Jacques Louis David - 1748-1825

( Originally Published 1906 )

FRENCH SCHOOL

JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID (pronounced Dah'vëed) was born in Paris on August 30, 1748. When he was nine years old his father was killed in a duel, and he was left to the guardianship of his mother and two uncles. The talent for drawing which the boy evinced very early in life decided his relatives that architecture was the profession he should adopt, but David him-self was determined to become a painter, and held so tenaciously to this purpose that he was allowed to have his way. Application was accordingly made to the celebrated artist Boucher to take him into his studio. But Boucher, who was then growing old, felt unwilling to undertake his instruction, and recommended him instead to Joseph Marie Vien, a painter of growing influence and repute who had lately returned from Rome, where a study of the antique had lent a certain severity to his style wholly lacking in the light and decorative manner of painting of Boucher and his followers.

Vien was struck by the ability shown in David's drawings and agreed to admit him to his studio. There the young man worked diligently and progressed rapidly. Through the influence of a relative, Sedaine, then secretary of the Academy of Architecture, he obtained a lodging in the Louvre, where he made his first independent attempts at painting. When twenty-two he determined to compete for the Grand Prize of Rome, a sort of traveling fellowship entitling its holder to a residence of some years in Italy. Repeated failures to win this much-coveted prize were deeply mortifying to David's proud, sensitive nature, and finally, convinced that he was the object of unjust persecution, he decided to end his existence by starvation. Locking him-self into his room, he remained for three days without food or drink, brooding over his disappointment, and it was only with great difficulty that the friends who found him there, pale and emaciated, could persuade him to renounce his intention.

This incident seems to have brought David into notice, and through the efforts of the architect Le Doux he was engaged by Mlle. Guimard, a famous opera-dancer of that day, to complete the rococo decorations begun by Fragonard in her house in Paris. His work evidently gave satisfaction, for besides generously recompensing the young artist, Mlle. Guimard commissioned him to paint her portrait.

In 1774 David again entered the competition for the Prize of Rome. This time the picture he submitted to the judges, `Antiochus and Stratonice,' a mediocre work, vivid in color and affected in composition, was awarded the prize, and in the following year he accompanied his master, Vien, who had been appointed director of the French Academy in Rome, to Italy.

David was at that time twenty-seven years old. He is described as tall and strongly built. His face, in which energy and will were indicated rather than genius, was somewhat disfigured by a deformity of the upper jaw caused by an accidental blow from a stone received when a child. This disfigurement be-came more pronounced as he grew older, and increased a natural difficulty in his speech. His character was still undeveloped. The vehemence and intensity of his nature, his domineering spirit, were as yet dormant, and in the young student not fully emancipated from the tenets and prejudices of the rococo school of eighteenth-century painting in France, it is difficult to see the future despotic leader, "the great high priest of classicism," who, so soon to become penetrated with veneration for the antique, was destined to head the movement that revolutionized painting in France.

But David's conversion was not immediate. Not at first did the works of the greatest masters appeal to what he himself signalized as his "coarse Gallic taste." The sight of Correggio's achievements in Parma filled him with enthusiasm, it is true, but for a time he chose to apply himself to copying the works of Valentin, a French follower of Caravaggio and Ribera. He could not long, however, escape the great neo-antique movement of which Rome was the center. The theories of Lessing, the paintings of Mengs, the publications of Winckelmann, aided by the discoveries then being made in Pompeii and Herculaneum, all tending as they did towards a revival of classic art, had their effect upon his mind and his practice. He filled his sketch-books with studies of the bas-reliefs on Trajan's column; beauty of line and simplicity in composition assumed more and more importance in his eyes; little by little the traditions of the rococo school were forgotten or laid aside, and in the austerity of such works as `Hector,' an academic figure now in the Museum of Montpellier, in a composition entitled `The Death of Patroclus,' and in a large can-vas painted somewhat in the style of the Bolognese school, representing `St. Roch interceding with the Virgin for the Plague-stricken,' now in Marseilles, we see how widely David had departed from the codes of the popular French school. In two important works that soon followed, `Belisarius asking Alms,' now in the Lille Museum, and `Andromache weeping over the Body of Hector,' both based upon a study of the antique, a complete departure from his early traditions is apparent.

