one of the Curiatii fighters, and thus she weeps in the realisation that, in any case, she will lose someone she loves. Read more...
Diana and Apollo Killing Niobe's Children is a 1772 painting by Jacques-Louis David, now in the Dallas Museum of Art. He produced it to compete for the Prix de Rome. In the Rococo style which marked his early period, it was emblematic of the conflict between David and the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture jury, which refused him the prize followed a pre-arranged vote. Read more...
Sappho and Phaon is an 1809 neoclassical painting by the French painter Jacques-Louis David of Cupid, Sappho and her lover Phaon. It was commissioned by Prince Nikolai Yusupov for his Moika Palace and is now the only painting by David in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.
Sappho is shown sitting in a chair at the foot of a bed in a classically decorated room with columns, a marble floor and a view to a rural landscape outside (with Venus's birds, doves, sitting on the doorstep). Phaon stands behind the chair holding a spear and bow. On her knee is a scroll with some of her verses in praise of Phaon and Cupid kneels in front of her, holding up her lyre, which she tries to play with her right hand whilst leaning her head back to let Phaon cradle her head in his left arm. Read more...
Napoleon Crossing the Alps (also known as Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass or Bonaparte Crossing the Alps; listed as Le Premier Consul franchissant les Alpes au col du Grand Saint-Bernard) is the title given to the five versions of an oil on canvas equestrian portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte painted by the French artist Jacques-Louis David between 1801 and 1805. Initially commissioned by the King of Spain, the composition shows a strongly idealized view of the real crossing that Napoleon and his army made across the Alps through the Great St. Bernard Pass in May 1800. Read more...
The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis is an 1818 painting by Jacques-Louis David, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum. It was a commission by count Franz Erwein von Schonborn-Wiesentheid during David's exile in Brussels. It shows Telemachus and Eucharis, two characters in Fénelon's novel Les Aventures de Télémaque, inspired by Homer's Odyssey. It was the artist's last painting to show a couple from mythology, it was a pendant painting to his Love and Psyche. Read more...
The Death of Marat (French: La Mort de Marat or Marat Assassiné) is a 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David of the murdered French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat. It is one of the most famous images of the French Revolution. David was the leading French painter, as well as a Montagnard and a member of the revolutionary Committee of General Security. The painting shows the radical journalist lying dead in his bath on July 13, 1793 after his murder by Charlotte Corday. Painted in the months after Marat's murder, it has been described by T. J. Clark as the first modernist painting, for "the way it took the stuff of politics as its material, and did not transmute it". Read more...
Saint Jerome Hears the Trumpet of the Last Judgment is a 1779 painting by Jacques-Louis David. Read more...
The Death of Socrates (French: La Mort de Socrate) is an oil on canvas painted by French painter Jacques-Louis David in 1787. The painting focuses on a classical subject like many of his works from that decade, in this case the story of the execution of Socrates as told by Plato in his Phaedo. In this story, Socrates has been convicted of corrupting the youth of Athens and introducing strange gods, and has been sentenced to die by drinking poison hemlock. Socrates uses his death as a final lesson for his pupils rather than fleeing when the opportunity arises, and faces it calmly. The Phaedo depicts the death of Socrates and is also Plato's fourth and last dialogue to detail the philosopher's final days, which is also detailed in Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito.
In the painting, an old man in a white robe sits upright on a bed, one hand extended over a cup, the other gesturing in the air. He is surrounded by other men of varying ages, most showing emotional distress, unlike the stoic old man. The young man handing him the cup looks the other way, with his face in his free hand. Another young man clutches the thigh of the old man. An elderly man sits at the end of the bed, slumped over and looking in his lap. To the left, other men are seen through an arch set in the background wall. Read more...
Minerva Fighting Mars (Combat de Mars contre Minerve) is a 1771 painting by Jacques-Louis David, now in the Louvre. Read more...
Portrait of Madame Pastoret is a 1791 portrait by Jacques-Louis David. It shows Adélaide Pastoret, née Piscatory de Vaufreland (1765-1843). He was a friend of the Pastoret family but broke with them in 1792 after they became more politically radical. With his portraits of Philippe-Laurent de Joubert and Madame Trudaine, it was one of three paintings left incomplete due to the advance of the French Revolution - all three figures were arrested or emigrated. An infant's head is also shown in the cot - this is Amédée de Pastoret, a future conseiller d'Etat, painted by Ingres in 1826.
It was still in his studio on his death, when it was sold for 400 francs to its subject and remained in her family until the 1890 death without issue of her grand-daughter, the marquise de Rougé du Plessis-Bellière, née Marie de Pastoret. It was catalogued as on show to the public in her collection at her château in Moreuil in 1884 A visitor described it in 1890. Her collections were auctioned in May 1897, with the portrait sold for 17900 francs as lot 21 to M. Cheramy It has been in the Art Institute of Chicago since 1967. Read more...
