56 The New York Reviewonly as a painter, and he no doubt had
low esteem for those who adopted
drawing as their principal medium of
visual expression.” He did not produce
autonomous drawings for collectors,
drawings to be engraved, or drawings
for the market generally, despite the
well- established demand for compo-
sitional drawings by living artists. He
rarely sold his finished drawings, pre-
ferring to make gifts of some of them
to students, friends, and associates. Yet
David’s most enthusiastic historian,
Pierre Rosenberg, has written that of
all French artists, he is almost the only
one “to have imbued his drawings with
an extraordinary tension, an implaca-
ble human presence, a powerful and
distinct strangeness.”^4
One of the great merits of the Met’s
exhibition is to propose—on the walls
and in the catalog—a process and se-
quence for the various types of Da-
vid’s drawings that remained in place
throughout his career, regardless of
stylistic developments in the paintings
themselves. For his large paintings
of classical history or contemporary
events—for which many preparatory
drawings were made—he started with
small, quickly sketched figures in black
chalk. He then made groupings in a
generalized architectural setting. Next
he experimented with the placement
and poses of the figures, at times bring-
ing individual motifs to a considerable
finish while leaving other parts of the
sheet undeveloped. His nude figure
studies invariably preceded the draped
and clothed ones.
Only then did David make detailed,
“finished” compositional drawings in
pen and ink and wash, which were often
signed and dated. These were followed
by an oil sketch of modest dimensions,
painted over a pen- and- ink drawing
or directly onto the canvas (or panel).
At this point David posed his models
in the studio to make relatively large
drapery studies of great refinement—
there are six examples in the exhibi-
tion—which he squared for transfer to
use in the final painting, the execution
of which might be by more than one
hand.^5 He continued to work from the
model as he completed his painting,
on which further (significant) changes
were made in the final stages. The en-
tire process was a largely monochro-
matic one, with color introduced late in
the sequence. Yet as his pupil Étienne
Delécluze recalled David saying, with
regard to the deficiencies of the French
school before his appearance on the
scene: “Color is the most essential
quality of art, which immediately takes
possession of our senses.”Although David despised the
Académie royale de peinture et de
sculpture and was responsible for its
demise in August 1793, as a history
painter he was a product of its peda-
gogy and a beneficiary of its patronage.
His earliest drawings of the male nude,
known as académies, and introduced
in the first gallery at the Met under
the slightly misleading rubric “A Ris-
ing Star,” are unexceptional, but once
in Rome David quickly mastered the
prevailing neo- Baroque manner, no-
tably in The Combat of Diomedes, a
bombastic and oversize drawing nearly
seven feet in length.
Breakthrough came in Naples in
1779 with a neo- Poussinesque draw-
ing, Belisarius Begging for Arms, and
upon returning to Paris in September
1780, David was immediately identified
as one of the most promising history
painters of the new “youth move-
ment” nurtured by the first painter to
the king, Jean- Baptiste Marie Pierre,
and the superintendent of buildings,
Charles Claude de Flahaut, comte
d’Angiviller. David was provided with
a commodious studio and lodgings in
the Louvre, and despite regulations to
the contrary, was permitted to apply
for associate membership in the Acad-
emy on August 24, 1781, so that he
could exhibit at the biennial Salon that
opened the following day. He was in-
cluded in the civil list for 1782 to paint a
heroic subject from Roman history and
given considerable latitude in both the
subject and the deadline for its com-
pletion. And in May 1782 he made an
advantageous marriage to Marguerite
Charlotte Pécoul—sixteen years his ju-
nior—from a family of wealthy builders
and architects, who brought a dowry of
50,000 livres. The signing of their mar-
riage contract was witnessed by several
dignitaries from the Académie royale
de peinture et de sculpture, including
David’s teacher Joseph Marie Vien and
the first painter, Pierre.
