10410 Rome were virtually assured professional success, assuming of course their willingness to continue in the Academic tradi-

tion of painting (Z10530). David had four times entered and

Neoclassical painting failed to win the Prix de Rome. At one point he locked him- self in his room for days, apparently intent on starving to IN FRANCE 1780–1825 death. He was saved by the intervention of fellow students. by

Dr John W Nixon Fig. 1 Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii, 1784–85 (small version), oil on canvas, 127 x 165 cm/ 50 x 65 in; Toledo Museum of Art, gift of Edward Drummond Libbey.

Related Study Notes French Neoclassical painting in the period 1780–1825 In 1780 he was elected to the French Royal Academy, was dominated by two men, Jacques-Louis David (1748– Over the next twenty years his severe and uncompromising 1825) and Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres 1780–1867). attitude to his art and politics brought him to a position of 10040 David’s austere and morally demanding work resonates Classicism, Neoclassicism power and influence. John Canaday writes: with the revolutionary mood of his times, standing in and Romanticism stark and bloody contrast to the dreamy frivolity of the He established himself as art dictator of France, where his 10050 immediately preceding Rococo style. David’s contribut- paintings influenced everything from philosophical moral- Perspectives on realism ion to the French Revolution of 1789, indeed, tellingly ity to interior decoration. Political theorists used his extended beyond the artistic. Although what is probably paintings to support their arguments, and every woman in 10323 Europe with any pretensions to chic discarded her ward- Nicolas Poussin his best known work – The Oath of the Horatii, 1784–5 – was actually commissioned by his monarch, Louis XVI, robe and changed her hair-do to make herself over in the 10430 David was one of the signatories to Louis’s death pattern of the female type he invented to enact his pictor- Realist painting in France warrant. He thus had a direct hand in one of the most ial dramas. It was the most drastic “new look” in the 1820–1860 momentous social and political upheavals of modern history of fashion, but it was only a footnote to David’s times. Generally acknowledged as one of France’s career… 10530 …He served among other capacities as a member of Academicism greatest painters, Ingres, a student of David’s, sits almost as uneasily with the ‘Neoclassical’ label as he the legislative body voting life or death for his former does with the ‘Romantic’. His work is a peculiar blend of patron, Louis XVI. David’s vote was among those that In the text, a Z symbol both tendencies. In 1798 the English Romantic poet sent this ineffectual, confused, and incompetent young refers to these Study Notes William Wordsworth famously described poetry as man to the guillotine. David also guillotined the Royal “emotion recollected in tranquillity”. This sense of an Academy in which he had been nurtured… emotional experience being methodically worked upon …Some of his actions at this time [the so-called “Reign has a truth for all the arts, the literary and the visual, the of Terror” that followed the 1789 Revolution] make it Classical and the Romantic. In its embracing of these difficult not to see him as a fanatic.1 two extremes, Wordsworth’s observation also suggests The excesses of the Reign of Terror period eventually how art historical labels can be crudely generalising and sickened the people into reaction. The revolutionaries’ inadequate when applied to individual artists. This is “Committee of Public Safety” was overthrown in 1794 and a particularly so in the case of Ingres, a painter whose new regime, under a group of five known as “The Directory”, work is strongly Classical in technique but almost as established. David himself narrowly escaped execution and strongly Romantic in subject matter – the exotic and the instead was imprisoned, for four months in the Luxembourg erotic featuring frequently. Through Ingres’s work we Palace in 1794, and for a further two months in 1795, after see evidence of widespread and ongoing changes in which he was freed under a general amnesty. In 1800, patronage, with the interests and subject matter of Napoleon Bonaparte became Consul, and in 1804, Emperor. church, aristocracy and state losing ground to those of David rose again to prominence, the propaganda or public the rising professional and commercial classes. The arts relations value of his art being well appreciated. He quickly become ‘popular’ in a new sense and feed off one became First Painter to the Emperor. With Napoleon’s fall in another to an extent unheard of under the old order. 1815 he went into exile in Brussels.

