Patrick Bade
David and the Art of Revolution

Patrick Bade - David and the Art of Revolution

- On the left-hand side, you can see a self portrait of Jacques-Louis David, looking troubled and intense, as well he might. He was a man who lived through interesting times. He lived through the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, fall of Napoleon, Bourbon Restoration, several violent regime changes. And these tumultuous events at a crucial moment, really, in Western history are reflected in his work, and that is one reason why he is, a major reason I would say, why he’s so fascinating as an artist. On the right-hand side is “The Death of Marat.” I think you can say that really, in almost a literal sense, it’s an iconic image, one of the most powerful images in Western art. I will be talking more about that picture later. So he’s born in 1748, at the height of the Ancien Regime, and his early work, again, it reflects the time in which he lived. He was a distant relative of Francois Boucher. Boucher seems to have been his first mentor. He went to him for advice and even tuition. You’d never recognise this, of course, as a painting by David if you didn’t know that it was by him. It’s very much in the style of Boucher, those sweetie colours, that rather frothy paint surface, rouged cheeks of the young ladies, and her powdered hair. All typical of the Rococo style. So he went to Boucher, who by this time was quite elderly, and decided that it’d be better to send him off to a colleague called Vien, that you see on the left-hand side, who was of a younger generation and was a proponent of the new Neoclassical style, which had started to emerge in the 1760s.

So on the screen at moment, you’ve got a painting by Vien top left, painting by Boucher bottom right, and you can see there’s stylistically just the most enormous pendulum swing between one and the other, the Boucher with its Baroque and Rococo curves, notice all the crinkly animated drapery, once again, the sweetie colours, and so on, whereas Vien, I mean, they’re both actually, in a way, classical subjects because it’s Venus, goddess of love, painted by Boucher, although he makes her look very much like a French cocotte of the 18th century. On the left hand side is The Cupid Seller by, you know, in some ways it is still a very Ancien Regime painting in its frivolity, the idea of a merchant of baby putti, coming around to sell them as pets. It’s a rather frivolous and silly idea, although it’s actually based on a fresco that was discovered in the excavations of Pompeii. But stylistically we can see an enormous change that you’ve got this clarity of composition and space. You have the composition laid out parallel to the picture surface. Of course the drapery has now calmed down. As I’ve said to you many times, once you get to Neoclassicism, you’ve got to get out the ironing board and the drapery doesn’t have that liveliness and a life of its own. It would have an , it now clings to the body underneath it and it defines the body. And you’ve got very clear contours outlining of all the forms.

So in fact, David was attached in one way or another to Vienna for nearly 15 years initially, yes, we’ve got a better clearer image of The Cupid Seller by Vien. But initially Boucher was not actually very interested in the new style of Neo classicism. This is a painting of 1771, which is still completely late Baroque Rococo sweetie colours, the agitated drapery, the rather operatic gestures of all figures. It’s all very, very late Baroque Rococo. This was painted as an entry in the Prix de Rome competition. This was an annual competition for students at the academy in Paris. There would be a subject that would be set to all the students. They all had to paint the subject, the same subject. And the one who won the Prix de Rome would then be sent off to Rome to study for five years with a generous government pension. Vien felt, in 1771, that David was not yet ready and he told him not to enter the competition, but David did so anyway; and he won it. But you know, the French are very much ones for rules and regulations. And when the jury discovered that he had disobeyed his master, the prize was withdrawn much to the chagrin of David. And it took him another three attempts to actually win the prize. This is his third attempt, the death of Seneca. And so this is a couple of years later, this is 1773, but once again, it’s very, very Baroque and by actually by this date in the 1770s, it’s rather backward looking and old old-fashioned with, again the wind swept drapery, the architectural background, which is not parallel to the picture surface and looks very much like operatic stage scenery, the flailing arms and so on.

It’s all still very, very late Baroque in character. This was his fourth attempt at the Prix de Rome and this was the one that won him the prize and the subject set that year was Antiochus and Stratonice, he’s a young man who’s insanely in love with his stepmother, and you can see him compromising with the new neoclassical style that now the composition instead of plunging diagonally into space, the figures are all set out parallel to the picture surface. And you’ve still got a fair bit of complex drapery in the top left hand corner, but you can see that the drapery is calming down and it’s beginning to cling to the body underneath. So he’s looking around and he’s certainly looking back to Poussin, the top left is a painting by the great 17th century classical Baroque painter Poussin And Poussin is certainly a key influence on early French Neoclassicism. And bottom left is a painting of a classical subject, Germanicus by Greuze. So you can see similarities in all three compositions, can’t you, with the reclining figure on a bed that’s parallel to the picture surface and the frieze-like composition. So he, yes, he won the prize in 1775 and he set off for Rome still in the company of Vien because Vien in that year was appointed to be director of the French Academy in Rome. So on the way down to Rome, they stopped in Parma and Vien went into Parma Cathedral and he looked up into the dome and he was so astonished by what he saw that he quite literally had a fit and fell on the ground with all his limbs flailing. It’s a classic example of what’s called the Stendhal syndrome. I’ve experienced it, well, I’ve not had a total fit, but I have experienced it a couple of times in my life when I’ve been so overcome by an aesthetic experience or work of art that I’ve momentarily felt ill or faint. And it’s a common phenomenon.

