Jacques-Louis David (in Pere Lachaise Cemetery) - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity towards a classical austerity and severity, chiming 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 de Robespierre, 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 I. It was at this time that he developed his 'Empire style', notable for its use of warm Venetian colours. David had a huge number of pupils, making him the strongest influence in French art of the 19th century, especially academic Salon painting.

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 Collège 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 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 an architect. 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 Louvre.

David 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 of 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. 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.

At the very beginning, David was a supporter of the Revolution, a friend of Robespierre and a Jacobin. While others were leaving the country for new and greater opportunities, David stayed to help destroy the old order.

David then began work on something that would later hound him: propaganda for the new republic. David’s painting of Brutus was shown during the play Brutus, by the famous Frenchman, Voltaire. The people responded in an uproar of approval.

In 1791, the King attempted to flee the country, and the emperor of Austria announced his intention to restore the monarchy. In reaction, the people arrested the King. The monarchy was finally destroyed by the French people in 1792. When the new National Convention held its first meeting, David was sitting with his friends Jean-Paul Marat and Robespierre. In the Convention, David soon earned a nickname "ferocious terrorist". Soon, Robespierre’s agents discovered a secret vault of the king’s proving he was trying to overthrow the government, and demanded his execution. The National Convention held the trial of Louis XVI and David voted for the death of the King, which caused his wife, a royalist, to divorce him.

Soon, David's friend Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a woman of an opposing political party, whose name can be seen in the note Marat holds in David's subsequent painting, The Death of Marat. David once again organized a spectacular funeral, and Marat was buried in the Panthéon. Marat died in the bathtub, writing. David wanted to have his body submerged in the bathtub during the funeral procession, but the body had begun to putrefy. Instead, Marat’s body was periodically sprinkled with water as the people came to see his corpse, complete with gaping wound. The Death of Marat, perhaps David's most famous painting, has been called the Pietà of the revolution. David had to work quickly, but the result was a simple and powerful image. Everything in the picture leads back to Marat’s head.

In one of history's great coincidences, David's close association with the Committee of Public Safety during the Terror resulted in his signing of the death warrant for one Alexandre de Beauharnais, a minor noble. De Beauharnais's widow, Rose-Marie Josephe de Tascher de Beauharnais would later be known to the world as Josephine Bonaparte, Empress of the French. It was her coronation by her husband, Napoleon I, that David depicted so memorably in the Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine, 2 December 1804.

David had been an admirer of Napoleon from their first meeting, struck by the then-General Bonaparte's classical features. Requesting a sitting from the busy and impatient general, David was able to sketch Napoleon in 1797. David recorded the conqueror of Italy's face, but the full composition of General Bonaparte holding the peace treaty with Austria remains unfinished. Napoleon had high esteem for David, and asked him to accompany him to Egypt in 1798, but David refused, claiming he was too old for adventuring and sending instead his student, Antoine-Jean Gros.

After Napoleon's successful coup d'etat in 1799, as First Consul he commissioned David to commemorate his daring crossing of the Alps. The crossing of the St. Bernard Pass had allowed the French to surprise the Austrian army and win victory at the Battle of Marengo on June 14, 1800. Although Napoleon had crossed the Alps on a mule, he requested that he be "portrayed calm upon a fiery horse". David complied with Napoleon Crossing the Saint-Bernard. After the proclamation of the Empire in 1804, David became the official court painter of the regime.

After the Bourbons returned to power, David was on the list of proscribed former revolutionaries and Bonapartists, as during the French Revolution, he had voted for the execution of Louis XVI, the older brother of the new King, Louis XVIII. Louis XVIII, however, granted David amnesty and even offered him a position as a court painter. David refused this offer, preferring instead to seek a self-imposed exile in Brussels. There, he painted Cupid and Psyche and lived out the last days of his life quietly with his wife, whom he had remarried. During this time, he largely devoted his efforts to smaller-scale paintings of mythological scenes and to portraits of Bruxellois and Napoleonic emigres, such as the Baron Gerard.

When David was leaving the theater, he was hit by a carriage and later died of deformations to the heart in December 29, 1824. After his death, some of his portrait paintings were sold at auction in Paris, with his paintings going for very small sums. His famous painting of Marat was shown in a special secluded room so as not to outrage the public. David’s body was not allowed into France and was therefore buried in Brussels, but his heart was buried at Père Lachaise, Paris.

David's paintings can be viewed in Paris in the Louvre.

Description: David later became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Maximilien de Robespierre, 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 I. It was at this time that he developed his 'Empire style', notable for its use of warm Venetian colours. David had a huge number of pupils, making him the strongest influence in French art of the 19th century, especially academic Salon painting. Date of birth: 08/30/1748 Date of death: 12/29/1825 Area of notoriety: Art Marker Type: Headstone Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: 09:00 - 17:30 Fee required?: No Web site: Not listed

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