Art Style and Accomplishments Although Jacques-Louis David’s paintings would become synonymous with the 1789 Revolution, his initial achievements were iconic depictions of heroic acts commissioned by royal and noble customers who embraced the neoclassical aesthetic as the newest style.
18th century French painter Jacques-Louis David possessed an incredible talent and a deep admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte. Both are clear in the striking portrait Napoleon Crossing the Alps, but few know that this painting was a defining moment for both its artist and subject. 1.
His mother, Geneviève Buron, came of a family of builders and architects and was distantly related to the painter François Boucher (1703-1770). Under the guardianship of uncles on his mother's side, Louis received a sound classical education. His guardians wished to train him as an architect, but he insisted on being allowed to study painting.
On the reinstatement of Louis XVIII after Waterloo, David was banished from France, together with other regicides who had opted for Napoleon. He settled in Brussels in 1816 and, at sixty-eight, prepared for a new life.
Biography. Jacques-Louis David was born in Paris in 1748, the son of an iron merchant who was killed in a duel (an unusual circumstance in his social class), when the boy was nine years old. His mother, Geneviève Buron, came of a family of builders and architects and was distantly related to ...
Deciding that he could carry it out only in Rome, David traveled to Italy with financial help from his father-in-law and there finished the picture in eleven months. Exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1785, its Spartan severity excited general admiration and founded David's reputation as France's foremost painter.
His political activity was at first confined to the Academy, in which he became the leader of a dissident faction of junior members. By enlisting the aid of the Commune of Paris, then of the National Assembly, and finally of the Jacobin Club, he managed to dismantle the privileges of the academy one by one and, as a member of the Committee of Public Instruction in 1793, obtained the decree that abolished it altogether. An admirer and friend of Robespierre,, he voted for the beheading of the king and the queen (January and October 1793) and briefly presided over the Convention. During his years of Revolutionary activity, he did not produce moralizing history paintings, such as might be expected from an artist-legislator. His first service to the Revolution was to commemorate the Oath in the Tennis Court at the request of a Jacobin club in 1790. His drawing (Louvre) of that crucial meeting of the Third Estate in an indoor tennis court at Versailles, exhibited at the Salon of 1791, was to have been executed in a large painting paid for by public subscription, but the scheme failed and the canvas remained unfinished. As the leading member of the Committee of Public Instruction, David was in fact, though not in title, Robespierre's minister of the arts, to whom it fell to plan the huge national pageants that were the Revolution's chief means of mass indoctrination. He designed their settings of artificial mountains, symbolic sculptures, and monumental altars, sketched the costumes and organized the ceremonial for the Translation of Voltaire's Ashes to the Pantheon (1791), the celebration of the Mutinous Swiss Guards (1792), the Festival of Brotherhood (1793), and the Feast of the Supreme Being (1794), and volunteered to paint the memorial portraits of the Revolution's "martyrs"-- Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau (1793, lost), Marat (1793, Musées Royaux, Brussels), and Barra (unfinished, Musée Calvet, Avignon).
David now signed a declaration of loyalty to Napoleon--an act of courage , since he foresaw the emperor's ultimate defeat. On the reinstatement of Louis XVIII after Waterloo, David was banished from France, together with other regicides who had opted for Napoleon.
The second canvas in the series, Presentation of the Standards (1808-1810 , Versailles), which records the armies' homage to the emperor, proved less successful. After its exhibition at the Salon of 1810, David received no further state commissions.
The years between Robespierre's fall (1794) and Bonaparte's rise (1799) were his interlude of artistic independence between two political engagements, a time to concentrate on matters of form and style. While still in prison, his thoughts turned again to themes from antiquity.
His entry in 1789, Brutus in the Atrium of His House, after the Execution of His Sons (Louvre), based on a play by Voltaire, was, like the Horatii, a royal commission, but its moral lesson--that family ties must yield to the demands of patriotism--was stated with an unyielding hardness that foretold the Terror.
Art historians tend to favor David's pre-Napoleonic Era works. Napoleon Crossing The Alps has been criticized for its stiffness, which makes it seem more a statue than a frozen moment. Though David would paint until the end of his life, none of his subsequent works reached the acclaim of those created in the late 1700s, like Oath of the Horatii, The Death of Socrates, and The Death of Marat. His earlier works earned him a reputation as a groundbreaker and pioneer of Neoclassicism. However, his Napoleon portraits are remembered more for their history than artistry.
IT WAS NOT DAVID'S FIRST ATTEMPT AT PAINTING NAPOLEON. In 1797 , David began a painting of the general meant to commemorate the peace treaty with Austria at Campo-Formio. He painted the face and sketched the body, but then abandoned the portrait and shifted his attention to The Intervention of the Sabine Women (1799).
He requested an equestrian portrait, which was a genre that royalty tended to prefer. Napoleon demanded he be portrayed as " calme sur un cheval fougueux ,” which translates roughly to "calm on a fiery horse." David delivered.
In the spring of 1800, Napoleon's forces trekked through the Alps by way of the Great St. Bernard Pass for a surprise attack on Austrian armies in what is now northern Italy. On June 14, the Battle of Marengo pushed the Austrians out of the territory completely, and bolstered Napoleon's position in European politics. Painted over four months in 1800 and 1801, Napoleon Crossing The Alps was intended to illustrate this important victory.
His Death of Socrates (1787) fanned the flames of rebellion, while The Death of Marat (1793) memorialized its subject as a martyr of the French Revolution. At the turn of the 19th century, France was on the rise thanks to Napoleon Bonaparte, who'd staged a coup d’état against the revolutionary government.
1. NAPOLEON CROSSING THE ALPS MARKED A NEW ERA FOR FRANCE. David's history-based works not only marked political movements in France but also contributed to them.
Looking to strengthen relations with France, Charles IV of Spain met with Bonaparte for an exchange of grand gifts. Napoleon offered pistols made in Versailles, fine dresses sewn in Paris, jewels, and armor. Charles IV presented 16 Spanish horses from own stables, portraits of himself and his queen painted by Spanish artist Francisco Goya, ...