So I think it was important for David because it alerts him to the fact that there’s more to art than the frou frou of Boucher. That art can be something much, much more powerful. It is an absolutely extraordinary experience. Every year I do a trip to Parma for the Verde Festival and I always enjoy taking the clients into the cathedral and watching their reaction when they look up into this incredible dome for… nobody’s actually, I’ve never needed to call for an ambulance, but people are always completely blown away by the sheer power of this extraordinary work of art. So he goes on to Rome, and as I said, he has to stay there for five years, actually, he stayed there for the best part of 10 years. And so the students, I mean, there were Prix de Rome of course applied to musicians, to writers and poets and so on, as well as painters. And they had to send back to Paris every year what was called an envoie. An envoie was meant to show their progress. And this is the first envoie that David sent back for the authorities at the academy in Paris. And they would then make a detailed criticism. We still have the criticism they made of this picture. And what they said about it is, it’s too complicated, there’s too much going on, there’s too much spacial confusion. So it’s still this, in its multiplicity, in its excessive drama and gesturing and all that kind of thing.

And you can see Achilles with his very, he looks like he stepped out of a Handel opera with his billowing red cloak and his ostrich feathers in his helmet. And it does seem that David took this criticism to heart and he does move on and he searches out a much simpler and more coherent kind of composition. And once again, I think the artist that he looked at to help him do this was Poussin. So we have an altarpiece of 1780 by David on the left-hand side. It’s Saint Roch. He’s the patron saint of plague victims and he’s interceding with the virgin on the behalf of the plague victims. And you can see that now the figures brought right up toward the front of the picture frame everything splayed out parallel to the picture frame. The figures have a new monumentality, a new clarity, have a really sculptural quality. And you can see that the contours are much more defined. So that’s David on the left hand side and two paintings of the Virgin and Child by Poussin on the right hand side, which were evidently models for this picture on the left. Now in 1789 Poussin went down to Naples; before he set out for Italy in 1775, He said, “The antique shall not seduce me” This was definitely a case of famous last words because when he went down to Naples and he saw all the stuff that had been excavated from Pompeii, and he looked, saw lots and lots of ancient classical art, it was a revelation for him, he said it was like having a cataract operation that he could suddenly see for the first time. And the result was this picture in 1781, which I think is his first mature masterpiece, blind Belisarius. It’s a huge picture, really enormous. It’s now in the museum, the Musee de Beaux in Lyon, which I very, very strongly recommend to you. It’s a marvellous… a day in Lyon from London is an easy thing to do and fascinating, amazing museums. Lyon’s Musee de Beaux has the best collection of painting in France outside of Paris and this is one of the star masterpieces in that collection.

And so it tells a story from ancient Roman history of a great general who has served his country and saved his country, but he’s now reduced to begging on the streets. And you see a woman offering him alms and in the background you can see one of his soldiers who recognises him, who is absolutely horrified to see this great man treated so ungratefully by his country. So this picture was sent back to Paris and it was exhibited in the Salon of 1781, where it was seen by the great philosophe Diderot, the editor of the encyclopaedia And Diderot wrote famous salon critiques, he’s, in a way, arguably the first modern art critic. And it was Diderot, if you remember last time I mentioned, who condemned Boucher as an artist who possessed every quality except truth. Truth you may say is a very subjective concept. But Diderot saw truth in this and he hailed David as a great master in the making. Once again, I think Poussin is a very powerful influence on these early mature paintings of David. You can see the use of the architectural background, the way the space is very carefully defined, figures brought up towards the front of the picture and the use of the tiling or the stones like a chess board to help you understand and define the the pictorial space. You can see that his style which had previously been quite painterly, quite frothy, quite juicy, we’ve now got a much smoother paint surface of course one of the frequent criticisms of neoclassical painting that the paint surfaces can be very bland cause of this licked smooth surface.

