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Jacques-Louis David
(Aug.30,1748 Paris - Dec.29,1825 Brussels). French Oil Painting Artist Biography.
Jacques-Louis David was 10 years old, when his father died in a pistol duel. He had his first art 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 him in 1776, Vien having been appointed director of the French Academy in Rome.
In Italy, Jacques-Louis David was able to indulge his love for the antique and came into contact with the initiators of the new Classical revival. 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 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 (1784, Louvre, Paris), Brutus and his Dead Sons (1789, Louvre, Paris) or The Death of Socrates (1787, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). They were received with acclamation by critics and public alike. Art critic Reynolds compared the Death of Socrates with Michelangelo Sistine Ceiling and after ten visits to the Paris Salon described it "in every sense perfect."
David was in active sympathy with the French Revolution, becoming a Deputy and voting for the execution of Louis XVI. His position was unchallenged as the oil painter of the Revolution. His three paintings of martyrs of the French Revolution, though conceived as portraits, raised oil portraiture into the domain of universal tragedy. They were, The Death of Lepeletier (now known only from an engraving), The Death of Marat (1793, Musées Royaux, Brussels) and The Death of Bara (Musée Calvet, Avignon, unfinished). After the fall of Robespierre in 1794 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 (1794-99 Louvre, Paris) 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 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.
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 oil paintings glorifying the exploits of the Emperor, among them the enormous Coronation of Napoleon (1805-07 Louvre). These works show a change both in technique and in feeling from the earlier works. The cold colors and severe compositions of the historical and heroic oil 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.
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. He continued to be an outstanding portraiture artist, but he never surpassed such earlier achievements as the great Napoleon Crossing the Alps (1800, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, one of four versions) or the coolly erotic Madame Récamier (1800 Louvre).
His work had a resounding influence on the development of French and European oil painting and the worlds artists and his many pupils included Gérard, Gros and Jean Auguste Ingres.
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Napoleon Crossing the Alps
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Brutus and his Dead Sons
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The Death of Socrates
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Madame Récamier
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The Death of Marat
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