As required by the Académie royale,
the first painter assigned David the
subject of his reception piece, which
conferred full membership. Eighteen
months later, on March 29, 1783, he
presented an oil sketch, Andromache
Mourning the Death of Hector, for the
Académie royale’s approval. The fin-
ished painting was delivered just under
five months later, on August 23, 1783. I
belabor this procedure a little because
it reminds us that, however indepen-
dent, ambitious, and self- assured David
was in the 1780s—as he wrote to a pa-
tron in August 1785, “No one can ever
make me do anything that is to the det-
riment of my glory”—it was fully in his
interest as a history painter to ascend
the ranks of the Académie royale and
benefit from the crown’s patronage.
Thus it is incorrect to state, as the
catalog does, that in the early 1780s
David was “casting about for subjects
for his morceau de réception.” He had
no choice in the matter. Of great inter-
est, however, are several highly worked
compositional drawings of heroic
(and violent) ancient Roman themes
that David was producing around this
time, anticipating the commissions he
would receive later in the decade. We
know from a recently discovered list of
subjects jotted down on the pages of a
sketchbook around 1782–1783 that he
was reading Homer, Plutarch, Racine,
and other authors to find appropriate
episodes from Roman history. (With
Hubert Robert and Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, he was among the most learned
artists of the ancien régime.) Not only
did he cite passages relating to the work
in progress Andromache Mourning
the Death of Hector, but he also noted
references to the lives of the Horatii,
Septimius Severus, Caracalla, Geta,
and Pompey. Between 1781 and 1783,
all but the last were subjects of David’s
compositional drawings.^6Although Plato’s Phaedo was not on
David’s reading list at this time, in 1782
he made his first compositional draw-
ing in black chalk, pen and ink, and gray
wash for The Death of Socrates, four
years before a painting of this subject
was commissioned by the twenty- two-
year- old Charles Louis Trudaine de
Montigny. With his younger brother,
Charles Michel Trudaine de La Sa-
blière, Trudaine de Montigny was guil-
lotined on 8 Thermidor Year II (July
26, 1794), the day before Robespierre’s
removal from office. As one of the four-
teen members of the Committee of Pub-
lic Safety that oversaw the Terror, David
had refused to intercede on their behalf.
The dossier around The Death of
Socrates— owned since 1931 by the Met,
and as such the only work whose exe-
cution can be traced in the exhibition
from preliminary studies to completed
painting—is among the most satisfy-
ing on view. Two patches of paper with
David’s revisions affixed to the earliest
compositional drawing—on the wall
above the cupbearer, and for the seated
figure of Crito—remind us of the unfor-
giving medium of pen and ink and wash,
which makes the slightest alteration dif-
ficult. There was a long gestation for this
composition, with David returning to it
in the spring of 1786, after receiving the
commission and having been encour-
aged to consult a scholar attached to
the Oratorian Congregation on the rue
Saint- Honoré regarding the appropriate
treatment of the subject. (After their
meeting, David made no significant
changes to his composition.)
The Met’s drawing from 1786 in pen
and ink, full of pentimenti and new
ideas, communicates David’s excite-
ment at being able to start work on the
project again. Beautiful drapery stud-
ies for the seated Crito and the sorrow-
ing acolyte behind the seated Plato,
squared for transfer, show the rigor of
his working method. In these sheets he
concentrates exclusively on the folds of
the men’s togas and pays scant attention
to their facial expression, anatomy, or
coiffure. In the absence of the painted
oil sketch for The Death of Socrates—
which we know that David made—we
can only imagine the final refinements
in accessories, color harmonies, and
hues before he arrived at the finished
painting.^7That these refinements were signifi-
cant is demonstrated in the sequences
devoted to David’s other prerevolu-
tionary masterpieces, The Oath of the
Horatii, Paris and Helen, and The Lic-
tors Bringing Brutus the Bodies of His
Sons, for which the Met was able to bor-
row all three painted sketches. Com-
paring the oil sketch to the finished
work, we note that the patch of sky at
the upper right will be banished from
The Oath of the Horatii, all of whose
protagonists will be robed in garments
of different colors. In Paris and Helen
muscular Paris will be relieved of most
of his drapery and provided with a lyre
of a different design, and the lovers’
nuptial bed will be arrayed in volumi-
nous silks of many hues. The position
of the weeping nurse at right in the oil
sketch for Brutus is revised yet again
in the superb drapery study from the
Musée des Beaux- Arts, Tours. She now
covers her face with her robes, revealing
her bare neck and right arm exactly as
she will be portrayed in the final paint-
ing. David’s embodiment in paint of his
“taut, astricted vision” is the result of
ongoing revision and distillation.^8 It is
achieved, as Perrin Stein notes in the
catalog, “not by epiphany but by perse-
verance and experimentation.”