And that is, it’s certainly true even of some paintings of David that we’ll see later. But I don’t think it’s true of this picture. I would describe it as crisp rather than bland. And it is actually a very beautiful picture in its paint surface. So that is 1781; 1784, he’s still in Rome and he paints this picture, which in some ways is the key picture of his entire career. It’s The Oath of the Horatii, it’s an enormous picture. It’s now in the Louvre. And this was sent back to Paris and it was shown in the Salon of 1785. And it depicts an incident in the early history of ancient Rome when the Romans were still fighting neighbouring tribes it was Rome against Alba and there were cattle wars and kidnappings and so on. And it was decided that, instead of fighting a full scale war, they were going to appoint three heroes on either side the Curiatii, for Alba, and the Horatii for Rome, and that these six men would fight it out and whoever won, who’s left standing at the end would be the winner of the war. You might think, well that’s quite a rational way to fight a war, I suppose. So this is, the subject was very well known because it’s a subject of one of the most famous plays of the 17th century; Horace, by Corneille although it’s been pointed out that the scene depicted in this picture does not actually occur in Corneille’s play. And there’s been a lot of speculation about what, where the inspiration for the precise theme of this picture came from. So you could, this is one of those key moments in western art.

I’ve already mentioned Caravaggio and Vato in their way were turning points. This is another great turning point you can see with this picture the Neoclassical style, which had its first glimmerings in the 1760s, reaches full fruition. So it has many distinctive features of the Neoclassical style. But again, there’s the frieze like composition, the sharp definition of space that the sweetie colours of the Rococo are giving way to much simpler colours. Blue red, this is not actually a very accurate image of the colour of the original. The fainting swooning woman in the middle on the right hand side, she has a very beautiful mustard yellow cloak, which doesn’t really come across here. So you’ve got red, blue, yellow primary colours. Another curious feature of this picture that separates it from the Baroque; Baroque you’ve got this kind of organic unity full of movement, one element flows into another. Here we have a very clear separation of parts and I would say a slightly disjointed composition. The effect is staccato, it’s sort of jerky rather than one element flowing into another. Another feature of this and of his other neoclassical paintings is the very sharp definition of gender and the kind of, kind of zoning for, you’ve got the masculine area on the left hand side with these muscular young men with their slightly proto fascist poses and the women, they’re a sort of wimpy lot they’re all weeping and flopping on the right hand side.

And the reason for this is that, now let me see, I’m going to look at my note here cause I want to get this right. Sabina. Sabina is, she’s the one with the blue and the mustard yellow clothing. And she’s actually a member of Curiatii tribe. She’s the sister of the three men that the Horatii are going to go and fight. And Camilla, she’s the, she’s the sister of the Horatii, but she’s betrothed to one of the group of Curiatii. So the painting as in Corneille’s play, is about the conflict between love and duty. So what happens is that, the Horatii go off and they fight the Curiatii and they, they sort of fight to the last, all three Curiatii are killed and two of the Horatii are killed. Horace, the older of the Horatii, is the only one who survives. So Rome technically has won the war. He comes back and he finds his sister weeping and crying, crying and mourning because he’s just killed her fiance. And so he thinks this is a terrible dereliction of moral duty that, you know, her duty should be to the tribe, not to love. So he kills his sister. Lovely thing to do. And he, you know, because and that is sort of presented that in this story as an example of manly virtue that he would kill his sister because she’s weeping over her dead lover. Ooh, actually that’s slightly better colour here on the left hand side. So this was being painted 1784 to 1785. It was sent off to the Salon of 1785 in Paris.

And at the same time in Rome, the Venetian sculptor Canova was engaged in making this funerary monument for Pope Clement the 14th. And there are very remarkable stylistic similarities. I think it’s pretty certain it must be that Canova and David were fully aware of what each was doing, who influenced who is difficult to say. But if you look at the Canova tomb you can see a lot of the same elements of this clear, very clear separation of parts. This treatment, this classical treatment of the drapery, now the ironed drapery, which clings very clearly to the body and defines it and the sort of weepy floppy women are remarkably similar as well. So here’s a detail of the mourning weeping women. It’s got this smoothness of surface, sharply defined contours, characteristic of the neo classical style. Now another - it’s not a coincidence - another case of zeitgeist, the same thing going on at the same time. Exactly at this moment in 1784 to 1785, the Neoclassical architect Ledoux was engaged in designing the gates for the tax wall that surrounded Paris. Two of these survive, there were 50 of them originally, but two survive intact. One is the barrière d'Enfer in the south of Paris. And the other one, this is the Barrier de La Villette, which is just at the end of the street where I live in Paris. A really extraordinary building. When people come and stay with me or I take them around and we walk in the area, I always show them this. And if they don’t know already, I always say, when was that built? And people rarely think that it was built in 1785. It looks so modern, it’s so paired down, so simple. I mean it is classical, but it’s a kind of simplified version of classicism If you look at these very, very simple Doric columns on the upper level of the Barrier de La Villette, you can see that they’re they’re identical with the columns in the background of David’s painting.

