and LouisJeanJacques Durameau (1733–1796) emulated the Italian baroque tradition. The austerity of
the Roman school best suited those artists who wished to distinguish their work from the “merely
decorative,” since it was felt to appeal primarily to the mind rather than the eye. History painters were
judged by academicians and critics less on their choice of style than on their ability to live up to the
example of their illustrious predecessors, but all were expected to produce well composed, legible
narrative scenes based on a wellchosen “moment” with significant expressive potential and historically
convincing costumes.
In the last three decades of the eighteenth century, French history painters, including David and his pupil
JeanGermain Drouais (1763–1788) were significantly influenced by Caravaggio, whose style was
encountered by many of the students at the French Academy in Rome (Conisbee, 1981, 59–68).
Caravaggio’s emphasis on realism and dramatic effects of light and shade was often combined, in late
century neoclassical paintings, with the influence of Poussin’s dignified, “classic” figures and
compositions. JeanCharlesNicaise Perrin (1754–1831) and Suvée were among the artists influenced
by Poussin; Regnault was also influenced considerably by the more disciplined, restrained classicism of
Reni. These few examples demonstrate that academies encouraged or condoned a wide range of stylistic
influences within the history genre.
The pattern in France was copied elsewhere. Neoclassical art popular internationally in the late
eighteenth century was influenced by the more austere classicism of the Roman, Bolognese or
Poussinesque traditions, and acquired a moral “edge” through its greater distance from decorative visual
effects. Neoclassical artists based in other countries included Nathaniel DanceHolland, Gavin
Hamilton, Angelica Kauffman, Benjamin West, James Barry, Christian Gottlieb Schick (1761–1812),
Eberhard Georg Friedrich von Wächter (1762–1852) and Philipp Friedrich von Hetsch (1758–1838).
The work of these artists reflects varying degrees of drama and spectacle, as well as stylistic variation:
neoclassicism was not monolithic. For example, the historical compositions of Gavin Hamilton were
more crowded than those of Poussin, the hero of many neoclassicists; his figures more massive,
Michelangelesque, closer to the picture plane and less correct than their academic antique prototypes
(Macmillan, 1986, 32–43). There were differences in emphasis: Hamilton was among those who
championed Greek, Homeric subjects rather than Roman subjects (Macmillan, 1986, 33–58) as he built
on the lead given by the writer and philosopher George Turnbull (1698–1748) and instigated an
international taste for such subjects through strong commercial and cultural networks in Rome.
The growing dominance of neoclassicism might be linked more broadly with the Enlightenment’s
emphasis on moral, social and political reform, discussed further in Chapter 5. Paintings such as David’s
The Oath of the Horatii (Le Serment des Horaces, 1785) (Crow, 1985, 212–217) and West’s The Death
of General Wolfe (1770) (Figure 2.4; Abrams, 1985, 161–164) were often read in their own time as
vehicles for political allegory; in the first of these through a representation of young soldiers whose vigor
might be seen as emblematic of radicalized, revolutionary youth. David’s neoclassicism or reforming
“true style” constituted a sober alternative to the earlier, playful mythologies of the neoclassicist Vien
(Rosenblum, 1967, 55–86; Conisbee, 1981, 95, 98, 100, 106). West’s painting offered a similarly
uplifting, heroic and patriotic interpretation of British colonial ambitions in what is now French Canada.