Transcriber’s Note: Italics are enclosed in _underscores_. Additional
notes will be found near the end of this ebook.
[Illustration: MLLE. CHARLOTTE DU VAL D’OGNES
_The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York_]
JACQUES LOUIS DAVID
AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
BY
W. R. VALENTINER
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
FREDERIC FAIRCHILD SHERMAN
MCMXXIX
Copyright, 1929, by
Frederic F. Sherman
TO
ELEANOR AND EDSEL B. FORD
ILLUSTRATIONS
MLLE. CHARLOTTE DU VAL D’OGNES Frontispiece
FIG. 1 MADAME DE SERVAN (1799) 3
FIG. 2 H. RIGAUD: GENTLEMAN PLAYING A BAGPIPE 3
FIG. 3 F. BOUCHER: MADAME DE POMPADOUR 3
FIG. 4 MINERVA’S CONQUEST OF MARS (1771) 4
FIG. 5 THE BLIND BELISARIUS (1781) 8
FIG. 6 THE OATH OF THE HORATII (1784) 8
FIG. 7 VILLAGE OUTSIDE ROME (1788) 8
FIG. 8 VIEW IN ROME (1788) 8
FIG. 9 PEN SKETCH OF MARIE ANTOINETTE (1793)
_Made from the artist’s window as the tumbril
halted on the way to the scaffold_ 14
FIG. 10 STUDY FROM THE ITALIAN SKETCHBOOK (1788) 14
FIG. 11 MICHEL GÉRARD AND HIS FAMILY (1789) 18
FIG. 12 PORTRAIT OF BARÊRE (1793) 22
FIG. 13 LAVOISIER AND HIS WIFE (1787) 26
FIG. 14 MME. DE RICHMOND AND HER SON (_c._ 1800) 26
FIG. 15 LE PELLETIER (1793) _From engraving in the Louvre_ 26
FIG. 16 MARAT (1793) 26
FIG. 17 DANTON (1799) _From drawing in the Museum, Lille_ 26
FIG. 18 MADAME SERIZIAT AND SON (1795) 32
FIG. 19 MONSIEUR SERIZIAT (1795) 32
FIG. 20 MARAT (1793) 38
FIG. 21 ST. JUST (1792) 44
FIG. 22 SELF PORTRAIT 44
FIG. 23 WOMAN OF THE REVOLUTION (1795) 51
FIG. 24 NAPOLEON AS FIRST CONSUL (1797) 51
FIG. 25 PORTRAIT OF VIGÉE LEBRUN (1793) 54
FIG. 26 MADAME RECAMIER (1800) 54
FIG. 27 INGRES AS A BOY (1795) 54
[Illustration: FIG. 2. H. RIGAUD: GENTLEMAN PLAYING A BAGPIPE
_Museum, Aix_]
[Illustration: FIG. 1. L. DAVID: MADAME DE SERVAN (1799)
_Private Possession, New York_]
[Illustration: FIG. 3. F. BOUCHER: MADAME DE POMPADOUR
_Collection of Maurice de Rothschild, Paris_]
JACQUES LOUIS DAVID
AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
❦
Is it possible that a period like the French Revolution and the era
of Napoleon’s tyrannous rule should witness the development of a
great art? It would seem that in the domain of art fresh creative
impulses are born more often in times of unrest and disturbance than
in periods of political security. Those epochs in the history of art
which we regard today as “golden ages”--the age of Pericles; the
Renaissance at about 1500; the Holland of the day of Frans Hals and
Rembrandt--were by no means peaceful years, but periods of national
strife and revolutionary ideas. No happy alliance is possible between
political discipline and art which springs from the free, untrammeled
impulse of the individual. We need only walk through those galleries
at Fontainebleau arranged by Napoleon during the days of his Empire to
recognize the deadening influence exerted by an established autocracy,
and feel blow coldly over us the chilly breath of an academic and
court-inspired art.
On the contrary, the period of the French Revolution, and the days
of Napoleon’s struggle to power, which coincided with the period of
David’s finest achievement, witnessed so powerful an onrush of new
ideas that their influence persists till the present day. Modern art
had its inception in this period, and today, after a lapse of over
a hundred years, is again tending in the direction first indicated
by David. It is herein that the significance of his contribution
lies. Helped by the influences of the revolution, he destroyed the
artificial, hyper-refined art ideals of the eighteenth century, and
substituted for them a sterner, simpler, more healthy and democratic
art. That is not to affirm that his art was greater than the one it
superseded. David was not a genius of the highest order as was Watteau,
but to those of us sensitive to the forces underlying our own times, it
says--or should say--more than pre-revolutionary art.
We need only to compare a portrait of David’s style like the one of
Madame de Servan (Fig. 1) with portraits of his predecessors (Figs.