So it’s a, it’s a moment where that the Neoclassical style really comes together and matures in painting, in sculpture and in architecture simultaneously. So 1785; we’re just four years away from the revolution. And in these four years, David, he’s now found his voice, he’s found his mature style and he continues with that and he develops it. This is the death of Seneca. Well, we can see again, many of the features I’ve already pointed out, the frieze light composition laid out parallel to the picture surface. The smoothness of paint surface, the clarity of the contours. He’s still, I think, under the spell of Poussin, there is Poussin top right and also certainly under the spell of Rafael. There’s a detail of Rafael’s School of Athens, bottom left. And you can see drawing is now very, very important. And this is a sketch for the figure of Seneca. And you can see it’s been squared up for enlargement, which tells us that the, that this drawing was a working drawing that was actually used for the creation of the painting. Now 1789, 1789, the year of the outbreak of the French Revolution, that has such a sort of ring to it. 1789 is such a key date in the whole history of Western civilization. And this was the picture that David sent to the Salon of 1789. And again, I’m going to check a note because I want to read you, it’s got a very long title. J Brutus first Consul has returned to his home, having condemned his two sons who had joined the Tarquins and conspired against Roman Liberty, Lictors bringing back the bodies so that they may be given burial.

That was the title given to this picture. So the theme of the picture is, has similar to that of the Oath of the Horatii. It’s that duty takes precedence over love, I must say. It’s a philosophy that I don’t find very attractive myself. But so Brutus is a hero because he’s actually condemned his own sons to death because he thinks that they have betrayed the Roman Republic. It is a very powerful image. And once again, you’ve got this zoning, haven’t you, you’ve got the, there’s the masculine area on the left hand side and the, the feminine area, the woman’s area on the right hand side where the women are. He, of course, Brutus himself is completely stoic and the women are just floppy and hysterical on the right hand side. One of the things I think, which is really powerful in this is the way the lighting, it’s almost cinematic, isn’t it, with Brutus himself, who’s in, he’s in the shadow and the light is actually picking out the corpses of the two sons that he’s just condemned to death. Another detail I love in this picture is this still life in the centre. And there’s a lot to be said about this actually, because the point here is that Brutus is living a rather spartan life of virtue. So his women have to do the darning and the sewing. So there’s a moral, if not political point being made here. The other detail here, which is very fascinating, look at that chair. That is a super elegant chair, I suppose it’s vaguely classical in its shape, but it’s very paired down, very simplified. It’s kind of timeless. You could imagine a chair like that in some kind of showroom of a designer furniture maker on Madison Avenue. Very, very elegant. It was actually specially designed and specially made. They existed these chairs and they were made for David and he had them in his studio. Now this picture… 1789; and it’s a painting about celebrating the Roman Republic and condemning people who wanted to, the sons had conspired to bring back the kings, the old monarchies; so you think, 1789… did this painting, was it prescient? Was it a painting that had a political agenda?

And the fascinating thing is that it picked up an agenda, you know, it became an icon of the French Revolution and it came to symbolise the rejection of monarchy. But it doesn’t seem to have been consciously, at least, in David’s mind, when he painted it, this, it was actually bought by a member of the French royal family it wasn’t seen as subversive or dangerous. It was, it wasn’t removed from the Salon throughout that summer when there were turbulence and riots and storming the Bastille. No, this painting was allowed to continue to be shown in public. And David himself wrote a lengthy letter explaining the picture, which makes absolutely no mention of Republican or anti-monarchist sentiment. So it’s a fascinating example of how an image can change its meaning or can pick up new meanings through ongoing political events. Now the other picture that he showed in the same salon, 1789, is this portrait of Lavoisier, which I’ve shown you already. He was the one of the greatest scientific minds of the 18th century. He identified and named oxygen and hydrogen. Here he is with his wife, who actually was, had been a pupil of David. So there was a personal connection between them and this marvellous rendering of all the equipment in his laboratory. Now this painting actually was removed for political reasons from the salon.