Jacques-Louis David WORK Antiochus and Stratonice, 1774, with which he won the Prix David (1748–1825) was distantly related to the Rococo paint- de Rome, is a technically accomplished exercise in painting er François Boucher (1703–70) and it was Boucher who rather than an impressive work of art. It was with The Oath of directed the young David to the historical painter Comte the Horatii, 1784–5, that David first established himself as an Joseph-Marie Vien (1716–1809) for training. In 1775–6, as authoritative and original painter. The treatment is hard, holder of the prestigious student award, the Prix de Rome linear and sombre in tone. The theme gives… (Rome Prize), won on the strength of his painting Antiochus …expression to the new cult of the sterner civic virtues of and Stratonice, 1774, David accompanied Vien to Rome, stoical self-sacrifice, devotion to duty, honesty, and there to begin his three years of official study. Aside from the austerity, virtues which by a romantic misconception of art of Classical antiquity, the High Renaissance paintings of historical fact contributed to an uncritical admiration for Raphael, Correggio and Titian were apparently the favoured

objects of study – Raphael for expressiveness, Correggio for 1 chiaroscuro, and Titian for colour. Winners of the Prix de John Canaday, Mainstreams of Modern Art, Thames and Hudson, London, 1959, pp. 6–7.

1/4 10410u.doc: first published 2007 CCEA GCE HISTORY OF ART Ancient Rome.2 grief as the bodies of his two sons, whom he had And Canaday writes: condemned to death for conspiring against Roman liberty, are carried home for burial. Lictors Bringing Back to …The Oath of the Horatii is spare, organized almost Brutus the Bodies of his Sons was completed and exhib- mathematically into unit variations of the number 3. ited the very year of the Revolution. Even more than The Against three simple arches the participants are divided Horatii it was a sensation as a political allegory. Just as into three groups of generally triangular shapes – the Brutus had sacrificed his own sons to the cause of Roman three sons, the father holding their three swords, and the liberty, so must the French people purify their country at group of women… The three groups, considered as a no matter what costs. Brutus’s strength was openly unit, are united in a final triangle, binding the picture into a compared with the weakness of Louis XVI, who had decisive whole… allowed members of his family to emigrate and take up …The three stalwart young Romans are vowing to arms for other countries against France.4 their father that they will return victorious or give their lives David’s roles as propagandist and pictorial historian of the in a duel with three warrior brothers of the city of Alba, a Revolution come together most memorably perhaps in his duel to be fought in the presence of the armies of both cities to determine which city will rule the other. The The Death of Marat, 1793. Canaday describes the circum- stances behind the painting as follows: special complication in this situation is that one of the grieving women to the right is not only the wife of one of Marat, a leading figure in the Reign of Terror and a close the Roman warriors but the sister of one of the Albans as friend of David’s, was assassinated in his bathtub by a well. In addition, the youngest of the women is a sister of woman named Charlotte Corday. Although she was a the Romans but the fiancée of one of the Albans. Revolutionary sympathizer, Corday was outraged by the Thus the subject of The Oath of the Horatii is excesses of the Terror and appointed herself judge and 3 executioner of at least one of the guilty, Marat, and was dedication and sacrifice… herself guillotined for his assassination… David’s theme is taken directly from a play – Horace, 1640 – …the bath was a medicinal one in which Marat spent by the French classical dramatist Pierre Corneille (1606–84), his days because he was afflicted with an eczema. Lining renowned for his depictions of personal and moral forces in the tub with sheets and wrapping his head in a turban, no conflict. The shallow space, the clarity of the perfectly pro- doubt also medicated, he received callers and carried on portioned figures, and the dramatic lighting may be related to business as usual… Corday gained an audience by that of the theatrical stage, or perhaps the frieze sculptures sending a note saying she had information of vital impor- (low-relief sculptural narratives) of Classical antiquity. On its tance to France. Marat’s tub was rigged with a cover to exhibition at the Paris Salon the painting caused a sensation. serve as a desk… From a particularized subject full of As with most of David’s mature works, it was generally seen sordid and commonplace details, David developed a to be a sharply focused allegory of contemporary political generalized statement in noble and ideal terms. Here he events. The theme of personal sacrifice in service to social or approaches a classicism truer than that of his classical ‘republican’ ideals continues in other works. subjects with their trappings imitated from ancient Rome.5 The Death of Socrates, 1787, depicts Socrates, the first of