2 and 3) in order to recognize the difference between the Rococo
period and the new era, introduced by David. This portrait of Madame
de Servan, painted about 1800,[1] impresses one as a composition of
statuesque simplicity expressing the salient spirit of a period which
was seeking fundamentally new doctrines by which to govern life. The
portrait by Rigaud, the famous court painter of the reign of Louis XIV,
painted in the beginning of the century, and of Boucher’s portrait
of Madame de Pompadour, painted in 1758, do not differ too much from
another in style. In these portraits of the Rococo period the surface
is filled with a restless play of short-curving lines; light and
shadow are alternated perpetually at close intervals; the colors form
a pleasing pattern of small variegated patches, and the costume and
accessories almost eclipse the real motif--that of portraiture. In
David’s canvas the figure emerges clearly from a wide and empty space,
and a clear, flowing line with definite horizontals and verticals
has replaced the tortuous curves. It seems an extraordinary piece of
daring for the artist to have composed in these broad planes with a
completely empty background, when we consider the century-old tradition
embodied in the older paintings. It was the French Revolution, with its
rejection of old formulas which inspired this daring.
But just as the revolution, from prelude to aftermath, covered a span
of some twenty years, so the artist required a similar period of time
to gradually attain the classic style which we see here stamped with
the authority of his fifty years.
Jacques Louis David was born in 1748 in the middle of the Louis
XV period, and the school which fathered him was that of Boucher,
the frank exponent of the playful and elegant school of painting
fostered by the artificial social life of Paris. David’s earliest
known composition, “Minerva’s Conquest of Mars,” painted in 1771 in
the artist’s twenty-third year, and now in the Louvre (Fig. 4), shows
Boucher’s influence clearly. Here we still have the unquiet baroque
line of pre-revolutionary painting--the picture is full of detail,
the draperies worn by the figures flutter in the breeze like those of
Boucher and the cherubs beloved of this master float in the clouds. The
subject, too, is of the mythologic-allegorical character affected by
the painters of the court and the aristocracy. The Goddess of Wisdom
conquers the God of War! What irony when we remember that twenty years
later during the revolution the painter of this picture was among those
who helped let loose on France a war of twenty years’ duration.
[Illustration: FIG. 4. MINERVA’S CONQUEST OF MARS (1771)
_Louvre, Paris_]
If we look more closely we can discern an alien spirit behind the
apparently suave portrayal. Despite his subject the young artist’s
combative vein emerges. True, Mars is overthrown, but with what ill
grace he accepts his fate. It might be Danton himself, the great
revolutionary, overthrown by his enemies. A face expressing such fury
of despair, so spasmodically clenched a hand was never portrayed by any
of the playful Rococo painters, and can we not discern something of the
energetic Napoleonic spirit in Minerva’s conquering pose?
David must have been of a naturally passionate and excitable
temperament--possibly inherited from his father who was killed in a
duel when the boy was eleven years old. As a young artist he applied
for the Prix de Rome, and when he did not at once receive it from
the Academy, was about to take his life in despair and was only
persuaded by a friend to abandon the idea of starving himself to death
after three days of fasting with that purpose in view. Later on, in
extenuation of this episode, he said: “This postponement of my journey
to Italy was prejudicial to my development, as I was four years too
late in abandoning the bad style of the French painters.” Like all
reformers he believed that everything produced by the generation
preceding him was bad, although today all that we can say is that it
was different!
When, in 1775, he did actually set out for Rome, and his friends at
parting advised him to beware the influence of the antique, he replied
proudly, “Antique art cannot seduce me--it lacks fire and passion.”
Before long, however, he was in thrall to the classic art of Italy, and
within a few years his art had undergone a complete transformation, not
only in form but in subject. One of the first pictures that he sent
from Italy in 1781 to be exhibited in Paris was “The Blind Belisarius,”
now in the Museum at Lille (a later version, painted in 1784, in the
Louvre) (Fig. 5). Belisarius, once an all-powerful general of the Roman
Emperor Justinian, crouches, old, blind and poor by the side of the
road. The saviour of Rome and conqueror of Carthage has fallen into
disgrace with a master jealous of his fame, and is reduced to beggary.
A rich Roman lady, with tears in her eyes, is placing alms in the old
man’s helmet held out by a youth, while a passing soldier recognizes
his old commander with surprise and pain. Our artist has turned his
back on the cheerful Olympian themes of the allegoric-mythological
school, and with this tragic subject descends to that world of sorrow
and misery in which, but a few years later, he was to see his own
nation engulfed. He is still preoccupied, however, with classic themes
seen through the eyes of that antiquity in which he had submerged
himself. He has not yet completely achieved his individual style, and
Boucher’s influence is superseded by that of another French painter who
represented the classic style one hundred years earlier--Poussin.
