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Home , Jean Sylvain Bailly, Tennis Court Oath

EXTENSION ACTIVITIES – Jacques-Louis David’s ‘Oath of the Tennis Court’, 1791

Read the discussion of Jacques-Louis-David’s ‘Oath of the Tennis Court’ (1791) on p. 3-8 of this handout. Then complete the following extension activities:

1. One of the big problems which faced David as the Revolution progressed was that many of the figures to whom he had given prominence in the 1791 drawing fell from favour as political conditions changed. Using Liberating France (including the Who’s Who) and other sources, find out what happened to Mounier, Mirabeau, Bailly, Barère, Barnave, and Robespierre. Then research the clergymen, Abbé Grégoire and Abbé Sieyès.

2. David alludes to the popular movement which became known as the sans-culottes through the strong and robust figure in the red bonnet of liberty in the lower left hand corner. Referring to Liberating France (including the Section B Timeline), write a paragraph to outline the role played by the sans-culottes movement from 10 August 1792 until the days of Germinal and Prairial Year III, (1 April and 20-23 May 1795).

3. Using Liberating France (including the Who’s Who) and other sources, outline David’s career – both as a painter and as a politician. In your answer consider the importance his paintings and drawings 1789-1795, and his role in organising public ceremonies. Then investigate his political activities as a deputy in the .

4. David uses at least eight revolutionary ideas in his 1791 study of the . Locate them and any other revolutionary ideas not mentioned in the summary above. Where did these ideas come from and how did they develop through the revolutionary period? How far did the revolution stray from some of these foundational principles? To track these ideas it is useful to refer to a number of key documents, including the Constitutions and some of the laws. Set your answer up in a summary table like the one below:

Revolutionary Source of the How is this How is this How far has the How far principle idea – a revolutionary revolutionary revolution strayed does the shown in philosphe or principle laid principle from this original revolution David’s ‘Oath other? out in either the implemented in the revolutionary re-constitute of the Tennis Declaration of earlier principle by 1793- this original Court’ Identify the Rights of Man Constitutions? 94? revolutionar work and give and Citizen or y principle in a quote. the August Consider both the Quote from either the Decrees? Constitution of 1791 the ‘Constitution of Constitution and the Constitution the Terror’ (Law of of Year III, of 1793 as these 14 Frimaire, i.e. 4 (1795)? Quote the differ on some December 1793) or relevant points, most notably the other laws, such Quote the clause. the definition of as the Law of clause. citizenship. Suspects, 17 September 1793, the Quote the clause. (10 June 1794), the de-Christianisation campaign, and so on. Revolutionary principle 1

Revolutionary principle 2

See over. This is a working file – pay no David’s Tennis Court Oath to inconsistencies of footnotes- endnotes etc.

The SOLE FUNCTION of this file is to assist with the layout of the images into the text – i.e. working out which image goes against which name. My are byn perfect but the layout was superbly done in the 2010 edition. [The text here has been altered slightly from 2010 edition.]

Preparatory Study: Pen and brown ink, brown wash with white highlights and traces of chalk. Height 66 cm – Width 101.2 cm

J-L David, 1791

Intentions and contradictions of David’s representation of the Tennis Court Oath

In March 1790, Jacques-Louis David, the leading artist of the , began his study for a large commemorative oil painting of one of the seminal revolutionary moments of 1789, the Oath of the Tennis Court. To many in 1790, it must have seemed that the Revolution itself was now over, and that all which remained to be done was to continue the implementation of the revolutionary principles expressed in this image. David conceived a work on a grand scale, commensurate with the magnitude of the historic event of 20 June. David intended this image to be read as an immortalisation of a contemporary historical triumph and this had been the patriotic purpose of the formal commission from the Club. As an exposition of the great intellectual principles of the Revolution, this is an exciting image indeed; but, as an accurate historical record of the event, we as historians must be extremely cautious in accepting it at face value. Over time, political expediency came to sully the purity of patriotic intent and historical reality, as many of the heroes depicted from the 20 June 1789 fell from favour either through their own actions or through the rapid changes of those who held political power.