the three great Greek philosophers (the others, Plato and Aristotle) about to carry out the sentence of death on himself Fig. 4 David, Death of Marat (or Marat Breathing his Last), 1793; oil and drink the poison, hemlock. His crime was holding to on canvas, 165.1 x 128.0 cm/ 65 x 50.4 in; Musée Royal des Beaux principles conflicting with religious beliefs of his fellow Athen- Arts, Brussels. ians. By showing Socrates surrounded by twelve ‘disciples’, however, it may be noted how David himself introduces The dramatic lighting points to the influences of Correggio another kind of religious reference into the narrative. and Caravaggio. The highlighted white turban also lends a halo-like effect –Tim Marlow tellingly refers to the painting as His Lictors Bringing Back to Brutus the Bodies of his “effectively a republican altarpiece”.6 Sons, 1789, coincided not only with the French Revolution but with a Paris production of Voltaire’s play Brutus, 1730, Fig. 5 David, The Intervention of the Sabine Women (or The Rape of the Sabine Women), 1799; oil on canvas, 386 x 520 cm/ 152 x 204.7 Fig. 2 David, The Death of Socrates, 1787; oil on canvas, 129.5 x in; Louvre Museum, Paris. 196.2 cm/ 51 x 77.25 in; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

During his imprisonment in the Luxembourg Palace David on the same subject. Canaday: began his next major work, The Intervention of the Sabine These “stoic” pictures with political overtones reached the Women, 1795–99. Canaday: climax – not aesthetically, but politically – in a picture of According to the legend, the Sabine women were abduct- [Lucius] Brutus, First Consul of Rome, sternly repressing ed by the Romans, who took them to wife. [A few years]

Later when the fathers marched against the ravishers, the Fig. 3 David, Lictors Bringing Back to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, women threw themselves between their Sabine fathers 1789; oil on canvas, 325 x 422.9 cm/ 128 x 166.5 in; Louvre Museum, and their Roman husbands to stop the carnage. In Paris.

4 Canaday, p. 13. 2 Harold Osborne, editor, The Oxford Companion to Art, Oxford 5 Canaday, p. 14. University Press, 1970, p. 303. 6 Tim Marlow, writer and presenter, Great Artists 2, with Tim Marlow, 3 Canaday, p. 10. “David”, C5 Television, London, 2003.

2/4 10410u.doc: first published 2007 CCEA GCE HISTORY OF ART David’s picture the Sabine woman in the center is Her- portraits of female sitters, friends or otherwise, frequently celia; her husband Romulus is about to throw his javelin feature luxurious fabrics, jewellery and furnishings. Large at Tatius, who bends to parry the blow. According to one mirrors are a favourite accessory. story, David selected the subject because he was moved Throughout his life, and despite the evidence in his work by the devotion of his wife, who returned to him when he of considerable sensitivity to colour, Ingres proclaimed the was sent to prison. (She had left him when he voted for primacy of line, of drawing. This echoes David’s teaching – the death of the king.) According to another, Hercelia and, at a more general level, the Enlightenment’s faith in the symbolizes France throwing herself between the warring power of reason – and has to be seen in the context of his parties in the civil conflict that tore the country after the somewhat unhappy championing of the Neoclassical cause Revolution. By the time David finished the picture, France against Delacroix’s the Romantic. As Canaday writes: 7 had finally reached unity under Napoleon… Ingres was a pedestrian personality, stubborn and At least one of David’s later works, Napoleon Crossing plodding, while Delacroix was spectacular and aristocratic the Alps, 1805–7, has a distinctly Romantic feel. With such a in contrast to Ingres’s humble origin and bourgeois

Fig. 6 David, Napoleon Crossing the Alps, c.1800–7; Musée National ambition. Delacroix painted brilliantly and theorized even du Château, Versailles. more brilliantly. Ingres’s pronouncements were stuffy… But he was a great painter.8 commission, however, it is unlikely that David himself would have had much say on the overall presentation. Napoleon Fig. 9 Ingres, Apotheosis of Homer, 1827; oil on canvas, 386 x 515.6 in.his Study, 1812, is a much more sedate treatment. The cm/ 152 x 203 in; Louvre Museum, Paris.