This influence lasted throughout his Italian period. Even as late as
1788 we are constantly reminded in his landscape studies of Nicolas
Poussin and Claude Lorrain, as may be exemplified by the two pages from
an hitherto unpublished Italian sketchbook dated 1788, reproducing
views from the surroundings of Rome (Figs. 7 and 8).[2]
[Illustration: FIG. 5. THE BLIND BELISARIUS (1781)
_Museum, Lille_]
[Illustration: FIG. 6. THE OATH OF THE HORATII (1784)
_Louvre, Paris_]
Just as the poets and orators of the revolution harked back to the
classic trend of the seventeenth century--as Voltaire and even
Robespierre evoked Racine and Corneille--David, too, now followed a
trend of French art which has persisted from medieval times to the
present day, that line of classic, simple, antiquely conceived, clearly
constructed creations from which the highly developed church sculptures
of the middle ages, the Renaissance paintings of the period of Francis
I, and the art of Claude Lorrain and Poussin derive. Simplicity
and straight lines replaced the restless, complicated curve in the
composition of the Belisarius. It is not alone in the architecture,
strongly influenced by the antique, that the horizontal and vertical
line multiplied itself, the painter, too, sought to lend strength and
rhythm to his composition by a parallelism in the gestures of his
figures. The arms of Belisarius and the boy follow the same line, as do
their feet, and the soldier’s hands repeat the parallel gesture.
[Illustration: FIG. 7. VILLAGE OUTSIDE ROME
From the Italian sketchbook (1788)
_Private possession, Detroit_]
[Illustration: FIG. 8. VIEW IN ROME
From the Italian sketchbook (1788)
_Private possession, Detroit_]
David achieved this linear coördination between figures and
architecture with even greater success in his next important work, “The
Oath of the Horatii,” painted in 1783 and now in the Louvre (Fig. 6).
The figures, divided into three groups, are posed in masterly fashion
against the three arches of the architectural background--three men on
the left, three female figures on the right, and the old man, holding
out the three swords in the centre. The movement swings from group
to group with the same rhythm that governs the curves of the arches,
and is strongly emphasized by the parallel lines of limbs and
draperies. We are told that the outstretched foot of the foremost
youth was drawn and redrawn by David many times. It is now in exactly
the right stance to determine the general linear movement and is at
the same time a masterpiece of naturalistic drawing. The pose of this
youth’s spear has been criticised as practically impossible, but it
requires precisely this continuous line to strengthen the rhythm of the
outstretched legs.
The motif is again drawn from Roman history, this time via a drama by
Corneille with which David was familiar. The three sons of the old
Horace, who occupies the centre of the canvas, were chosen by the
Romans to meet the Albans in single combat, the latter being also
represented by three brothers, the Curiatii. It had been agreed that
this combat should decide which race would have dominion over the
other. The victory fell to the Horatii, the representatives of Rome.
Two of the brothers fell in combat with the Curiatii, but the third
triumphed through a ruse--turning apparently in flight and killing his
three opponents one after another as they pursued him.
The trumpet call to freedom implicit in this composition must have
rung in the ears of the youthful French patriots who crowded to see
it, for it appeared at a moment when the soul of young France had
been stirred by the American war of independence. It was painted in
the year 1783 when Benjamin Franklin signed in Paris that treaty
with England in which, for the first time, the independence of the
American Union was recognized. Beyond the Atlantic there had come
into existence a republic comparable to the Roman republic, an
anti-monarchical conception whose ideals were sympathetic to the
progressive thinkers of France, though France was, at the same time,
the seat of Europe’s oldest and most absolute monarchy. How did this
message of freedom from across the ocean affect the youth of France?
Our artist’s ear was sensitively attuned to the ferment of radical
thought. While the painters of the older school, Boucher and Fragonard,
still painted their playful compositions and tried to dissemble the
tragic reality, the dull rumble of the coming earthquake sounded its
note in David’s paintings. His themes became ever more gruesome and
inflammatory. A painting in Marseilles depicts St. Roche pleading with
the Madonna to succor the sick, and the foreground is filled with
dead, plague-stricken bodies. Another in Valence represents the Death
of Ugolino with his Sons--that horrible scene from Dante’s _Divina
Commedia_ in which the Italian general and his five sons die of hunger
in a dungeon into which they have been thrown by his political enemies.
[Illustration: FIG. 9. PEN SKETCH OF MARIE ANTOINETTE
Made from the artist’s window as the tumbril halted on the way to the
scaffold (1793)
_Collection of Edmond de Rothschild, Paris_]
[Illustration: FIG. 10. STUDY FROM THE ITALIAN SKETCHBOOK (1788)]
“The Death of Socrates,”[3] painted in 1787, now in private possession
in Paris, enhanced David’s rapidly growing celebrity not only in
France, but abroad. No less a personage than Sir Joshua Reynolds, who
was then in Paris, said that he had studied the picture daily for a
week, and with every inspection found it more perfect. It was, he said,
“the greatest achievement since Raffael’s frescoes in the Vatican, and
would have done honor to the Athenians of the Periclean age.” Today,
of course, this estimate seems an exaggeration to us. The composition
is assuredly well planned, and admirable in many of its aspects: the
youth, who with averted face hands the poisoned cup to Socrates, and
the other youth in the background beating his hands against the arch
of the doorway. Some of the gestures seem theatrical, however, and
individual figures, such as the athletic and uninspired Socrates, look
as though they had been derived from a relief. The composition is too
studied; it lacks feeling. Why is it that David’s great historical
compositions are apt to leave us cold, especially those produced during
a period of great spiritual and political turmoil in which his own
sympathies were greatly involved? His part in the revolution amply
proves the strength of the passions which might have found an outlet
in his art. Why was he not the realist to dramatize those struggles
like Delacroix who lived fifty years later, when revolution and
world-war were over, yet who painted battles of all kinds with the
most terrific naturalism. The answer lies in this very fact: Delacroix
never witnessed the battle scenes he reproduced; they are the fruit of
his imagination. It is impossible for a significant realistic art to
develop during war and revolution. What one experiences at such times
is so horrible that the imagination is stifled rather than stimulated.