Before the exhibition at the Salon of 1781 of his `Belisarius,' David, after five years of study in Rome, had returned to Paris, where a short time after-wards he was made an academician and assigned a lodging and a studio in the Louvre. Two years later occurred his marriage with Mlle. Marguerite Charlotte Pécoul, whose father was architect and superintendent of buildings to the king. M. Pécoul was not only rich, but generous, and upon finding that David was desirous of returning to Rome to complete in more congenial surroundings a large picture commissioned by the king, Louis xvi., the subject of which was suggested by Corneille's tragedy `Les Horaces,' he willingly furnished means for the journey to Italy; and in 1784 David, accompanied by his wife and by three of his pupils, found himself once more in Rome.

All his thoughts and time were now given to the completion of his picture, `The Oath of the Horatii,' which was finished at the end of eleven months. In Rome it met with an immediate success. Princes, cardinals, artists, archaeologists, and men of letters crowded to David's studio to see and admire. This enthusiastic reception was repeated in Paris, when in 1785 the great canvas was exhibited at the Salon. The cold, austere qualities of this famous picture, its harsh coloring, and the theatrical and studied attitudes of the personages represented render it difficult for us to-day to realize the intense feeling its appearance aroused in Paris. What little adverse criticism it provoked only served to increase its fame. The subject appealed to every zealous Republican, and David was felt to be "the man after the heart of the age."

The `Oath of the Horatii' was soon followed by `The Death of Socrates,' which achieved an almost equal success, and by `Lictors bringing to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons.' Because of the revolutionary spirit expressed in this last, an attempt was made to prevent its exhibition, but the public, seeing in it an allegory of the incorruptible justice of republicanism, insisted upon its being shown.

David's triumph was complete. The recognized leader of a new school based upon a study of Greek and Roman models, the regenerator of French painting, his influence was felt not only in art, but in the dress and fashions of the period. In emulation of the classic severity of costume portrayed by him in his pictures, the voluminous and ruffled skirts and laced corsets worn by ladies of fashion were thrown aside, and the loose flowing robes and simple girdles of Roman matrons adopted. Hair-powder was discarded and a classic arrangement of the hair became the vogue. Even in furniture the fashion changed, and in place of the highly ornamented chairs and tables of Louis Quinze, the severe simplicity of the antique became popular. David, indeed, reigned supreme. His studio in the Louvre, furnished with austere but elegant simplicity, was the resort of a large and increasing number of pupils, and was visited by all the men and women prominent in France in that day.

In 1789 the disagreements which for some time past had been steadily increasing among the members of the Academy of Painting, culminated in the secession of those who had sought for a revision of its statutes, on the ground that all members were entitled to equal rights, and that the Salons should be open to all for the exhibition of their works. David, who had no sympathy with the conservative views of many of his brother academicians, and who despised the methods of instruction which then prevailed in the Academy schools, was proclaimed president of the seceding faction. All this served to increase his fame, and he was regarded as the champion of liberty in the domain of art.

Between 1789 and 1792 he painted some of his finest portraits—a branch of art in which he always excelled, and on which his fame as a technician rests more surely to-day than on his large and dreary subject-pictures.

At the outbreak of the French Revolution David was over forty years old and at the full maturity of his powers. When it was decided by the National Assembly to commemorate in painting the famous oath taken on June 20, 1789, in the Tennis Court at Versailles, by the members of that body not to separate until "the constitution of the kingdom had been established and con-firmed on solid foundations," David, the painter of the `Horatii' and of `Bru tus,' was chosen to portray the scene. This picture, `Le Serment du Jeu de Paume' (The Oath in the Tennis Court), was never completed, but the preparatory study for it, exhibited at the Salon of 1791, still exists.

An ardent Republican, David became a member of the famous Jacobin Club (so-called because its headquarters were in the Jacobin convent in Paris), made up of those whose views were most radically opposed to the government. In September, 1792, he was elected a deputy to the National Convention and took his seat among the "Montagnards," as the more advanced members were called. The following June he was appointed secretary of the Convention, and not many months later became a member of the terrible "Committee of Public Safety," and was among those members of the Convention who, in January, 1793, voted for the death of the king, Louis xvi.