And the reason for that was that Lavoisier, as well as being a great scientist, he was, had a nice little earner on the side as what was called a tax farmer. And of course it was the whole tax system in France, it was so corrupt and so unjust, that, largely, led to the French Revolution. And so he was with the mob, he was a hated figure. And later he suffered a terrible fate. He was executed on the guillotine. But, so this painting was removed from the Salon because it was thought to be too inflammatory. So events moving very, very quickly. On the 20th of June, we have the famous oath of the tennis court. Now France’s finances were in an absolutely dire state. And there were two main reasons for this. One was that, as I said, the complete injustice and the corruption of the system with aristocrats and the Catholic church not paying any taxes. So it was only the ordinary people who paid the taxes. And also France desperate for revenge against the British, for the loss of the American colonies and India in the seven years war, went all out to support the American Revolution against the British. The American Revolution was heavily, heavily financed by France. And so that was one of the reasons there was a great big black hole in French finances and they needed to raise more money. And they realised that they actually had to get the consent of the people to do this. So I’m sure William’s talked all about this in greater detail and depth but the French, theoretically had an equivalent of the parliament in England, the state’s general, but it hadn’t actually been called since 1614.

So for well over 150 years. But in desperation, they called together the states general, three estates there’s the church, the aristocracy and the people, and the third estate, that’s the people, they said, okay, we will vote for the taxes, but not before we establish some rights for the people. We want to establish a constitution. And so the monarchy, the king Louis the 16th and his ministers, they took fright at this and they, this was all happening at Versailles and they closed down the assembly hall where the third estate was supposed to meet and locked them out. And so, what to do, what to do? As a member of the third estate, a doctor called Dr. Guillotine, later famous for inventing a clever machine for chopping people’s heads off, he said, well, there is a space, why don’t we all go to the tennis court? So they all went to the tennis court and there was this moment of terrific excitement and fervour, at 10:30 on the morning of the 20th of June, 1789, they all swore a oath that they would not disband, they would not disperse until they achieved some kind of constitution for the French nation. It was a very exciting moment. And at the very moment that they swore this oath, there was a sudden summer thunderstorm. And you can see in the top left-hand corner, you can see yes, this rush of wind, thunder clap, you can see somebody with an umbrella and the wind has blown the umbrella inside out and the curtain bellows into the tennis court.

Now David was there, and he was actually caught up in all the excitement. We know he was there cause we, he had a, he made notes, including, you can see that the, a little tiny sketch of the inside out umbrella in the top part here. And the sketch below is showing you the interior of the tennis court. So from this moment, David is completely swept up in the events of the revolution. And he goes over to the revolutionaries he was intending to paint a vast canvas would’ve been a 10 metre long, 33 feet long canvas of this subject of the Oath of Horatii - no, the oath of the tennis court. And, but as I said, he was swept up in events. He got involved very directly in politics. He became a member of the convention. He actually voted for the death of Louis the 16th. He joined the most extremist party in the revolution, the Jacobins. And he was, once the Revolution really got going, He was appointed to what we might call propaganda… a minister of propaganda. He was in charge of all the great celebratory events, rather as Goebbels was for the Third Reich, he was for the French Revolution.

He organised these mass demonstrations, these festivals like the one you see here, there were 12 of them all together, which are the direct antecedents you could say of the Nuremberg rallies in the the 1930s. These two images are the most extraordinary and powerful iconic images of the French Revolution. Little tiny thumbnail sketch made in a matter of seconds, probably, as he observed Mary Antoinette, her back stiff, you can see the hapsburg lip, of course a prominent lip. Her beautiful hair has been brutally cut. So as not to get in the way of the blade of the guillotine here she is sitting on the cart that’s taking her to her death. And you can see to humiliate her even further, they put this Phrygian cap, which is a symbol of revolution on her shorn off hair. It’s an incredible piece of observation. And on the right hand side, the death of Marat. Marat was one of, actually one of the, the most unpleasant of the French revolutionaries. Of course, I think we would all, anybody today would go along with the basic initial ideals of the French Revolution and say it was a very good thing. And in many ways the French Revolution changed the world for the better. But as with so many other revolutions that we’ve seen, you can see it, well most extreme of course in Russia, but you know, other places like Venezuela, revolutions that started with the highest ideals quickly degenerated into brutality and their own form of injustice. And certainly Marat was a very, very… he was a chancellor.