Only insensitive and coarse natures are capable of painting scenes of
horror through which they have lived. When, and as now in our days,
reality weighs all too heavily upon us, art, in self defense, becomes
abstract and withdraws itself from reality. It is for this reason that
the art of the revolution, David’s art, was stylized and cool: the
artist perforce took refuge from the horrors of reality in the kingdom
of his imagination. His art, like the poetry and oratory of the day,
was idealistic in trend. When Robespierre delivered those terrible
speeches that sent so many human beings to the guillotine, he spoke
slowly, rhythmically, in artfully rounded phrases, as though he were
holding an academic discussion. That the great revolutionaries,
among whom we must number David, thought idealistically rather than
realistically, is proved conclusively by their manner of expressing
themselves. Like all fanatics they lived in a world of dreams and
believed their ideas--which seemed to them so splendid--to be either
already realized or on the verge of realization. They believed only one
last great effort to be necessary, to achieve--though at the cost of
human lives--the freedom of humanity as a whole. This alone can explain
why revolutionaries who pursued their ends through rivers of blood,
seem at times inspired with a noble and unexpected humanitarianism; why
they were nearly all tender and devoted men in their private family
life. Danton idolized his wife and children, the letters of Camille
Desmoulins to his bride are beautiful and touching, and Robespierre,
the solitary, the incorruptible, whose private life was beyond
criticism, was a great lover of nature, who brought, we are told,
bunches of wild flowers home with him from his long walks.
With the portrayal of Brutus (now in the Louvre), who, because of his
profound respect for justice permitted the execution of his sons, we
find ourselves on the threshold of the revolution. Brutus, with stern,
dark countenance, is seated before the Goddess of Justice, while behind
him the bodies of his sons are borne across the scene and the grieving
mother and sisters cling together in the pillared hall of their
dwelling.
While today we feel the construction of this picture to be far too
studied, and are inclined to dub it academic, David’s intention was
directed precisely against the then accepted traditional formulas.
Whoever dreamed, said contemporary criticism, of placing the principal
figure in the shadow or planning a composition without regard to
the triangular construction? David left the centre of the canvas
purposely free. Our eyes fall first on a column, a chair, a still life
arrangement on a table, frankly at the expense of the composition’s
unity. The incidentals were drawn with extraordinary care. In order to
assure the accuracy of the classic furnishings, David had the cabinet
maker, Jacob, make the pieces for him after his own designs. The
painting created such an extraordinary sensation that not only did it
give the first impetus to the Parisian vogue for classic furniture,
but women’s fashions were definitely influenced by the loosely coifed
hair and long flowing garments of the feminine figures. Not the least
significant part of David’s contribution to art is the influence he
exerted on the decorative arts and on fashion. It is very rare that
the influence of a single artist’s work on a bygone style can be so
clearly measured as in the case of David, from whose art the decorative
art of the Empire period derived.
Only an artist who is much in the public eye can sway styles, and David
became one of the heroes of the day when this composition was exhibited
in the Salon of 1789--the year whose autumn was to see the outbreak
of the revolution. Perhaps no other picture has ever played so great
a rôle in the political and social life of a nation as this work,
which is by no means its author’s finest production, much less among
the finest of art history. All of which goes to prove how unreliable
popular taste is when it comes to a question of contemporary art.
It was of course the subject which evoked such enormous acclaim, for
the very name of Brutus was one to conjure with where the radical
youth of Paris was concerned. Wherever speeches on the new political
conceptions were made there was mention of the name of Rome’s deliverer
from the yoke of Caesar, and from Mirabeau to Danton the people loved
to connect the name of Brutus with their heroes. Even the opponents
of the revolution believed themselves to be inspired by him. When
Charlotte Corday murdered David’s friend Marat, she declared in
prison that she hoped to meet Brutus in Elysium. This veneration for
antiquity, which was characteristic of the revolutionary period, was
greatly fostered by David’s classical compositions.