Raphael was a great influence, as can be seen in the Fig. 7 David, Napoleon in his Study, 1812; National Gallery, Apotheosis of Homer, 1827 (Fig. 9), clearly based on Washington; Samuel H. Kress Collection. Raphael’s famous School of Athens, c.1509, in the Vatican, or the Virgin with the Host, 1854, clearly owing much to Raphael’s various treatments of the same subject. Another candles have burnt low and the clock shows 4.15 – am. such work is Pope Pius VII, 1814, now in the Sistine Chapel Napoleon is reported to have remarked: “You have under- in the Vatican. stood me, David: by night I work for the happiness of my Fig. 10 Ingres, Jupiter and Thetis, 1811; oil on canvas, 330.2 x 256.5 subjects and by day for their glory.” On Napoleon’s fall in cm/ 130 x 101 in; Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence, France. 1815, David went into exile in Brussels and his last paintings revert to a drier and more austere style, but with little of the Partly because of his social failings, Ingres left for Rome power of his earlier work. in 1835, as Director of the French Academy there, and only returned to Paris in 1841, where he remained, the recipient Jean Auguste-Dominique Ingres of many high honours, until his death in 1867. Ingres (1780–1867), the son of a minor sculptor and painter, was born at Montauban. After entering the Toulouse Acad- emy he went to Paris in 1796 and, alongside the Romanticist Fig. 11 Ingres, Madame Moitessier Seated, 1844–56; oil on canvas; National Gallery, London. Antoine-Jean Gros (1771–1835), studied under David. He won the Prix de Rome with his painting The Envoys of With regards to his work, portraiture defers to the female Agamemnon, 1801, but owing to government economic nude as the dominant theme. The nudes often appear as strictures was unable to take up his award, of three years’ ‘bathers’, ‘odalisques’ (French term, deriving from Turkish for study in Rome, until 1806–7. He remained in Rome until harem or slave girls) or as participants within mythological or 1820, after which he spent four years in Florence before historical dramas, such as in Jupiter and Thetis, 1811, Roger returning to Paris. Freeing Angelica, 1819, or La Source, 1820–56.

Fig. 8 Ingres, Louis Bertin, 1832; oil on canvas, 116.2 x 95.0 cm/ Fig. 12 Ingres, Grande Odalisque, 1814; oil on canvas, 89.7 x 162 45.75 x 37.4 in; Louvre Museum, Paris. cm/ 35 x 63 in; Louvre Museum, Paris.

Even before 1806, he had established a reputation as an In relation to Neoclassicism in general and one of Ingres’s accomplished portrait painter. His early works are often set ‘bathers’ in particular, Canaday comments: against landscape backgrounds, as in his Mademoiselle Rivière, 1805, a portrait of a fifteen year old girl before a lush …before long classicism degenerated into a fettering green landscape through which glides a meandering silvery code of arbitrary rules and standards. By the middle of the river. David described this particular work as “bizarre, revol- [19th] century the demigod of the school was a pedantic utionary, Gothic”. Ingres’s portraits of the rich and powerful, tyrant and a great artist named Jean Auguste Dominique such as his Louis Bertin, 1832, or Mme Moitessier Standing, Ingres, who mercilessly dictated these sterile recipes, yet 1851, are characterised by great purity of line and a hard rose above them in his own art. His The Bather of Valpin- enamel-like finish. These ‘Classical’ qualities are somewhat çon [1808] observes the rules in its precision, its enamel- relaxed in his self-portraits and portraits of friends. His like surface, its carefully controlled drawing, its limitation

