Jacques Louis David: 78 Drawings

Jacques-Louis David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style. His history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward a classical asceticism and severity, heightened feeling chiming with the moral climate of the final years of the Ancien Régime. He later became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Maximilien Robespierre, and was effectively a dictator of the arts under the French Republic. Imprisoned after Robespierre's fall from power, he aligned himself with yet another political regime upon his release, that of Napoleon I. It was at this time that he developed his Empire style. After Napoleon's fall from power and the Bourbon revival, David exiled himself to Brussels in the then-United Kingdom of the Netherlands where he remained until his death. His work had a resounding influence on the development of French - and indeed European - painting, and his many pupils included Gеrard, Gros, and Ingres.