[Illustration: FIG. 11. MICHEL GÉRARD AND HIS FAMILY (1789)
_Museum, Le Mans_]
The narrative of the German writer Halem,[4] who visited Paris
the first year of the revolution, and attended some theatrical
presentations, tells us vividly how familiar the populace was with
David’s painting. He attended a performance of the “Brutus” of
Voltaire, at the National Theater, and relates that although he
got to the Box Office at five o’clock in the afternoon, he had the
utmost difficulty in obtaining a seat. He writes, “Mirabeau stood
near me at the ticket office and because of his celebrity was given
a place in the fourth balcony. I followed him through the crowd as
best I could and managed to get a chair in a rented loge. Mirabeau’s
entrance was received with thunderous applause and cries of ‘To the
gallery, Mirabeau.’ As he did not respond a deputation waited on him,
the spokesman saying, ‘The French nation demands its Brutus.’ He had
to give in, and was borne away to be received in the gallery with
rapturous applause. What a triumph when later Valerius’ words to Brutus,
‘On you alone all eyes here are turned,
‘You who broke our chains and gave us the gift of freedom,’
were addressed pointedly to him. At the end of the play I was amazed
to see David’s painting of Brutus reproduced on the stage. In speaking
Brutus’ last words with which the play closes:
‘Rome now is free. That is enough.
The gods be thanked,’
Vanhove, the leading actor, assumed the pose of David’s Brutus, and
the bodies of his sons were borne across the back of the stage. Every
Parisian knows David’s picture. Everyone instantly recognized the
intention of publicly honoring the artist through this presentation,
and general applause heightened the celebration.” So reads the
narrative.
What had happened? Why this enthusiasm of crowd and intellectuals for
a new day? Why these celebrations within celebrations? Even today,
almost one hundred and fifty years later, the words “French Revolution”
rouse our blood, literature is divided into opposing camps by which
either the revolution or the monarchy is condemned, and there are many
who hold in abhorrence the events of those days and the theories that
brought them into being and believe that the awful bath of blood might
have been avoided--as though revolutions were the work of men and not
natural occurrences like tidal waves that the individual can neither
bring into being nor arrest in their course. In the history of the
human race we see again and again how one social stratum after another
climbs up, pushing aside the one that preceded it. When, as in France,
a monarchy and aristocracy has been in power long enough to weaken in
its rule because security and luxury have undermined its morale and its
strength, another stratum, scenting this weakness, seeks to wrest to
itself this power which its fresh and undrained life force fits it more
ably to use. In France this social stratum was the Bourgeoisie, the
Third Estate, which from the beginning of the new era--the sixteenth
century--had grown strong commercially and illustrious in art and
literature, but had not yet achieved any political rights.
The nobility, however, preferred to die rather than allow the
power which they had held for hundreds of years to pass from their
hands--quite naturally, for the function of government is their only
element. So came the unequal battle in which from the beginning the
victory was to the young and powerful stratum. To the ruling class
form alone was left, while the class which aspired to rule possessed
passion. Like all young, unpractised and fanatical fighters, their
representatives shot far beyond their goal, and because, though
victors, they were still unpractised in the use of power, they abused
it, destroyed senselessly whatever still lived of the old régime,
and then turned upon each other until the strongest pushed the others
aside and became supreme. These strongest among the strong were
successively the leaders of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies:
first Mirabeau, later the so-called Terrorists, among them Danton,
Robespierre and Marat, and finally Napoleon.
The democratic idea was victorious in the French Revolution despite
Napoleon, who, at first, embodied this idea in himself, and whose
Empire was only the short reaction which follows all new experiments.
Its consequences have persisted to our own day, when as the
revolution’s final result one monarchy after another in the European
scene has gone into eclipse.
If we would be just we must admit that during the revolution there
were heroes on both sides, among the monarchists as well as the
revolutionaries. Among the monarchists--to name a few of the more
notable--were the King, the Queen and Charlotte Corday. On the
revolutionary side we can muster practically all of the leaders,
who sooner or later almost all perished on the scaffold for their
principles, and we can familiarize ourselves with these men through
David’s portraits.
The outward events of the beginning of the revolution are well known.
The financial difficulties of the Government compelled the King and
his Advisors to convene the States General, which had not met for
generations. The elections of the deputies had already roused popular
passion, and when the Government, after the Assembly had convened,
endeavored to establish the old order in which all the power was vested
in the upper classes and the Third Estate had none, revolt broke loose.
Under Mirabeau’s leadership the representatives of the Third Estate
left the Assembly, and met, for lack of other quarters, in the Jeu de
Paume (the Tennis Court), where they took oath not to dissolve until
they had established a new constitution. This “Oath of the Tennis
Court” was immortalized by David in a famous composition of which only
sketches by David and paintings after his cartoon by other artists have
been preserved.[5]
[Illustration: FIG. 12. PORTRAIT OF BARÈRE (1793)
_Palais, Versailles_]
It was a year later, when the Revolutionary Assembly had established
its power, that it recalled that great day of the beginning of the
revolution and commissioned David to paint the picture. It is again the
German poet Halem, who describes the circumstances for us, in a letter
written by him after a visit to the Jacobin Club. He writes: “After
continued speechifying, Dubois de Crancé, a member of the National
Assembly, rose and recalled to the memory of those present that day
on June 20th of the preceding year, when six hundred harried and
unarmed Deputies, surrounded, as he put it, ‘by the Oriental pomp and
the bayonets of despotism,’ laid the cornerstone of French freedom by
the well-known oath of the tennis court at Versailles. Never could he
recall this event, said he, without his heart beating faster, without
a glow of patriotic feeling. He proposed the formulation of an address
to the assembly in which they should be asked to sanction (1.) That the
tennis court, grave of despotism and cradle of freedom, be declared a
national monument, closed, and dedicated to stillness.... (2.) That
the wonderful moment of this first oath be perpetuated by a painting
120′ high and 30′ wide, painted by the greatest of the French masters,
and hung in the National Convention. ‘I say,’ he continued, ‘by the
greatest of the masters, and to whom else could I refer than to him who
so nobly depicted Brutus and the Oath of the Horatii?’ The vaulted hall
rang with loud cries of assent. David the painter was present. Everyone
turned toward him, and pale with enthusiasm the young man stepped to
the orator’s platform and thanked the Assembly in trembling tones for
its trust, which he hoped from his heart to adequately repay, adding
touchingly, ‘Sleep will not visit me for many a night.’
