Tea at Trianon: Jacques-Louis David’s Artistic Revolution

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, May 27, 2018

Jacques-Louis David’s Artistic Revolution

From Cherwell:

Revolutionary France was a troubling time to be an artist. ‘The Declaration of the Rights of the Man’ declared an end to censorship. Yet Robespierre’s terror saw the blood of countless artists stain the Place de Revolution. The rules were less clear but in many ways state control over the arts remained unchanged. But the state didn’t just erase art, it also sponsored its creation.

Enter Jacques-Louis David, married to a royalist and a member of the artistic elite who became the de facto artist of the revolution. David’s great talent was his ability to take stories that were known but distort how audiences felt about them. We can see this in David’s neoclassical style through which he depicted the same characters but with new emotions.

Take his painting ‘The Oath of the Horatii’, presented in the Paris Salon in 1785. The painting depicted a narrative known by the citizens of Paris: two groups of men, the Horatii and the Curatii, were selected to fight in order to resolve a conflict between Rome and Alba. On the left of the painting we see the oath taking place, presented in the geometric lines of the Horatii. On the right we see the women, the sisters of the Horatii and the wives of the Curatii, weeping at the fate of their loved ones. In the period dramatizations of the story there is little reference to this oath and the selection of the combatants is usually depicted as the result of aristocratic whims. Here David paints a world where the state is worth the ultimate sacrifice.

But perhaps the message here is too subtle. ‘The Oath of the Horatii’ was, after all, accepted into the Paris Salon and David continued to receive royal commissions after its release. To see David’s true political masterstroke, we must look later in his career. On 13th July 1793 revolutionary journalist and politician Jean-Paul Marat was stabbed in his own bathtub by journalist Charlotte Corday. (Read more.)