The Louvre's David Retrospective: Some Gleanings
I recently attended a Louvre exhibit on the painter Jacques-Louis David, most known for the muscular classicism of The Oath of the Horatii, 1786. While its decisive attitudes and body language are often perceived as heralding the Revolution, in reality it was bought by Louis XVI himself.
Some very good art historical writing has been done concerning where David stood on politics that year, none of it conclusive, but what is sure is that when all hell broke loose he did become a member of the Committee of Public Safety and signer of many an execution warrant, the king's included and perhaps even that of a former love, Mme. Chalgrin (or so the story goes, at least).
Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii, 1786, Louvre, photo: Wiki, Shonagon
Less then a decade after the Horatii, he painted the Revolution’s premiere martyr, the secular pietà that is The Death of Marat. It solemnly marks the assassination of this sans-culotte journalist and close friend of David. One Charlotte Corday stabbed him in his bath, convinced he was the reason that the newborn nation was turning to the Terror with the September Massacres.
The detail I found particularly arresting in person, besides the scarlet water in the tub, was Corday’s abandoned knife, lower left, it too stained with red pigment. Blood and paint become one.
To my eyes, David left similar traces in the self-portrait of a year later. He had hurriedly created it, and never finished, as he sat in a jail cell waiting for his turn at the National Razor. That turn never came. Twice imprisoned, he escaped the guillotine by the the skin of his teeth, only to submit to Napoleon and then, under the Restoration, flee to Belgium to live out the rest of his years in exile.
But at this moment in 1794, when he stares down death, he has left two strokes of red to the left of his shoulder. It could well be simply the painter sloughing off some pigment on a background that will be otherwise filled. Its placement above the palette however, leads me to think it might be more than that, at least in the painter's passing thoughts.
Detail of previous
With these gender dynamics in mind, a recent reading of Hersilia’s Sisters by Norman Bryson has reopened my eyes to an artist. David's Intervention of the Sabine Women, 1799 is the book's center of gravity.
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In the Muséum known today as the Louvre, which he had done so much to create as chief artist of the new Republic, the work was displayed with the portraits of two influential society ladies on either side, in a kind of framing device.
and Mme. Récamier:
_Bernard_-_Jacques-Louis_David_-_Mus%C3%A9e_duLouvre_Peintures_INV_3708.jpg)
It might at first seem surprising, this contrast between them and the Sabine women's leader, Romulus's wife, Hersilia. One one hand you have two well-known living women, both seated, seemingly passive receptors of a gaze, and on the other, a frenzied agent of conciliation and concord in the midst of massacre from the distant past. Yet the ultra modish gowns worn by the two sitters were in essence a revival of just the kind of dress worn by Hersilia.
In the work's original showing, set up by David himself, a mirror in the back of the room reflected the painting's viewers of the canvas and brought the point home. The men strolling past, done up in the outrageous Directoire fashions of chin-height collars and tightly seamed jackets, could not be farther from the warriors going forth buck naked into battle and bloodshed.
Selected further reading
Thomas Crow "The Oath of the Horatii in 1785: Painting and pre-Revolutionary Radicalism in France," Art History, Volume 1, Issue 4, 1 December 1978, pp. 424–471.
Severine Sofio, Artistes femmes: La parenthèse enchantée XVIIIe - XIXe siècle, CNRS, 2023
Some very good art historical writing has been done concerning where David stood on politics that year, none of it conclusive, but what is sure is that when all hell broke loose he did become a member of the Committee of Public Safety and signer of many an execution warrant, the king's included and perhaps even that of a former love, Mme. Chalgrin (or so the story goes, at least).
Less then a decade after the Horatii, he painted the Revolution’s premiere martyr, the secular pietà that is The Death of Marat. It solemnly marks the assassination of this sans-culotte journalist and close friend of David. One Charlotte Corday stabbed him in his bath, convinced he was the reason that the newborn nation was turning to the Terror with the September Massacres.
Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat, 1793
Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique
Wiki via Google Art & Culture, FDRMRZUSA,
The detail I found particularly arresting in person, besides the scarlet water in the tub, was Corday’s abandoned knife, lower left, it too stained with red pigment. Blood and paint become one.