“Then ensued a noble rivalry. Abbé Dillon arose first to vindicate his
right to appear in the picture among those taking the oath. He was one
of the few clerics who had belonged to the National Assembly before
the day of the Oath. At that moment he had been obliged to take charge
of the unimportant clerical archives, and consequently had not been
present. He called the members present to witness and his claim was
admitted. Then arose the Comte de Noailles to voice his approval of
commemorating the Oath of those brave citizens. ‘But, alas,’ said he,
‘the former aristocracy sees itself excluded and how many of us echoed
that oath in our hearts. If only the painter could depict us standing
in the distance with yearning hearts and the burning wish that we might
be among the celebrants of the Oath.’ A third stood up and expressed
the wish that the suppliants might be included in the picture. A fourth
demanded that those wretches who had been present at the Oath, but who
had later fallen for the good cause be not included. A fifth got up and
related a story of Bailly who after fruitless efforts to calm the mob
around the tennis court, stepped out and commanded silence _in the name
of the National Assembly_. This decision, this command, the name of
the National Assembly then spoken openly to the people for the first
time, had a great effect, had quieted the mob and perhaps determined
its future mood. The orator asked the painter if he could make use of
this incident in his composition. The painter stepped once more to
the platform and thanked them all for their remarks, begging them to
remember, however, that the picture must have both unity and historical
accuracy. He was generally applauded. Mirabeau then took the floor and
with marvellous adroitness conceded full despotic power to genius such
as that of the artist David, and proposed that Dubois de Crancé prepare
a written petition for the National Assembly. Dubois made the excuse
that he was about to leave for the country and cries of ‘Mirabeau!
Mirabeau!’ resounded. Mirabeau understood the call and accepted the
formulation of the address. He read it at one of the next sittings
and the master’s hand was recognized.” So much for the account of the
eyewitness.
David exhibited the cartoon for “The Oath of the Tennis Court” in the
Salon of 1791 and on Barère’s proposal the National Assembly voted
that the painting be carried out at the cost of the State and be hung
in the National Convention as an incentive to zeal. In the Catalogue
of the Exhibition David had stated that it was not his intention to
make likenesses of the members of the National Assembly. How easily,
nevertheless, the Parisian public recognized the various personalities
and what a sensation the composition made is proved by the fact that
Barère practically became a personage through the fact that David
portrayed him writing, in the left foreground, near the principal
group--placing on paper for posterity the tale of the great event.
Barère’s not too inspired journal, _Point du Jour_, became from that
moment a much sought-after sheet.
[Illustration: FIG. 13. LAVOISIER AND HIS WIFE (1787)
_Private Collection, New York_]
[Illustration: FIG. 14. MME. DE RICHMOND AND HER SON (_c._ 1800)
_Collection of Mr. Edward J. Berwind, New York_]
Despite the many characteristic types, David’s composition “The Oath
of the Tennis Court” is essentially in the monumental style in which
quite justly details are subordinated to the spirit of the whole.
The thronging crowd stands out against the bare walls of the Tennis
Court, in a clearly defined linear pattern, built up by the myriad
outstretched hands. The figures are all filled with a mighty dramatic
force. Bailly, the president, in the centre, stands like a statue of
bronze. For the first time David shook himself free of historical
subjects, depicted a contemporary event and proved himself well able to
adapt his idealistic style to such a theme. In this simplified idiom he
attained the expression of a dignified, rhetorical passion which he was
unable to encompass to a like degree in his historical subjects,
and the lofty idealism of the composition speaks well for the sincerity
and intensity of his convictions.
[Illustration: FIG. 16. MARAT
(Drawing)
Study for the painting in Brussels]
[Illustration: FIG. 17. DANTON
(From drawing in the Museum, Lille)]
[Illustration: FIG. 15. LE PELLETIER
(From the engraving in the Louvre)]
The radical Jacobin Club, whose members had pledged themselves so
enthusiastically to the promotion of his art, became thereafter
one of his favorite haunts. Because, as an artist, he was not
particularly judicious politically he allowed himself to be influenced
by the extremists whose biting logic is often more compelling to
temperamental laymen than are more moderate councils. David had,
as his whole career clearly proves, a rarely fine instinct for the
elementary forces in political and social life, and those to whom he
now turned, the representatives of the “Mountain”--to whom Marat,
Danton and Robespierre belonged--were as a matter of fact the strongest
personalities on whom leadership was soon to devolve. Thanks to them
he was elected to the National Assembly in 1792. He never assumed any
leading part, for a defect in his speech interfered with his public
speaking, but he often gave vent to his enthusiasm only by loud cries
of assent.