In fact, the political integrity of the work was compromised even by the time it was first shown in public in September 1791. The choice of the topic of the Oath of the Tennis Court was designed to celebrate a great revolutionary and patriotic moment on the road to constitutional monarchy. But, in the wake of the flight of the royal family to Varennes in June 1791, this enterprise now seemed flawed at its very heart. The Salon exhibition opened on 11 September and Louis XVI formally accepted the 1791 Constitution on 13 September. But, by this time some of the contemporary revolutionary heroes shown by David had already begun their tragic fall: Mirabeau, the great advocate for constitutional monarchy, had died in April 1791 under strong suspicion of spying for the court and Bailly, as mayor of Paris, had been blamed for ordering the National Guard to fire on the assembled crowed at the on 17 July. As the Revolution progressed the number of David’s subjects who had fallen from revolutionary grace steadily mounted. Eventually, David had to abandon the work. Revolutionary personalities and symbolism in the image

In the general composition and the particular detail, David’s 1791 pen and ink drawing is rich in revolutionary symbolism. The floor space of the tennis court seems to be a seething mass of exhilarated men, excitedly throwing their hats in the air and raising their arms in a salute of loyalty to the new nation and its new assembly, which, they vow, will not disband until it has written a constitution for the new body politic. Michael Adcock has pointed out how strongly this contrasts with the formal pomp and rigid hierarchy shown in the engraving by 1 Helman of the opening ceremony of the Estates-General less than eight weeks before.

At the compositional heart of this image is the figure of Jean-Sylvain Bailly, who had been appointed early in May to control the debates of the Third Estate. As President of the three-day-old National Assembly, he stands on the table, hand raised, reading out the draft of the Oath as it was proposed by the young deputy from Grenoble, Jean-Joseph Mounier. Throughout the body of deputies, David depicts many of them taking the oath with their arms raised in the classical salute of civic loyalty used in the ancient Republic of Rome.

Directly below Bailly is the trinity of clergy, representing religious tolerance and reconciliation: in the centre the ordained priest, Abbé Henri Grégoire, fraternally puts his arms about the shoulders of the Capuchin monk, Dom Gerle, (in the white robe to the left, who was not actually at the Tennis Court on that day)2; while the Protestant clergyman, Rabaut Saint- Etienne, is seen to the right. Seated at the table, somewhat aloof, is the Abbé Sieyès, author of the seminal pamphlet, ‘What is the Third-Estate?’, whose ‘strong and robust man’ had ‘within itself all that [was] necessary to constitute a complete nation.’3 It was Sieyès’ key idea which had provided the theoretical rationalisation of popular sovereignty and representational democracy which had formed the basis of the declaration of the National Assembly on 17 June.

To the left of the trinity of clergy sits the lawyer Bertrand Barère, deputy from Bigorre, who was already acting as a 4 journalist, pen in hand, reporting on the events.

1 The Opening of the Estates-General in May 1789 by C. Monet (Painter to the King), engraved by Helman (‘Engraver to the Queen’) in Michael Adcock, A Student Handbook, p.41-42. 2 J.M. Thompson, The French Revolution, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1964, p.20. 3 AbbéSieyès, What is the Third Estate? Chapter 1, in John Hall Stewart, A Documentary Survey of the French Revolution, The Macmillan Company, 1951, p.44. 4 J.M. Thompson, The French Revolution, p.20. Another fraternal embrace expressing uninhibited and open expression of feeling occurs at the left hand edge of the image. The deputies Rewbell and Curé Thibault clasp each other’s shoulders and exchange a direct but warm gaze. They seem delighted to see each other. The openness of this expression of sentiment, the art historian Philippe Bordes has argued, may be directly attributed to the ideas of Rousseau: ‘In becoming free, man approaches nature and simplifies his relations with others’.5 This was Rousseau’s response to the stultifying, rigid and artificial social etiquette of the old regime, and the hypocrisy of manners of which Diderot had complained.6 Upon viewing the drawing of the Tennis Court Oath in 1791, the contemporary art theorist and critic, Quatremère de Qincy, approved of the ‘greater expression of frankness and openness, more natural manners, … more poses which are not wooden or affected, more open emotion and more warmth in the artistic language.’7 Thus David sought to depict the triumph of natural emotion over artifice of the deputies and brotherly relationships which, it was hoped, would mark the new revolutionary society.