To my eyes, David left similar traces in the self-portrait of a year later. He had hurriedly created it, and never finished, as he sat in a jail cell waiting for his turn at the National Razor. That turn never came. Twice imprisoned, he escaped the guillotine by the the skin of his teeth, only to submit to Napoleon and then, under the Restoration, flee to Belgium to live out the rest of his years in exile.
Jacques-Louis David, Self Portrait, 1794, Louvre, photo: Wiki, source unknown
But at this moment in 1794, when he stares down death, he has left two strokes of red to the left of his shoulder. It could well be simply the painter sloughing off some pigment on a background that will be otherwise filled. Its placement above the palette however, leads me to think it might be more than that, at least in the painter's passing thoughts.
In a contemporary’s memoir, Albertine Clément-Hémery recalls her days in rival painter Regnault’s studio for girls. She reports that in his analogous workshop, David would regularly say “Broyons du rouge” or “Let us grind some red,” in reference to grinding a pigment to mix with its medium in the world before prepared oil painting tubes. It recalls the French saying of feeling low, or depressed, which is “broyer du noir” – to grind some black. Yet Clément-Hémery tells us the painter would particularly repeat these words as he signed away warrants for death penalty arrests, where the red to be ground is the blood soon to spill, on the Place de la Revolution or Place du Trône Renversé where the guillotine loomed, runnels of red streaming in the gutters.
It should be remembered that David also taught girls, throughout his career, and often in full defiance of the powers that be. It might seem odd, since his signature work of The Oath of the Horatii affirms such homosocial virility. The women are relegated to the margin of this display of active masculine dedication. In the tale the scene comes from, the women were intertwined by marriage and love with the Curatii family, the very one the Horatii brothers were swearing in filial piety to vanquish. The women's place in this world, at its edges, is defined by a molle slumping, weak and lacking the fierce, brave gestures the moment demanded. The women are swooning in despair and defeat before the battle has even begun.
Just a few years later he began -- but never finished -- The Tennis Court Oath, worked on between 1790 and 1793 or 94.
It should be remembered that David also taught girls, throughout his career, and often in full defiance of the powers that be. It might seem odd, since his signature work of The Oath of the Horatii affirms such homosocial virility. The women are relegated to the margin of this display of active masculine dedication. In the tale the scene comes from, the women were intertwined by marriage and love with the Curatii family, the very one the Horatii brothers were swearing in filial piety to vanquish. The women's place in this world, at its edges, is defined by a molle slumping, weak and lacking the fierce, brave gestures the moment demanded. The women are swooning in despair and defeat before the battle has even begun.
Just a few years later he began -- but never finished -- The Tennis Court Oath, worked on between 1790 and 1793 or 94.
David, The Tennis Court Oath, unfinished, 1790 - 1794, Musée national du Château de Versailles,
Photo Wiki, via Google Arts & Culture — fAER0Kl7k5kYEQ
The gigantic sketched canvas commemorates the Third Estate deputies swearing to remain in place until a constitution was drafted and adopted. Here again, in this homosocial world, the men vow their oaths of allegiance. The artist has chosen to set the composition in such a way that two men on the left shake hands across the midsection of a third in back of them. I cannot help but think of the etymology of testimony, of witness, that fossilized in the word “testicles.”
With these gender dynamics in mind, a recent reading of Hersilia’s Sisters by Norman Bryson has reopened my eyes to an artist. David's Intervention of the Sabine Women, 1799 is the book's center of gravity.
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Jacques-Louis David, The Intervention of the Sabine Women, 1799, Louvre,
photo: Wiki, Wilfredor
David painted it some five years after the Terror. Though not long enough in the past for the murdered to lie easy, still Robespierre was dead and beheaded. Paris yearned for some peaceful government to put an end to the animosities and lingering ill-will that the tumult had brought into play, to establish a peaceful post-Revolutionary society. The image he chose for this great comeback -- almost a near-death experience -- from his tarnished reputation shows the crucial instant when women come between the male warriors in the act of slaughter.
In the Muséum known today as the Louvre, which he had done so much to create as chief artist of the new Republic, the work was displayed with the portraits of two influential society ladies on either side, in a kind of framing device.