For the rest his contribution lay in the field of art. He busied
himself with cartoons for monumental paintings, with monuments, with
arranging national festivals, sketching classical costumes for all the
functionaries, and in organizing the artist world, always, we must
admit, from an idealistic standpoint. He has been much criticised
for the fact that he concurred in the King’s execution, and later in
Danton’s. In the condemnation of the King, however, he followed his
party; in Danton’s case his reasons were personal.
The principal oration against the King at his trial in 1793 was made by
Barère, the lawyer, who advocated David’s composition to the National
Assembly, and whom David later immortalized as historiographer in
his work. David painted a masterly portrait of him delivering the
Impeachment of Louis XVI (Fig. 12). In the composition which lies
before him on the parapet is written the beginning of the famous speech
which ends with the words, “The Tree of Liberty could not grow were it
not watered with the blood of Kings.” Barère, good-looking and a clever
orator, was not among the nobler of the revolutionaries. He belongs to
that very small group of revolutionary leaders who did not themselves
become sacrifices, but outlived the revolution in all its phases and
held public office even in the times of reaction under Napoleon and
the Bourbons. The Abbe Sieyès was another of this group. He was from
the very first a representative of the Third Estate and achieved some
reputation under Napoleon. David, too, whose art safeguarded him among
the dangers of the revolution, belongs to them. Both Sieyès, whose
clerical frock was his protection, and David were helped by the fact
that they knew how to stand aloof. Barère, however, was the type of
politician who trims his sails to meet the wind and uses his sagacity
to judge not where right but where might is and then diplomatically
allies himself to it in order to always be in the vanguard of events.
His accusations against the King only expressed the general feeling of
the people whom he strove to please.
True, this general sentiment would not have been possible had not
the monarchy for years been its own worst enemy and made of itself a
laughing stock. There is, indeed, no excuse for political murder. The
King merited the guillotine as little as did thousands of others on
both sides who were sacrificed to it on account of their political
opinions. That Louis XVI was arraigned before a tribunal of his people,
however, was in part at least the fault of the monarchy itself. This
particular King possessed very few of those qualities which a nation
expects from its sovereign. It is one of Fate’s most remarkable ironies
that Louis XVI had every desire to be democratic--but his manner of so
being was unfortunate to a degree. The story runs that as nineteen year
old Dauphin he used to pursue the servants laden with soiled laundry
in order to tickle them under the arms, and as King the blacksmith’s
hammer and anvil were his favorite diversions. The young and charming
Marie Antoinette found it hard to accustom herself to a clumsy husband
with soiled hands who emerged red-faced from his smithy and approached
her affectionately. It happened that did the King espy from a window
masons working in the courtyard below he would run down with rolled-up
sleeves to assist them. There is a certain kind of good nature that
is inappropriate to Princes. His portraits show him as having a
clumsy, phlegmatic figure and plain, not too intelligent features. A
typical representative of a doomed caste, he lacked any energy to stem
misfortune, any originality or appreciation of the new conceptions of
the day. It seems as though a curse rests on people of this type, that
everything they do tends only to make their situation worse, as though
they help to bring about their own destruction. What weakness when
in the hour of the greatest danger Louis writes to his brother, the
Comte d’Artois: “I have revoked the orders that I gave. My troops will
abandon Paris, and I will use more gentle means. Don’t speak to me of
a Coup d’État, a display of force. I feel it is wiser to wait for the
storm to abate, and to expect everything from time, from the awakening
of right-thinking people and the love of the French nation for their
King.” Ideas of this kind never arrested a revolution! It was fortunate
for him that his phlegmatic temperament could find refuge in prayer.
This quality helped him to meet death with resolution but was of small
service to the caste he represented. The times were too violent for
Christian temperaments such as the King’s. Once when David received
a commission for a portrayal of Christ, and his patron remarked
subsequently that the figure looked more like Cato, David’s reply was:
“The times are not favorable for Christendom.”
[Illustration: FIG. 18. MADAME SERIZIAT AND SON (1795)
_Louvre, Paris_]
[Illustration: FIG. 19. MONSIEUR SERIZIAT (1795)
_Louvre, Paris_]
The King, however, continued to rely on the love of the French for
their monarch. As a matter of fact this sentiment was centuries old and
had persisted until the early years of his reign, but the aristocracy
had helped by derision and calumny to destroy all veneration for the
monarchy, poets and writers sowed doubts as to the efficacy of this
form of government, and the nation began to lose its age-old respect
as the King’s weaknesses became apparent. It is common prejudice that
Princes on account of their eminent position should be different and
more distinguished than the common run of mortals, although history
proves that notable personalities are as rare on the throne as in other
walks of life. If a ruler is gifted, he can allow himself to come into
contact with his people; if, as in most cases, he is not, he is better
advised to allow himself to be admired from afar. Louis XVI, however,
did just the opposite. We know what undignified scenes took place
when the mob on several occasions penetrated the palace. An innkeeper
stepped up to the King and spoke to him saying, after the King’s reply,
“You did well to give me a civil answer, otherwise I’d have made you
headwaiter in my inn tomorrow.” If the King had given this rascal
the blow in the face he deserved, he might have been spared his long
martyrdom with the scaffold at the end. Instead, however, he went up to
another ruffian who had thrust a red cap on his head, and who seemed to
be stumbling drunkenly against a door and helped him to open it. Even
on the scaffold he wanted to help the executioner cut off his hair.
