Monday, December 31, 2018

Artist of the day, December 31: Jacques-Louis David, French painter

Jacques-Louis David (1748 – 1825) was a French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward classical austerity and severity and heightened feeling, harmonizing with the moral climate of the final years of the Ancien Régime.

David later became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), and was effectively a dictator of the arts under the French Republic. Imprisoned after Robespierre's fall from power, he aligned himself with yet another political regime upon his release: that of Napoleon, The First Consul of France. At this time he developed his Empire style, notable for its use of warm Venetian colours. After Napoleon's fall from Imperial power and the Bourbon revival, David exiled himself to Brussels, then in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, where he remained until his death. David had a large number of pupils, making him the strongest influence in French art of the early 19th century, especially academic Salon painting.


Mr Jacques-Louis David self-portrait

1791, Self-Portrait

1768, Jupiter et Antiope

1772, Diana and Apollo Piercing Niobe’s Children with their Arrows

1774, Antiochus and Stratonica

1774-75, Mademoiselle Guimard as Terpsichore

1778, Hector's body

1780, Mlle Ducreux

1780, Patroclus, study

1780, Young Woman with a Turban

1781, Equestrian portrait of Stanisław Kostka Potocki

1783, Portrait of Alphonse Leroy

1784, Genevieve Jacqueline Pecoul, the painter’s mother-in-law

1784, Oath of the Horatii

1786, Oath of the Horatii (second version)

1787, The Death of Socrates

1788, Paris and Helen

1788, Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his wife

1789, The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons

1790, Portrait of Anne-Marie-Louise Thélusson, Comtesse de Sorcy


1793, The Death of Marat

1794, Homer Reciting his Verses to the Greeks

1794, The Representative of the People on Duty

1795, Portrait of a young girl

1795, Portrait of Pierre Sériziat

1797, Portrait of General Bonaparte

1798, Portrait of a young woman in white

1798-99, Portrait of Madame de Verninac

1799, The Intervention of the Sabine Women (detail)

1799, The Intervention of the Sabine Women

1800, Madame Récamier

1800, Portrait Of Mme ReCamier (Detail)

1801,Napoleon crossing the alps

1804, Portrait Of Suzanne Le Pelletier De Saint Fargeau

1804, Serment de l'armée fait à l'Empereur après la distribution des aigles

1804, Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau

1804, The Coronation of the Napoleon and Joséphine in Notre-Dame Cathedral (detail)

1805, Portrait of Pope Pius VII

1806, The Coronation of Napoleon

1809, Sappho and Phaon

1810, Portrait of Countess Daru

1812, Laure-Emilie-Felicite David, La Baronne Meunier

1812, The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries

1813, Marguerite-Charlotte David

1816, Étienne-Maurice Gérard

1816, Portrait of the Comte de Turenne

1816, The Comtesse Vilain XIIII and Her Daughter

1817, Cupid and Psyche

1817, Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès

1818, The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis

1821, The Sisters Zénaïde and Charlotte Bonaparte

1823, Madame Jacques-Louis Leblanc (Françoise Poncelle)

1825, The Anger of Achilles