Mme. de Verninac:
Portrait of Henriette de Verninac,1799, Louvre, Photo: Wiki, Coyau
and Mme. Récamier:
_Bernard_-_Jacques-Louis_David_-_Mus%C3%A9e_duLouvre_Peintures_INV_3708.jpg)
Portrait of Juliette Récamier, 1799, Louvre, photo: Wiki, Shonagon
It might at first seem surprising, this contrast between them and the Sabine women's leader, Romulus's wife, Hersilia. One one hand you have two well-known living women, both seated, seemingly passive receptors of a gaze, and on the other, a frenzied agent of conciliation and concord in the midst of massacre from the distant past. Yet the ultra modish gowns worn by the two sitters were in essence a revival of just the kind of dress worn by Hersilia.
In the work's original showing, set up by David himself, a mirror in the back of the room reflected the painting's viewers of the canvas and brought the point home. The men strolling past, done up in the outrageous Directoire fashions of chin-height collars and tightly seamed jackets, could not be farther from the warriors going forth buck naked into battle and bloodshed.
French Gentleman's Ensemble, 1790s, Victoria and Albert Museum
Yet the women attending the exhibit would be dressed in the simple, white, flowing muslins of the era, the same kind worn by Mme. de Verninac and Mme. Récamier. Those dresses drew their inspiration precisely from the era the canvas depicted, a scene in which the active Sabine women had had enough of the bloody strife, much as the Directoire had had enough of the Reign of Terror and other spasms of revolution.
The canvas conspires to pass the message that the men have had their day and say, and made a hash of it. Building a civil society in the wake of destruction means to follow the directives of the women, whose bravery in a time of equally harrowing and pivotal change had been exemplary, a far cry from the wilting wall flowers of 1786's distaff side of the Horatii family.
Lest we see the two women here portrayed as helpless, passive agents, Bryson's tour de force explains how much the home of diplomat like M. de Verninac or the financier Récamier owed to their wives, the hostesses, to their arranging, introducing, receiving, and smoothing enmities, alliances and friendships between the male movers and shakers, who could not accomplish their goals without the soft skill, subtle genius that belonged to the women who presided there.
The Louvre exhibit of today did not disappoint, cannily placing Hersilia and her Sabine comrades between the portraits of the two celebrated Directorate ladies, just as their painter had intended them to be viewed, of a piece, exemplars of courageous peacemakers.
This understated and yet profound retrospective of David marks the first since France's bicentennial of 1789, held now on the anniversary of his death two hundred years ago. The chronological approach takes us across his career, from his earliest efforts towards the Prix de Rome to his portraits of Brussels bourgeoisie. The scenography's lighting and hanging confronts us with the products of the hand and mind of a towering figure of French, indeed modern, painting. For all the consequence and completeness of the show, the painter remains a cipher: a man who accepted royal patronage, voted for that patron's death, friend to Marat and Robespierre, near martyr to his own beloved Revolution, and then fell worshiping at Napoleon's feet.
We look in vain for answers, but I hope these few impressions might shed some scattered light on him and his works.
Selected further reading
Isabelle/Yaëlle Arasa, Davidiennes: Les femmes peintres de l'atelier de Jacques-Louis David (1768-1825), Harmattan, 2019
Norman Bryson, Hersilia’s Sisters: Jacques-Louis David, Women, and the Emergence of Civil Society in Post-Revolution France, Getty Research Institute Los Angeles
T. J. Clark, "Painting in the Year II" Representations, N° 47, 1994, pp. 13-63
Norman Bryson, Hersilia’s Sisters: Jacques-Louis David, Women, and the Emergence of Civil Society in Post-Revolution France, Getty Research Institute Los Angeles
T. J. Clark, "Painting in the Year II" Representations, N° 47, 1994, pp. 13-63
Albertine Clément-Hémery, Souvenirs de 1793 et 1794, Lesne-Daloin éd., Cambrai, 1832
Thomas Crow "The Oath of the Horatii in 1785: Painting and pre-Revolutionary Radicalism in France," Art History, Volume 1, Issue 4, 1 December 1978, pp. 424–471.
Severine Sofio, Artistes femmes: La parenthèse enchantée XVIIIe - XIXe siècle, CNRS, 2023
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