David

Arlette Sérullaz

"The work of Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), along with that of Nicolas Poussin and Paul Cezanne, probably represents one of the three great turning points in the evolution of French art. A man of the Enlightenment but equally nurtured by the moral examples of classical literature, he altered the course of the pictorial school of his day, and more than any other stands for the particular form of a "return to order" that characterises French Neoclassicism." "Draughtsmanship was instrumental in that evolution; beholding antique ruins for the first time during his two stays in Rome, David constantly drew in his sketchbooks and albums, inventing an original graphic style, accurate and sharp. He was equally rigorous in the preparatory drawings for his great pre-Revolutionary compositions (The Oath of the Horatii, Brutus), as, subsequently, in the huge scenographies dedicated to Napoleon's...

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