Not gifted as an orator, and handicapped moreover by a hesitation in his speech, David rarely addressed the meeting of the Convention, giving expression to his feelings, when any question of great political importance arose, by vehement exclamations or by terse phrases full of force. But his brush, more eloquent than his tongue, was always at the service of the cause he held dear, and as the appointed organizer of all public fêtes and ceremonies of the Revolution, his rule was a despotic one. In recognition of his services the Convention elected him for a brief period to its presidency. The "Reign of Terror" was then at its height.

Early in 1793 had occurred the assassination of Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau, one of the deputies who had voted for Louis' death. The body was publicly exhibited, and David with realistic force painted a picture of the murdered man on his death-bed, presenting it to the Convention to be hung in their chamber as the portrait of "the first martyr of liberty." Six months after this, Marat, "the man of terror," fell a victim to the knife of Charlotte Corday. The excitement caused by this event was intense. When the news was brought to the Convention one of the deputies cried out, "David, where are you ? You have transmitted to posterity the image of Lepelletier dying for his country; one more picture remains for you to paint!" And in the breathless silence that followed this impassioned appeal David responded, "And I will do it." Not many months later he finished his marvelous painting —now in the Brussels Museum—of Marat dead in his bath, stabbed to the heart by the young girl who risked all in her attempt to free France from the monstrous deeds of this so-called "friend of the people."

When Robespierre, the dictator before whom all France had bowed, fell from power and met death on the scaffold, David,. his friend and admirer, himself narrowly escaped the guillotine. Thrown into prison, it was five months before he was liberated, and then only to be re-arrested on numerous charges. The Convention, however, before disbanding, voted a general amnesty, and in 1795 he regained his freedom. During his days of suffering one great happiness had been his: his wife, who, with her two daughters, had left him at the time of his political prominence, alienated by the violence of his revolutionary views, returned to him upon learning of his imprisonment, exerted every effort to save him from his threatened fate, and ever afterwards remained constant in her love and devotion.

When the Institute of France was founded, in 1795, David was elected one of the forty-eight original members. From now on he took no active part in politics. The Directory succeeded the Convention, and he was among the members of that body who retired to private life. His time was now wholly devoted to his art and to his pupils, among whom were many sculptors as well as painters who became famous in after years—numbering in all, it has been estimated, upwards of four hundred.

The friendship extended to David by Napoleon Bonaparte, elected First Consul in 1799, went far towards effacing from the public mind the recollection of his political career, and once more his studio became the resort of all the great people of the day. Napoleon himself was a frequent visitor, and lost no opportunity of showing the painter special marks of favor. David in his turn was completely fascinated by the personality of the man who had be-come the nation's hero, and yielded in all things to his wishes, even departing from his classic style of painting to adopt a form of art more pleasing to the ideas of Napoleon.

Upon Bonaparte's being proclaimed emperor, David, who had already been made a member of the Legion of Honor and was soon to become one of its officers, was named first painter to the imperial court and commissioned to execute four great Napoleonic pictures: `The Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine; 'The Distribution of the Standards; 'The Enthronement of Their Majesties;' and `The Entrance of the Emperor and Empress into the Hôtel de Ville.' The first two of these scenes alone were completed, and in the first David may be said to have reached the culmination of his powers.

But although still the leader in that classic school of painting which in France had for the time superseded all other manner of expression in art, David was not without enemies. Many of his colleagues in the Institute regarded him with disfavor, and, weary of the restrictions imposed upon them by his inexorable laws, they excluded him from the committee formed for reorganizing the École des Beaux-Arts. In order to assert his supremacy and put a stop to the spirit opposing itself to his tenets, David requested to be appointed director of public instruction in the School of Painting and Sculpture. But this request was refused. Mortified by the rebuff and vexed by the difficulty he had to collect the payment agreed upon for his great canvases of `The Coronation' and `The Distribution of the Eagles,' David withdrew to a great extent from official life.