The Death of Young Bara, Joseph Bara or The Death of Bara is an incomplete 1794 painting by the French artist Jacques-Louis David, now in the musée Calvet. Joseph Bara, a young drummer in the army of the French First Republic, killed by the Vendéens. He became a hero and martyr of the French Revolution and – with The Death of Marat and The Last Moments of Michel Lepeletier – the painting formed part of a series by David showing such martyrs. There is also an anonymous contemporary copy dating to 1794, now in the musée des beaux-arts de Lille and exhibited at the Musée de la Révolution française. Read more...
The Coronation of Napoleon (French: Le Sacre de Napoléon) is a painting completed in 1807 by Jacques-Louis David, the official painter of Napoleon, depicting the coronation of Napoleon I at Notre-Dame de Paris. The painting has imposing dimensions, as it is almost 10 metres (33 ft) wide by a little over 6 metres (20 ft) tall. The work is held in the Louvre in Paris.
The official title of the painting is Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I and Coronation of the Empress Josephine in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris on 2 December 1804. Read more...
Portrait of Madame Récamier is an 1800 portrait of the Parisian socialite Juliette Récamier by Jacques-Louis David showing her in the height of Neoclassical fashion, reclining on an Directoire style sofa in a simple Empire line dress with almost bare arms, and short hair "à la Titus". He began it in May 1800 but may have left it unfinished when he learned that François Gérard had been commissioned before him to paint a portrait of the same model (Gerard's portrait was completed in 1802); on the other hand many David portraits have the same bare background. The pose of a reclining figure looking back over her shoulder was adopted in 1814 by Ingres for his Grande Odalisque. It is now in the Louvre.
In Creatures in an Alphabet, Djuna Barnes wrote of the subject asThe Seal, she lounges like a bride,
Much too docile, there's no doubt;
Madame Récamier, on side,
(if such she has), and bottom out.
René Magritte also parodied David's painting in his own Perspective: Madame Récamier by David, showing a coffin reclining, now in the National Gallery of Canada. Read more...
Belisarius Begging for Alms (French: Bélisaire demandant l'aumône) is a large-format (288 × 312 cm) history painting in oil on canvas by Jacques-Louis David. It depicts the Byzantine general Belisarius, who heroically defeated the Vandals in North Africa in AD 533–534 on behalf of Justinian I, and (according to an apocryphal account probably added to his biography in the Middle Ages) was later blinded by the emperor and reduced to begging for alms on the street. David exhibited the work at the Salon of 1781 after returning from Italy and it proved a great success.
It is now on show at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille. Read more...
Jupiter and Antiope is a painting of unknown date, showing Jupiter and Antiope. On the reverse is a sketch of a young woman. It is possibly attributed to Jacques-Louis David, though the attribution is difficult since David disowned most of the works he produced as a young man.
David gave this painting to his cousin Marie-Françoise Baudry and her husband. Her grandson Adolphe Guillon left it to the musée de Sens on his death in 1896 where it is now held. It was published in 1911 by Charles Saunier. Read more...
The Vestal Virgin is a painting by Jacques-Louis David. Its date is unknown, but Antoine Schnapper estimates it between 1784 and 1787, 1787 being the year given for it in the 1803 Lespinasse sale catalogue. Sophie Monneret suggests 1783, the same year as Andromache Mourning Hector, perhaps in response to the creation of the Prix de Vertu.
It is a half length study of a vestal virgin and was rediscovered in 1909. Its attribution to David was contested by Gaston Brière, Klaus Holma and Louis Hautecœur, although the work is signed and mentioned in the painter's own list of works. Antoine Schnapper supported David as its artist by looking at the painting's treatment of the figure's hand and robe. Since the 1980s it has been in a private collection in the USA. Read more...
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Selected images
Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, 1817
Republican costume designed by David. Engraving by Denon.
Patroclus, study (1780), Musée Thomas-Henry
Marie Antoinette on the Way to the Guillotine, 16 October 1793. Sketched from a window in the rue Sainte-Honoré while the cart went past.
The Coronation of Napoleon, (1806)
The Death of Marat (1793)
Portrait of Pierre Sériziat, (1795), Louvre Museum
Jupiter et Antiope (1768), an early work showing the influence of Greuze
The Death of Socrates (1787)
Oath of the Horatii (second version; 1786)
Antiochus and Stratonica (1774), École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
Historical painter encouraged by the government, 1814 caricature, bodleian library.
The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries (1812) National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Drawing by Jacques-Louis David of the Tennis Court Oath. David later became a deputy in the National Convention in 1792
Portrait of the Comte de Turenne (1816), Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen
Mars Being Disarmed by Venus and the Three Graces, David's last great work (1824)
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