Other figures in the foreground to which David draws our attention are the as-yet unremarkable deputy from Arras, , and the Comte Riquetti de Mirabeau, who was one of the most prominent personalities of the Assembly in 1789. Mirabeau was elected a deputy for the Third Estate, not the Second, (which his rank allowed). He was a member of the Society of Thirty, an advocate for the civil rights of Jews and a member of Abbé Grégoire’s Society of the Friends of the Blacks, which was arguing for abolition of slavery or, at the very least, for civil rights for free people of colour in France’s colonies. While the Comte de Mirabeau had a taste for the dramatic gesture, Robespierre was a highly controlled and socially undemonstrative man. To see him represented in such an uninhibited pose, described by Schama as ‘the body language of Rousseauean sincerity and virtue’, stretches our credulity to the extreme.8 The artist explained this pose by claiming it was as if ‘Robespierre had two hearts beating for liberty.’9 In 1789, Robespierre was an obscure deputy from the provinces, not yet of great importance among the Third Estate deputies. David assigns Robespierre prominence in his composition because, by 1791, Robespierre had become the acknowledged leader of the radical element of the Jacobin Club, the faction with which 10 David was increasingly associating himself.

Behind Mirabeau, David depicts the only peasant representative at the Estates – General, the delegate from Rennes, an old man called ‘Père’ Michel Gérard, with his hands clasped in prayer. ‘Père’ Gérard refused to wear the black and white costume of the Third Estate, instead dressing as he usually did in brown cloth. A peasant proprietor from Brittany, Gérard was a foundation member of the Breton Club, later to become the

5 Philipe Bordes, Le Serment du Jeu de Paume, p.64. 6 , Essais sur la peinture and Pensées detaches, in Philippe Bordes, p 64. 7 Bordes, Le Serment du Jeu de Paume, p.64. 8 Simon Schama, Citizens, p. 569. 9 J.M. Thompson, The French Revolution, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1964, p. 20. 10 To read more of David’s political career and friendship with Robespierre, see the Who’s Who entry on p. x . His rough common sense was admired as the voice of popular wisdom, and his 11 countryman's waistcoat and plaited hair were later to become the model for the Jacobin fashion.

Opposition and Exclusions

It is at the edges of the image that David portrays those who are either excluded from the action or in opposition to it.

At the right-hand edge of the image is the deputy Martin d’Auch, famously the only deputy who opposed the Oath, arguing that he could not ‘conscientiously support measures not sanctioned by the King’.12 We see him seated with arms crossed in a refusal to stand and take the oath. Camus, the deputy in front of d’Auch urges him to his feet, while Tronchet behind restrains his excited colleague. The right to freedom of opinion, one of the great underpinning values of the new ideas, is thus expressed in a revolutionary cameo within a great revolutionary image.

In the right hand public gallery above d’Auch, excluded from the action in June 1789 but passionately involved as observers, are elements Schama has identified as ‘The People’ i– women, children and curious members of the Royal Guard.ii Bordes has claimed that their metaphorical role was to ‘transmit the spirit of the oath to the whole nation’,iii while Schama has described them as ‘audience, pupils and ideal citizens: patriotic …but never threatening in their unruliness.’iv Whatever role David conceived for this group in his drawing, Michael Adcock has realistically reminded us that the largely middle class and exclusively male deputies on the floor of the tennis court, euphorically swept up in this fraternal moment, seem unaware of these marginalised groups ‘merely looking in and observing a ritual theoretically conducted on their behalf’. Adcock warns that ‘By 1793, this marginalisation would become unacceptable, and these groups would challenge the very idea of representative democracy.’v Finally, we know from David’s own sketchbooks that the man writing on paper against the wall is one ‘Mr Maret, vi (sic) newspaper editor, taking notes’.

Acting as a counterbalance in the lower left-hand gallery we see more of the People: the deputy Maupetit de la Mayenne, who had been too ill to attend on that day, is carried in by two men, one a robust worker, with bare legs and feet, but wearing the Phrygian bonnet of liberty of the freed slave of ancient Rome. By 1792 this bonnet rouge had become the pervasive symbol of the sans-culottes, worn by all in the popular movement who wished publicly to demonstrate their revolutionary fervour. Schama has written that David represented the People of 20 June 1789 as ‘audience, pupils and

11 Thompson, p.20. 12 Thompson, p.20. ideal citizens: patriotic … but never threatening in their unruliness.’13 This ideal changed quickly, with the popular movement of Paris acting decisively in defence of the National Assembly on 14 July 1789 and again on 5-6 October, when the women of Paris marched to Versailles to force the King to approve its laws . By August 1792, the sans-culottes could be mobilised at short notice to take armed action in the streets of Paris, as the Revolutionary Commune called upon them to do on the journée of 10 August, the day King Louis XVI fell from the throne. This was popular sovereignty in action. When, in November and December of 1792, the new republican National Convention debated the legality of putting the King on trial, Robespierre claimed, ‘Louis cannot be judged; he is already judged. …To propose a trial for Louis XVI … is to put the Revolution itself on trial.’14 Robespierre held a deeply rooted Rousseauean belief that the people ‘are always guided by purity of intention’ (a pamphlet of December 1792) and ‘there is nothing so just or so good as the people, whenever they are not stirred- up by the excesses of oppression’ (April 1791).15 As the people had exercised the general will through action on the journée of August 10, in Robespierre’s mind, to call their sovereignty into question was to challenge the right of the National Convention itself to exist.

