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| DAVID, Jacques Louis |
| In
the arts the way in which an idea is rendered, and the manner in
which it is expressed, is much more important than the idea itself.
- Jacques Louis David |
 |
 |
 |
DAVID, Jacques Louis, French painter: born in Paris, France, Aug. 30, 1748 and died in Brussels, Dec. 29, 1825. A pupil of Joseph Marie Vien, he won the Prix de Rome in 1775 with his Antiochus and Stratonice. His leanings toward classicism were strengthened during his stay in Rome, and he is considered the founder of the French classical school. Returning to Paris in 1780, he became a member of the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture three years later. In 1784 he painted on commission from Louis XVI his celebrated Oath of the Horatii, now in the Louvre; in 1787, his Death of Socrates (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); in 1788, The Loves of Paris and Helen (Louvre); and in 1789, The Return of Brutus (Louvre).
After the outbreak of the French Revolution he became an ardent Jacobin. He organized a number of republican celebrations, and in 1792 was elected a deputy to the National Convention. He voted for the death of the king and was a close friend of Maximilien de Robespierre. After the latter's fall, in 1794, he was imprisoned for a few months. Meanwhile, he executed his Marat Assassinated (1793, Brussels Museum) and a self-portrait (1794, Louvre). From the following year date his portraits of M. and Mme. Seriziat (Louvre). Also in the Louvre is The Rape of the Sabine Women (1799).
In 1804 he was appointed court painter to Napoleon and commissioned to execute four large pictures, of which two were completed: Consecration of Napoleon (also known as Coronation, 1805-1807, Louvre) and The Distribution of the Eagles (1810, Versailles). Leonidas at Thermopylae (1814, Louvre) is the last painting he completed in Paris.
Banished as a regicide after the second restoration of Louis XVIII, he lived
in exile in Brussels from 1816 until his death. There he executed Les Trois
Dames de Grind (Louvre); Mars Disarmed by Venus (Brussels Museum); and a number
of portraits. David's classical and historical works, with their cold, formal
composition, lack the charm of some of his portraits, such as those of Madame
Recamier and Pope Pius VII, both in the Louvre.