He now turned his attention to finishing a picture begun sometime before —'Leonidas at Thermopylae'— and to the execution of several portraits. In the midst of all his celebrity, and notwithstanding the fact that his ambition and his love of power were boundless, it is noteworthy that he was accustomed to live in great simplicity. He loved music, especially Italian music, was fond of the theater, which he frequently attended, and in his home he entertained his friends with the utmost hospitality. Always quietly but elegantly dressed, his manner was marked by extreme courtesy. By his pupils he was both venerated and loved. Every Sunday morning it was his custom to receive them in his home, where in winter he was to be found beside his fire, pipe in mouth, and in summer in his garden, where he had erected a monument to the memory of his favorite pupil, Drouais, who had died in Rome.

David's faith in the fortune of Napoleon was so firm that he had unhesitatingly accepted whatever favors had been shown him by the emperor. His elder son had been made an under prefect in Hanover, his younger son was appointed chief of a squadron of cuirassiers, while his two daughters had been married to officers warmly attached to the imperial cause. While that cause was all-powerful in France everything went well with him and his family, but evil days were at hand for both emperor and artist. Napoleon's star, so long in the ascendant, began to set, and on the approach of the allied armies, David was filled with apprehension and resolved to transport many of his pictures —his `Marat' and `Lepelletier,' his `Coronation," Distribution of the Standards,' portrait of Napoleon, and various other works—to the coast of France, where they were carefully hidden. So far as he himself was concerned, however, his fears proved groundless. The restoration of the Bourbons left him undisturbed, and on Napoleon's return from Elba, David, among the first to welcome his hero, found himself again in favor and straightway appointed Commander of the Legion of Honor.

Unfortunately, during the "Hundred Days" which constituted Napoleon's brief return to power, David incautiously placed his signature to the "additional articles" excluding the Bourbons from the throne of France, thus ex-posing himself, in the event of Napoleon's downfall, to the vengeance of the royalists. This downfall quickly followed. Early in 1816, when Louis xvii. had been reinstated as King of France, a law was passed sentencing to exile all regicides who had signed the "additional acts."

It is said that had David humbled himself to ask it, an exception to this decree would have been made in his favor, in view of his services to art. Twenty years of peaceful existence had passed since the stormy period of the Revolution, when, as a member of the National Convention, he had voted for the death of Louis xvi., and twenty years had wiped out all remembrance of the part he had taken in those terrible days—so urged his friends; but David would listen to no such counsel, and, bitter as exile was to him, said farewell to France. His request that he might be allowed to go to Rome was refused, and he took up his residence in Brussels. There he found many friends, and was accorded a warm welcome by William I., King of the Netherlands, whose government testified by every mark of consideration and regard its appreciation of the honor shown it by the great painter who in his exile had selected Brussels as his home. And David, on his side, gave proof of the value he placed upon King William's hospitality by declining the invitation of the King of Prussia to go to Berlin, where he was offered the directorship of the Fine Arts, as well as higher honors and greater pecuniary reward than had been bestowed upon him in France as painter to Napoleon.

In Brussels David lived peacefully and by no means unhappily. His days were spent in painting; his evenings at the theater, where a special seat was reserved for him. Friends and pupils surrounded him, and no artist from Paris or elsewhere, and, indeed, no stranger of note passing through Brussels, failed to seek the honor of a visit to the man who was still regarded as the first painter of France.

But David was growing old and his hand was no longer so steady, nor were his eyes so strong, as in former years. The pictures painted at this period—`Love leaving Pysche,' `The Anger of Achilles,' above all his `Mars disarmed by Venus'—show a decided diminution of his powers.

In the winter of 1824—25 his health broke down. He continued, however, to work, but was interrupted more and more by illness, and his absence from his accustomed seat in the theater became more and more frequent. Towards the close of the year a serious affection of the heart prostrated him. When the end was very near, a proof of an engraving of his `Leonidas' was, at his re-quest, brought to him one morning for correction, and as he lay in bed, sup-ported by his attendants, he indicated with the cane which had been placed in his hand the various places where he wished changes to be made. "Too black here," he said in a voice weakened by suffering, "too light just there. The shading in this part is not well defined. . . . Here the touch seems uncertain . . . and yet,"—the words became scarcely audible—"yet it is the head of Leonidas. . . . " The voice failed altogether, the cane fell from his hand, and he breathed his last. This was on the twenty-ninth of December, 1825. David was seventy-seven years old.