With the onset of the French Revo-
lution, David—who attended meetings
of the radical Jacobin club as early
as the summer of 1790—became the
“pageant master” of the new Republic.
In addition to paintings and drawings
commemorating the momentous early
days of the Revolution and honoring its
martyrs, between April 1791 and July
1794 he was responsible for organizing
public festivals, planning monuments in
Paris and the provinces, designing new
uniforms for the holders of political
office, and even producing caricatures
of enemy British forces as propaganda.
Although he failed to win a seat in the
Legislative Assembly in September
1791, with Jean- Paul Marat’s support
David was elected to the National Con-
vention as a deputy from Paris in Sep-
tember of the following year. Having
voted in favor of Louis XVI’s execution
in January 1793, he was invited to sit on
various Republican committees—in-
cluding the all- powerful Committee
of Public Safety, of which he attended
over 130 meetings between September
1793 and July 1794. In June 1793 he
was elected president of the Jacobins;
the following month he was named sec-
retary of the National Convention; in
October 1793 he attended the interro-
gation of the dauphin, Louis Charles,
whom he had portrayed two year ear-
lier being instructed by his father in the
lessons of the new Constitution. (The
king’s commission for this double por-
trait, which never progressed beyond a
series of preparatory drawings, caused
David acute embarrassment.) Between
January 5 and January 21, 1794, David
held the highest political office in
the land as president of the National
Convention.A group of superb drawings and stud-
ies in the second gallery of the exhibi-
tion bears witness to David’s frenetic
activity as artist, orator, and adminis-
trator during these years. The grand-(^4) Pierre Rosenberg and Louis Antoine
Prat, Jacques- Louis David 1748 –
1825, Catalogue raisonné des dessins,
(Milan: Leonardo Arte, 2002), Volume
1, p. 20. This two- volume catalogue
raisonné has transformed Davidian
studies. The year after the corpus was
published, Roman Album No. 5, con-
taining 100 drawings, reappeared. See
Pierre Rosenberg and Benjamin Per-
ronet, “Un album inédit de David,”
Revue de l’Art, No. 142 (2003).
(^5) Squaring preparatory drawings for
transfer to a larger canvas was a well-
established technique—dating at least
to the Renaissance—that allowed the
painter to replicate (and enlarge) an
image from a drawing to the final
painting. The use of a grid ensured the
accurate placement of the image in the
finished composition.
(^6) See, in the current exhibition, The
Death of Camilla, The Oath of the
Horatii, Caracalla Killing His Brother
Geta in the Arms of His Mother, and
The Ghost of Septimius Severus Ap-
pearing to Caracalla After the Murder
of His Brother Geta.
(^7) In addition to the discussion in Jacques
Louis David: Radical Draftsman, pp.
140–149, see the exemplary study of
The Death of Socrates in Katharine
Baetjer, French Paintings in the Metro-
politan Museum of Art from the Early
Eighteenth Century Through the Rev-
olution (Metropolitan Museum of Art,
2019), pp. 306 –315.
(^8) Robert L. Hebert, David, Voltaire,
“Brutus,” and the French Revolution:
An Essay in Art and Politics (London:
Allen Lane, 1972), p. 38.
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