When Napoleon rose to power, David became his favourite painter. The
erstwhile Jacobin was chosen to paint the official _Coronation_ picture
(No. 202A), an enormous canvas, which, like most ceremonial pictures of
this kind, has more historical than artistic significance. The lifelike
portraiture of the numerous personages surrounding the central group of
Napoleon placing the crown on Josephine’s head, is the chief point of
interest. On the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815, David was sent
into exile. He died at Brussels in 1825; but his influence is reflected
in official French art to this day. It was he who imposed upon the
modern academic school a rigid canon of formal classic beauty which is
fatal to evolution and progress, because it does not permit personal
emotional expression.
Less severely classic in form, and showing at least an attempt at
approaching a little nearer to truth than David, is the painting of
the figures of _The Three Graces_ (No. 769), by David’s rival, J.
B. Regnault (1754-1829), in the La Caze collection. The worst type
of academic art is represented in the bituminous reconstructions of
classic antiquity by his pupil, P. N. Guérin (1774-1833), whose _Return
of Marcus Sextus_ (No. 393) enjoyed, perhaps owing to its supposed
political allusion to the return of the emigrants, a success which
cannot be accounted for on artistic grounds.
[Illustration:
PLATE XLV.—JACQUES LOUIS DAVID
(1748-1825)