7 Canaday, p. 18. 8 Canaday, p. 57.

3/4 10410u.doc: first published 2007 CCEA GCE HISTORY OF ART of colour within sharply defined boundaries. But in spirit both trained – may also be noted as minor painters within the the picture is sensuous beneath its careful surface…9 Neoclassical movement. Antoine Jean Gros (1771–1835) also deserves mention. Like Ingres, Gros was torn between Classicism and Romanticism. David entrusted him to carry Fig. 13 Ingres, Bather of Valpinçon, 1808; oil on canvas, 143.8 x 97.1 on the Neoclassical tradition but Gros himself, despite his cm/ 56.6 x 38.25 in; Louvre Museum, Paris. respect for David, was by personality and painterly technique more naturally a Romantic. As official war painter to The art historian Lionello Venturi tellingly refers to Ingres’s Napoleon, he produced many paintings in which a Romantic “frozen romanticism”.

Fig. 16 Antoine Jean Gros, Napoleon Visiting the Pesthouse at Jaffa, Fig. 14 Ingres, Odalisque with Slave, 1842; oil on canvas, 71.1 x 100 1804; oil on canvas, 5.31 x 7.19 m/ 209 x 283 in; Louvre, Paris. cm/ 28 x 39.4 in; Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, USA.

spirit is evident almost from the titles alone, as for instance Ingres’s Grande Odalisque, 1814, is renowned for having with Napoleon Visiting the Pesthouse at Jaffa, 1804, and The a spine some three vertebrae too long. His Odalisque with Battle of Aboukir, 1806. In the 1820s he attempted unsuc- the Slave, 1842, and tondo (circular painting) The Turkish cessfully to revert to the Classical style and in 1835 he Bath, 1852–63, are further examples of his obsession with ended his life by suicide. the sensuousness of the female nude, more often than not married to exotic Middle Eastern themes. Ingres’s peculiar mixture of qualities, of barely disguised, Fig. 17 Antoine Jean Gros, Napoleon on the Battlefield at Eylau, almost primitive, obsession served by a technique of the 1807–08; oil on canvas, 521 x 784 cm/ 205 x 309 in; Musée du utmost delicacy and precision has attracted many admirers, Louvre, Paris. Reproduced from www.wga.hu. notable among them, Degas, Renoir, Picasso and Francis Bacon. Canaday sums up Ingres’s significance as follows:

Fig. 15 Ingres, The Turkish Bath, c.1852–63; oil on canvas, diameter 107.9 cm/ 42.5 in; Louvre Museum, Paris.

In his portraits Ingres is a great stylist; so is he, of course, in his subject pictures. But he must remain only a stylist, nothing more, even in such pictures as Jupiter and Thetis, unless his characterizing element of hidden and uneven unconscious personal emotional expression is recog- nized. Baudelaire, who was so perceptive of the universal significance of the conceptions released through Dela- croix’s romantic forms, searched uneasily in the art of Ingres for meanings he seems to have suspected were concealed beneath the polished surface and fettered within the implacable contours of Ingres’s style. He never convinced himself that these meanings were there. But the twentieth century, with its explorations of the hidden impulses of the creative act, has revealed Ingres as an intense, intimate, and even secret artist of the most personal kind beneath his stylisations and pedantry.10 Our final illustration of Ingres’s works is of one of his final works, The Turkish Bath. Left foreground, amid a veritable mass of exposed female flesh, there appears again the coolly Classical form of the Valpinçon Bather.

Minor painters On the basis of ‘pictorial sermons’ such as The Village Girl, 1761, the painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) initially received influential backing for his expression of Enlighten- ment, or Neoclassical, values. The shallow sentimentality and undistinguished artistry of Greuze’s work became clear- er when set against the paintings of David. François Gérard (1770–1837) and Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (1774–1833) – in whose studio the great Romanticists Géricault and Delacroix

9 Canaday, pre-pagination. 10 Canaday, p. 73.

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