Jacques-Louis David was born into a prosperous family in Paris on August 30, 1748. When he was nine, his father was killed in a duel, and his mother left him with his prosperous architect uncles. They saw to it that he received an excellent education at the College des Quatre Nations, but he was never a good student; he had a tumor that impeded his speech, and he was always too busy drawing. He covered his notebooks with his drawings, and he once said, “I was always hiding behind the instructor’s chair, drawing for the duration of the class.” Soon, he desired to be a painter, but his uncles and mother wanted him to be a soldier. He soon overcame the opposition, and went to learn from François Boucher, the leading painter of the time, who was also a distant relative. Boucher was a Rococo painter, which was falling out of style and becoming more classical. Boucher decided that instead of taking over David’s tutelage, he would send David to his friend Joseph-Marie Vien, a mediocre painter, but one that embraced the classical reaction to Rococo. There David attended the Royal Academy, based in what is now the LouvreDavid attempted to win the Prix de Rome, an art scholarship to the French Academy in Rome four times. Once, he lost, according to legend because he had not consulted Vien, one the judges. Another time, he lost because a few other students had been competing for years, and Vien felt David’s education could wait for these other mediocre painters. In protest, he attempted to starve himself to death. Finally, in 1774, David won the Prix de Rome. Normally, he would have had to attend another school before attending the Academy in Rome, but Vien’s influence kept him out of it. He went to Italy with Vien in 1775, as Vien had been appointed director of the French Academy at Rome. Before leaving for Italy, he felt that the ancient was cold and irrelevant, but while in Italy, David observed the Italian masterpieces, and the ruins of ancient Rome. David filled sketchbooks with material that he would derive from for the rest of his life. While in Rome, he studied great masters, and came to favor above all others Raphael. In 1779, David was able to see the ruins of Pompeii, and was filled with wonder. After this, he sought to revolutionize the art world with the "eternal" concepts of classicism.
JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID’S EARLY WORK
David’s fellow students at the academy found him difficult to get along with, but they recognized his genius. David was allowed to stay at the French Academy in Rome for an extra year, but after 5 years in Rome, he returned to Paris. There, he found people ready to use their influence for him, and he was made a member of the Royal Academy. He sent two paintings to the royal academy, and both were included in the Salon of 1781, a high honor. He was praised by his famous contemporary painters, but the administration of the Royal Academy was very hostile to this young upstart. After the Salon, the King granted David lodging in the Louvre, an ancient and much desired privilege of great artists. When the contractor of the King’s buildings, M. Pecol, was arranging with David, he asked the artist to marry his daughter, Marguerite Charlotte. This marriage brought him money and eventually four children. David had his own pupils, about 40 to 50, and was commissioned by the government to paint "Horace defended by his Father," but Jacques soon decided, "Only in Rome can I paint Romans." His father in law provided the money he needed for the trip, and David headed for Rome with his wife and his favorite student, the Prix de Rome winner of that year. In Rome, David painted his famous Oath of the Horatii. “This painting occupies an extremely important place in the body of David’s work and in the history of French painting. The story was taken from Livy. We are in the period of the wars between Rome and Alba, in 669 B.C. It has been decided that the dispute between the two cities must be settled by an unusual form of combat to be fought by two groups of three champions each. The two groups are the three Horatii brothers and the three Curiatii brothers. The drama lay in the fact that one of the sisters of the Curiatii, Sabina, is married to one of the Horatii, while one of the sisters of the Horatii, Camilla, is betrothed to one of the Curiatii. Despite the ties between the two families, the Horatii’s father exhorts his sons to fight the Curiatii and they obey, despite the lamentations of the women.”
By Ginger Conejero, ANC | 09/08/2008 2:25 PM