He was a very nasty piece of work. And we got here, yes, the whole picture, A young woman called Charlotte Corday, who lived in the provinces, she was reading The Lives of Plutarch, great heroic stories of ancient Rome. And these inspired her to take action. She wanted to take direct action, she wanted to change history. And she decided that it was her moral duty to rid the world of this very nasty piece of work, Marat. So she comes up to Paris and she equips herself with a kitchen knife and she decides to go and murder him, but she’s turned away by his mistress who is suspicious of this attractive young woman who wants to see her lover. So she comes up with a new plan, she writes a letter to Marat promising to denounce traitors and enemies. And he was very interested in this of course. So he agrees to receive her. So she knows this is her day of destiny. And a wonderful detail, which I love, is that before she sets off to commit the murder, she calls in her hairdresser to do up her hair ‘cos she doesn’t want to enter history on a bad hair day. So she arrives at Marat’s house and once again the mistress tries to block her, but there’s a distraction and she slips in and she finds him in the bath. Now, it wasn’t that he was a clean, particularly clean person. In fact, to take baths, to have clean underwear, was a matter of suspicion during the revolution that you were somehow backsliding and maybe an aristocrat in disguise. No, he took baths cause he had an horrible, itchy skin condition and it was taking baths were the only things that that soothed the condition.

So she finds him naked in the bathroom and she plunges the knife into him and she kills him. It’s a secular entombment or image of Christ really. He’s borrowing from Christian iconography of the death of Christ. This is a Baroque entombment by Karachi, the top right hand side. But he’s, he’s stripped of its Christian meaning, he’s borrowed the Christian image and he’s using it in a secular way. It was a very original thing to do in a very influential thing actually, another detail which is intriguing, I mean, when I talked about the Ancien regime, about the incredible refinement and luxuriousness of French furniture under the Ancien regime, these exquisite desks, you know, that, that involve teams of craftsmen, took years to make, cost unbelievable fortunes, blingy, showy, outrageous flaunting of wealth and luxury. So David is making a point that Marat doesn’t have a desk like that. He has a packing case as a desk and you can see on the packing cases written, A Marat David - To Marat; and the year two. Cause they start, they wanted to start a new system of dates from the founding of the French Republic. Here is the letter you can read from Charlotte Corday to Marat. “It’s enough that I’m very unhappy that I have a right to your goodwill, your generosity”. That wasn’t at all actually what she’d written to him. But of course David is creating a new version of history.

So it is a really powerful, extraordinary painting. It was hung in the national convention and there were intended to be three of these paintings of Martyrs to the Revolution. This one was never finished and it’s a Joseph Bara, b a r a, it was a child who was on the Republican side and who was killed by Royalists. And there was this one which was completed and it actually hung in the convention. And this is the death of another revolutionary martyr Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau. Now the painting we don’t have anymore. Sadly it would’ve been I think a masterpiece on a level with the Marat painting. But there’s an ironic story here because when Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau was assassinated, his wife was dead and his daughter was orphaned and she was adopted by the Republic and she was renamed Liberte; Liberty. So she was Liberty, I mean very, sort of, quite a mouthful of a name that she had, poor girl, being called liberty. But she, ironically, she grew up to be an ardent monarchist. And for her, she wanted to blot out the shame of her father’s being a Republican. And she was wealthy and she offered an enormous sum of money to David’s heirs to buy the painting so that she could destroy it. And she also spent a lot of money searching for any prints made after the painting. She wanted to completely wipe out this image from the face of the earth, but one torn copy of a print escaped her and is now in the Bibliotheque Nationale and that’s the the reason why we know what that picture looked like. There’s this famous saying about the revolution eating its children. And the insert here is Robespierre, the leader of the Jacobins.

As I said, David was a supporter of Robespierre, but there came a point where Robespierre fell from power; David, on the day that this happened, David, at the National Convention, publicly embraced Robespierre 'cos they could see what was coming and he said to him, I swear to you, I will drink Hemlock with you. In other words, I will die with you. But in the afternoon when the crucial vote came in the National Convention, David was actually nowhere to be seen. He claimed that he had the runs and he was trapped in the toilet. Well, possible, possible I suppose. But anyway, he didn’t turn up to vote with, for, Robespierre. And after Robespierre’s death, horrible death and execution, really gruesome. I’m not going to tell you the details, put you off your dinner. He, David, was imprisoned in the Luxembourg and he, he spent some time, I think he probably must have pondered the wisdom of his ways. He was very, very lucky indeed not to be executed. You know, it was really, could so easily have happened as it did to other great artists and intellectuals like André Chénier and as I already mentioned, Lavoisier. While he was in prison, he was allowed to paint and he painted this picture of the view from his prison cell, which I love, I think what a pity, he never painted anything like this again, it’s so fresh.