The cool fashion in which he went to meet his doom, at least, merits
our admiration. An American historian has fittingly remarked: “The
unruffled dignity with which he met death was the finest act of his
reign.”
Posterity has devoted much sympathy to Marie Antoinette whose portraits
by Vigée LeBrun (Fig. 25) and other court painters are familiar to
all art lovers. Although she, too, was by no means an outstanding
ruler her life is particularly rich in human and touching incidents.
Her very weaknesses are those which arouse one’s sympathy. Who could
blame the young Princess, brought to Paris from Vienna at the age of
fifteen, that she remained in tutelage to her mother and sought her
advice? But this very relationship which resulted when misfortune
overtook her, in an appeal for help to the foreign courts, brought
about her downfall. Who can fail to understand that the lovely
and vivacious Marie Antoinette, surrounded by the pleasure-loving
society of Paris, and tied to a dull husband to whom, nevertheless,
she remained faithful, should have looked about her for congenial
friends. It was this, however, that gave rise in court circles to
those calumnies which so injured her reputation among her subjects and
finally ruined her--calumnies founded only on gossip, not on facts.
Who could blame her for finding burdensome the exaggerated etiquette
of the French court, the public dinner of the King and Queen once a
week, the ridiculous ceremonies of the lever, the crowd which attended
even the birth of her children. And why should this inexperienced
Queen have been held answerable for extravagant expenditures for
gowns and festivities when her predecessors had spent just as much
and the money was always given with the King’s approval? Her only
faults were inexperience and lack of caution. Unfortunately, when her
husband proved himself unfit, she essayed, to her undoing, to take the
political reins in her own hands. In her endeavour to save herself
and her family she allowed her feminine sympathies and antipathies to
influence her politically and so made matters worse. The price she paid
for her mistakes was terrific. In all the history of royalty there is
hardly a more terrible plunge from the pinnacle of power and wealth to
the depths of misery.
Art and culture never bloomed more luxuriantly in France than in the
early years of Marie Antoinette’s reign.[6] The most exquisite taste
pervaded the mode and was displayed at court functions; the furniture,
ornaments, bronzes and porcelains designed for Marie Antoinette are
among the most delightful productions of French decorative art; the
great French painters of the Rococo period--Boucher, Fragonard and
Hubert Robert--were still alive, as well as the sculptors Houdon,
Falconet and Clodion. It was natural that the young Queen should have
preferred this art to David’s with its cold, stern quality and sombre,
tragic motifs; that she ignored revolutionary literature, preferring to
amuse herself with charming Italian operas or the music of Gluck which
she introduced to France.
That all this splendour collapsed suddenly with the revolution was
not the most serious thing that faced the Queen--misfortune pursued
her into her most intimate family life. She, who loved her children
above all else and who, when the gathering disasters grew closer and
closer to her husband, saw the collapse of one pillar after another
of her very existence. Her youngest child died in his eleventh month.
The Dauphin, a gifted and charming lad of seven, sickened. How could
the mother who lay sobbing across the death-bed of her son at Meudon
worry over the gathering storms in Paris through which pealed the knell
announcing the Dauphin’s death? Then came the days when the mob hung
threateningly around the palace and forced her to leave Versailles for
Paris in its triumphant train. When the populace stormed the Tuilleries
and she feared for the fate of her other children how deeply offended
was the dignity which she possessed in the same measure that the King
lacked it. When the Royal family were brought back from their unlucky
flight to Varennes amid the abuse and insults of the mob, the King
accepted it all with his usual calm and even tried to converse with
his followers. The Queen, on the contrary, suffered so horribly under
the humiliation that her hair turned white over night. This, however,
was but the beginning. Then came the parting with the King who was led
to the scaffold (January 21, 1793); there was the even more painful
parting with her children, and the torture of almost a year in prison
without news of them, within sight of the bloody heads which, like that
of her friend the Princesse de Lamballe, were carried past her window
on pikes. When she was haled before the Tribunal, where she made answer
calmly to all accusations, she was but a shadow of herself.
David made a drawing of her on her way to the scaffold (October 16,
1793)--a horrifying sketch (Fig. 9). Does there perhaps speak from it
the injured vanity of an artist whose work had once been ignored by
this former Queen? What a study in contrasts! This was she who only a
few years previously had been the lovely model for the most charming
portrait of the court painters.