David’s use of nature to heighten dramatic impact

Finally, David reminds the viewer of the elemental nature of the momentous shift in power and perception which took place on 20 June 1789. In the left-hand upper gallery he depicts one of the summer thunderstorms which broke over Versailles during that month. On 20 June 1789 more heavy rain fell, as the deputies of the newly named National Assembly, barred from their meeting hall by royal guards, adjourned to the nearby Royal Tennis Court where they took their famous oath not to disband until they had written a constitution for France. The significance of this day was clear to all. Arthur Young, the English commentator, recorded in his journal on 21 June, ‘The step that the Commons have taken is, in fact, an assumption of all authority in the Kingdom.’16 This overturning of old-regime conventions and traditional sovereignty is suggested by David through the turbulence of the drapery and the inside out umbrella. For those who believed in omens, the thunderstorm was the physical harbinger (forewarning) of the end of the old regime. Although it is difficult to see, David shows the lightning bolt that struck the Chappelle Royale at Versailles, which Phillipe Bordes has interpreted this bolt of lightning as ‘a common evocation of the violence of the Revolution, as well as a typical Enlightenment condemnation of the political-religious system on which absolute monarchy was founded.’17

13 Schama, Citizens, p. 569. 14 Robespierre, ‘On the action to be taken against Louis XVI,’ Address to the National Convention, 3 December 1792, in George Rudé (ed), Robespierrre, Great Lives Observed, Prentice-Hall Inc., New Jersey, 1967, p.27. 15 Barrie Rose, Tribunes and Amazons, Ch. 12, ‘Robespierre and the Popular Movement,’ Macleay, Sydney, 1998, p. 211. 16 Thompson, The French Revolution, p. 20. 17 Phillipe Bordes, ‘Jacques-Louis David’s “Serment du Jeu de Paume”: Propaganda without a cause?’, Oxford Art Journal, February, 1980, p.23. For David’s contemporary audience, however, this lightning bolt had a further symbolism, directly representing liberty. , the American revolutionary who had drawn electricity from a lightning bolt in his famous kite experiment of 1752, was the American ambassador to France 1779- 85 and a great celebrity in Paris, where a rage for scientific learning gripped the French élite. Franklin exploited the French idealisation of the newly-independent America as a place of natural innocence, candour and freedom. Simon Schama has claimed that ‘The image of Franklin, who could tap the heavens for the celestial fire of electricity, became woven into the celebration of his other “American” virtues, most especially that of liberty.’18 The references to liberty and scientific reason are extended to encompass the Enlightenment itself through the swathe of light which seems to have accompanied the lightning bolt and the winds which stir the drapery.

Identifying figures in The Oath of the Tennis Court

It is great fun to be able to identify specific individuals in David’s visual roll-call of the National Constituent Assembly. But how do we know the identity of all these figures? First, we have David’s own plan which is numbered and includes a key. It appeared in a number of publications during the nineteenth century, including a book written in 1880 by the painter’s son, Jules David.1 Then, we have a number of labelled sketch portraits which David did of each deputy. There are the preparatory sketches in the Versailles Sketchbooks, and then, in October 1791, he invited every deputy whom he had not previously sketched to either pass by his atelier (workshop) at the Feuillants church for a portrait sitting, or to lend him a previously done portrait of themselves for him to copy. Of course, in several cases there are other portraits of notable individuals which we may use to compare, but it is David’s own list which provides the definitive historical evidence.

i Schama, Citizens, 569. ii David, Versailles Sketchbook, (fo 62v) in Bordes, Le Serment du Jeu de Paume, 65. iii Bordes, Le Serment du Jeu de Paume , 65: ‘ Spectateurs qui devaient transmettre l’esprit du serment à la nation entière’. iv Schama, Citizens, 569. v Michael Adcock in Adcock and Worrall, The French Revolution: A Student Handbook, 44. vi David, Versailles Sketchbook, ((fo 64r)

18 Schama, Citizens, pp.43-44.