Now that concept of truth, this to me has an, it’s so much more truthful as an image of nature than almost anything you find in 18th century French painting, certainly than any landscape by Boucher or Fragonard. But… and he was eventually released and he was a very chastened man. And so in some ways I always feel that David was a, a bit of an idiot. But he did have this absolutely uncanny ability to sense the meaning of the moment and to express it in his painting. So, after this terrible phase of revolution, the terror, we have the period of the Directoire, which was a period really of reconciliation, of France trying to come to terms with its divisions, trying to heal the wounds. And this is the big painting from that phase. It’s the intercession of the Sabine women. It’s another story from early Roman history where the Romans, they don’t have enough women. So they go off and they raid the Sabines and they take all their women and they rape them and the Sabines actually take some time to get their act together to go and rescue their women. By the time they do that, the women have actually become reconciled to their rapists very dubious concept, I think these days, and they’ve had babies with their rapists. So when, when the two armies, the Romans and the Sabines face up against one another, they’re all going to slaughter each other. The women rush between them holding up their babies to stop their men folk on both sides killing each other.

So this is a definitely a painting with a strong political meaning. And also maybe again, something to do with gender politics. I mean, at the height of his power in the revolution, David had dumped his wife, he traded her in, he divorced her for a younger model. But after he was released from prison, he went back to her. She took him back despite the fact that she had in the meantime inherited a lot of money and they were remarried. So this is also a painting I think about women and their role in healing divisions. I’m going to move on 'cos I’m running out of time. So he’s a wonderful portraitist, what can I say? At every phase of his life he paints great portraits that again reflect the mood of the time. So the mood, this is, we’re now under the Directorate. This period between the revolution and the rise of Napoleon, which is another one of those famous periods in history like the , where it’s a period of relaxation, political and moral. And this portrait pair of Monsieur Madame Seriziat I think very much expresses that the relaxed mood and of course the wonderfully elegant fashions of the Directoire period. Round about 1800, his portraits start, he moves into a more, I would say, hardcore neoclassical style. Very frigid, very icy, very smooth, very perfect. This is Madame de Verninac, this is the most famous portrait of this phase. Madam Recamier, who was a great beauty. She ran a salon in Paris. She was a leading figure in French intellectual life. She was married to a much older banker who was actually rumoured to be her biological father.

And she was famous for the exquisite beauty of her toes. In the two famous portraits of her, she is barefoot and exposing her toes. This is in the Louvre, it’s unfinished and… which is in itself interesting 'cos you, it gives you a sense of how David built up this glassy perfect paint surface with many layers 'cos this is lacking the final layers that it would’ve had. And he deliberately left it unfinished 'cos he was, became very angry with her, partly because she was a spoiled brat and she was late for sittings or didn’t turn up. But partly because she then commissioned another portrait, which I’ll show you in a minute, by Baron Gerard. So along comes Napoleon. And yet again, David changes his political allegiances and he meets Napoleon just after Napoleon has come back from his Italian victories, this is well before he declares himself Emperor. And the painting you see on the left, which is in the Louvre, is the only painting that David ever painted of Napoleon from life. Napoleon actually posed for a couple of hours for this picture he hated posing and would never do it again for David. But, so David, this is what he said. This is 1797. After doing this sketch, he wrote, oh my friends, what a fine head he has. It’s pure, it’s great, it’s as beautiful as the antique. Here is a man to whom alters would’ve been erected in ancient times.

Yes, my friends, my dear friends, Bonaparte is my hero. So from 1797 to 1815, David becomes the great propagandist artist for Napoleon showing Napoleon crossing the Alps on the right hand side. This is the coronation of Napoleon when he declares himself emperor in 1804, he brought the, he’d kidnapped the Pope, actually he brought the Pope to France and then actually humiliated him by, oh, here is a, you can see with this neoclassical style, very important for the artist to understand the body underneath the drapery in the clothing. So it becomes normal. And this is true through the mid to the mid 19th century for French artists, when they’re painting, even they’re painting clothed people. So we’ve got a nude study of the Pope on the right hand side, which is Pope Pius the ninth. But having kidnapped the Pope and brought him into Paris and made him sit through this ceremony, he humiliated the Pope by actually crowning himself. He lifts the crown and he puts it on his own head. Here is Josephine, who seems to be worshipping Napoleon. She doesn’t seem to be worshipping God or certainly not the Pope. She’s kneeling down before Napoleon. And so we find Napoleon sort of putting on weight here, here he is as emperor in the later stages of the empire. This is, again, very much a propaganda picture of Napoleon. You can you read the clock, it’s 20 past four in the morning. The candle has burnt very low there. This is Napoleon working hard on the behalf of his people. Then this once again, David has this uncanny knack of anticipating the political moment. This is, this painting is dated 1812. 1812.

