Jacques-Louis David was the leading painter of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.
As first painter to Napoleon, David held a position of great influence, and his heroic and disciplined neo-classical style was an entirely appropriate expression of the egalitarian fervor of the Revolution and the militaristic autocracy of Napoleon. After the restoration of the Bourbons David was forced, as someone who had voted for the execution of King Louis XVI, to live in exile in Brussels. He had many pupils and through them remained a potent force in academic salon painting well into the nineteenth century.
After studying at the French academy, David won the coveted Rome prize, which enabled him to make the essential journey to Italy. Once there, he was inspired by high renaissance and seventeenth-century painters as well as the Antique and his St Roch Altarpiece of 1780 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseille) shows the influence of Caravaggio (1571–1610) and Guercino (1591–1666). His reputation was made with his fully-fledged neo-classical Oath of the Horatii (1784, Musée du Louvre). This masterpiece has been held to anticipate the republican ideals of the Revolution, but its message is equally the moral imperative of commitment to a just cause. His later The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons adds a rider that such commitment demands great personal sacrifice.
Selected artworks
Further Reading
Philippe Bordes, Jacques-Louis David: Empire to Exile, exh. cat., New Haven, 2005.
Antoine Schnapper and Arlette Sérullaz, eds., Jacques-Louis David, exh. cat., Paris, 1989.
Anita Brookner, Jacques-Louis David, London, 1980.
Louis Joseph Aimé Thomé de Gamond, Vie de David, premier peintre de Napoléon, Brussels, 1826.
Notable Exhibitions
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jacques Louis David: Radical Draftsman, 17 February – 15 May 2022. Curated by Perrin Stein.
Vienna, Albertina Museum, From Poussin to David, 25 January – 25 April 2017. Curated by Christine Ekelhart.
Dallas, Dallas Museum of Art, Mind’s Eye: Masterworks on Paper from David to Cézanne, 29 June – 26 October 2014. Curated by Olivier Meslay and William Jordan.
Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, Antiquity Revived: Neoclassical Art in the Eighteenth Century, 20 March – May 30, 2011. Curated By Edgar Peters Bowron and Helga Aurisch.
Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, Jacques-Louis David: Empire to Exile, 1 February – 24 April 2005; travelled to Williamstown, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 6 June – 5 September 2005. Curated by Jon Seydl, Charlotte Eyerman, and Scott Schaefer.
Paris, Grand Palais, The Loves of the Gods: Mythological Painting from Watteau to David, 15 October 1991 – 6 January 1992; travelled to Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 23 February – 26 April 1992; Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, 23 May – 2 August 1992. Curated by Colin Bailey, Philippe Le Leyzour, and Pierre Rosenberg.
Paris, Musée du Louvre, Jacque-Louis David, 1748–1825, 26 October 1989 – 12 February 1990. Curated by Antoine Schnapper.