Jacques-Louis David Show at Louvre offers new perspective on artist

The centenary of Jacques-Louis David, who died on December 28, 1825, is just around the corner. To mark the occasion, the Louvre is hosting an exhibition of 100 works by the famous French artist.

Sébastien Allard, curator of the exhibition, told Artnews Before the opening ceremony, “But more importantly, our last David dates back to 1989 and is closely linked to the bicentenary of the French Revolution. After 35 years, it is time for us to revisit his career in a new light.”

While the Paris museum may house David’s largest work, with the exhibition opening on October 15 and running until January, there are also prestigious loans including Belgium’s Royal Museum of Fine Arts Mars disarmed by Venus (1824), Metropolitan Museum of Art death of socrates (1787), Cleveland Museum of Art Cupid and psychology (1817), the latter was not part of the 1989 exhibition.

“There is no comprehensive monograph on David,” Allard said. “He has been studied primarily in time periods that historiography tends to separate — the ancient régime, the French Revolution, the Empire. … I myself was initially most familiar with his later period.”

Even so, the impetus behind this David exhibition is not to assemble as many French master’s works as possible, as is the case with such blockbusters, but to highlight aspects of the artist’s practice that have not yet been studied in depth.

Key to this was David’s political involvement. During the last years of Ancien Régime he painted this death of socratesit appealed to liberal circles favoring a constitutional monarchy, such as the work’s patron, Charles Louis Trudaine de Montigny, a member of the Paris Assembly and the son of the Minister of Finance. David then moved closer to Robespierre and then voted for the execution of Louis XVI as a member of the National Assembly. During the Reign of Terror (1793-94), David held several prominent positions, from member of the Committee of Public Instruction to President of the National Delegation, and at the time painted portraits of the martyrs of the Revolution, including his friend Jean-Paul Marat, who was assassinated in 1793 due to his skin deterioration while bathing. After the revolution, David narrowly escaped the guillotine, and from 1799 he became obsessed with Napoleon Bonaparte, whom he became the emperor’s first painter. But with the restoration of bourbon in 1815, David was forced into exile in Brussels, where he died in 1825.

“The enemies of the revolution, they think [David] As a father of the French school, he was worried about saving the painter. [David] politician. “The exhibition aims to make David’s time inextricably linked to the complex politics of his time and the work he produced over a career spanning more than ten years.

The show also challenges David’s long-held neoclassical label, which has historically had a cold, abstract sense of formalism. When he worked in a classical style and chose scholarly topics, he did so to speak to the concerns of his own time, especially regarding the transition from royal subjects to free citizens. For Allard, the term “neoclassicism” was associated with David’s ambitious project of championing freedom and combating academicism.

“We have deliberately avoided using the term because of its formalistic connotations,” Allard said. “David’s reference to the Roman Republic was his way of speaking to his people in a time of uncertainty. He looked to the past only to bring a future to society. … His classical choices were his way of imposing order on the chaos and violence of society in the throes of reinvention.” In other words, David may have taken inspiration from Nicolas Poussin, the French Baroque painter who was active more than a century ago. Poussin drew inspiration, but he did not paint in Poussin’s strict classical style.

In fact, Caravaggio seemed to have had a greater influence on David’s work, according to Allard, who said he wanted to clearly demonstrate this connection. David first encountered Caravaggio’s paintings in 1779, when his teacher Joseph-Marie Vien sent him to Naples in the hope of lifting the young artist out of a period of depression. (He once told Wien, the pioneer of neoclassicism in painting: “Antiquity does not seduce me; it lacks spirit, it does not stir the soul.”)

The experience proved apocalyptic: David realized that his previous methods were wrong and determined to start over, abandoning “the principle that this was the wrong style,” as he once put it. When the Academy asked him to make a copy after a great master, he deliberately chose Valentin de Boulogne, one of Caravaggio’s followers, an unconventional choice for the time. David’s first large commission, St. Roch in trouble with the Virgins (1780)showing a dramatic chiaroscuro. Later works, e.g. Death of Marat (1793) and Cupid and Psychology (1817)drawing on Caravaggio’s christian burial (1603-04) and Cupid as Victor (1601-02). It was recently discovered that the latter’s work was exhibited in Paris shortly before David created his own depiction of Cupid.

David’s influence is not the only misconception about David that he hopes to correct in this exhibition. Take his nearly 14 feet long swear an oath (1784). Based on an ancient Roman legend about warring cities, three sons raised their swords to their father in a pledge of loyalty. Here, men take action when women cry. This has previously led many experts to describe David as a misogynist. However, Allard points out that this explanation ignores that “crying was not considered a weakness in the 18th century.” He counters this claim with David’s description of women Sabine Women’s Intervention (1799), in which “women came a long way. They stood beside what they called the reconciliation of men,” the curator said.

Another sign of David’s respect for women was his decision to open a studio to the students of Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, a move that angered the Academy and the rector of the Royal Academy of Arts, who oversaw the Royal Academy during the ancient régime. Later, during his exile in Brussels, David was surrounded by female artists, including Sophie Rude. Allard also mentions the painter’s wife Charlotte Pécoul, who David Pécoul married King Louis XVI in 1793, although they remarried in 1796.

Due to their monumental nature, three paintings from the Louvre could not be moved from the Salle daru to the exhibition, including Napoleon’s coronation (1805–07), thermopylae Leonidas (1814), and Lictors take son’s body to Brutus (1789). During the exhibition, Salle Daru will also have an unusual character, as mirrors will be installed in Napoleon’s coronation (on the wall swear an oath and his 1783 painting Andromache Morning Hector usually hung) to recreate the installations David used in his studio, first Sabine Women’s Intervention later Mars Disarmed by Venusenhance their visual impact on the public. “In this sense, David is the inventor of immersive exhibitions,” Allard said.

For the team at the Louvre, the exhibition’s installation is equally important to this retrospective experience of redefining the French master. Visitor who just stared swear an oath Will get a glimpse soon Tennis court oathlater, watching Death of Maratyou will see swear an oath again. “Display is The design allows the eye to naturally bounce from one canvas to another. ” Allard said.

Highlights aside, Allard said to him that the most important works in the exhibition were Mars Disarmed by Venusbelieved to be the artist’s final work. “I told Laurence des Cars,” Allard Mars Disarmed by Venusthe exhibition did not take place. “Allard jupiter and thys (1811) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, David’s former pupil. By 1824, the revolution was old news, Napoleon was gone, and the Bourbon family was back on the throne. Classical forms lost their value. Politically speaking, David is still in exile, back at Square One, which could explain his return to the mythical setting. In France, a new leading painter emerged.

Then maybe read Mars Disarmed by Venus When David was defeated by Inglis, Allard opined: “The true successors to David, those who sought the best way to remain relevant to the times, were when you consider the Romantics.”