Think of the Tchaikovsky Overture. 1812 when Napoleon’s armies are defeated by the Russian winter and they withdraw with terrible loss of life. And then finally he’s defeated at the Battle of Nations in 1813, outside of Leipzig. So this is Leonidas at Thermopylae. So this is the hero dying as the enemies close in. And as I said, it’s an uncannily prescient, prescient picture of the fate of the Napoleonic Empire. So what happens, 1814 Napoleon is deposed. He’s sent off to Elba, David, despite the fact that he has been so associated with the revolution, with Napoleon, he’s so famous, he’s so admired that initially he is forgiven and tolerated by the returning Bourbon. But when Napoleon makes, tries to make a comeback, we’ve seen of course a failed comeback in Britain recently; there may be a failed comeback coming in America shortly. We’ll see. But Napoleon, of course made a comeback that nearly came off but was finally defeated at Waterloo. And this time, because David had rallied to Napoleon, he was not forgiven by the Bourbon and he had to go into exile and he spends the rest of his life in Brussels and paints some unbelievably terrible pictures. I mean, surely this is one of the worst pictures ever painted by an artist that one would regard, in inverted commas, “Great”. It’s sleazy, it’s awful. It’s not truthful. It’s, it’s really icky. As is this, one of the scene is Mars disarmed by Venus, I suppose again, it’s got a certain political relevance the period after Napoleon.

But what an icky, awful painting. And even his qualities of drawings seem to have left him Venus is not well drawn. Anita Brookner, who wrote a very good book on David, she describes this picture as the great fireplace in the sky. David’s studio. He both, before he leaves Paris and after and up until his death in Brussels he is the most influential teacher in Europe. But I think I’m, I’m going to have to stop here. I was going to talk about some of his pupils. I have to show, just show you this, of course, the other Madame Recamier by an artist called Gerard, he’s always known as Baron Gerard because Napoleon gave him a title. And this is in the musée Carnavalet. And once again you see her displaying her delicious feet. And what fascinates me about Gerard, and quite a lot of these neoclassical artists, you’ve got this glassy smooth, perfect paint surface with, you know, not a brushstroke, really, visible It’s all smoothed together, but he was capable of doing this, these wonderful free spontaneous drawings. This is a study for the, and this, I’ll finish with this proudly 'cos this is actually hanging on the wall behind me. It’s a little study by Baron Gerard for a portrait that would’ve been similar, I think to the Madame Recamier. You can see it’s really dashed off pen and ink drawing drawn with fantastic spontaneity. But I’ve run out of time and I want to see if there are any questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: What is the subject of the painting in -

A: It’s the ascension of the Virgin going up to Heaven.

Yes. I mean that’s one of my favourite little museums is the House of Toscanini in Parma. And of course I agree about Parmesan cheese, which is fabulous.

Q: Was David from…

A: I think he was from a comfortably off family. He wasn’t aristocratic, but I don’t, he didn’t come from a poor background. He funded his long stay… Well initially it was funded by the French government. First five years.

Death of Socrates. Yes, thank you. Not Seneca…

Is the tennis court… Yes, the tennis court is

A failed harvest certainly were a contribution. I mean there was general poverty. It was a kind of, I mean we may see a revolution in England coming up soon. It was a similar crisis of rising prices and poverty. Sounds very familiar, as you say.

Is the painting supposed to be… it’s meant to be very pro Marat. It’s absolutely meant to be pro Marat. It’s a total propaganda piece in his favour.

Q: Were other paintings or drawings of people whom David was close to personally against those?

A: Well, he was friendly apparently with Lavoisier. I don’t think there are any portraits of his family.

Q: Do I think the world is more or less cruel?

A: It’s probably the same, but that, that we have greater means for being cruel, unfortunately, ever greater means.

Did… I think David did have real political feelings, but I think he, I don’t think he, I think he really believed all that stuff, but I think he was actually in some ways a rather silly man easily influenced and easily swept along by whatever was happening.

Q: Are most of David’s paintings at the Louvre?

A: Really, no, of course the Death of Marat is actually in Brussels. There is a very beautiful portrait by David in the National Gallery but it was the first painting by David ever to enter a British public collection. And I think it’s because the British had a real horror of him because, he’d signed the death warrant of Louis the 16th. There’s a great portrait of David, of Napoleon in Washington National Gallery and there’s one in Vienna. But yes, probably the most of the famous ones are in the Louvre.

And that’s it. Thank you all very, very much and see you again on Wednesday. When we move on to romanticism.