Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David was the leading painter of French Neoclassicism. His pictures are clear, severe and heroic, with sculpted figures, crisp outlines, strong light and compositions laid out like a stage, and he put them at the service of the Revolution and then of Napoleon.

He was born in Paris in 1748, won the Prix de Rome in 1774 and studied in Italy. The Oath of the Horatii of 1784 made him famous. During the Revolution he was an active politician and painted The Death of Marat. Under Napoleon he became the official court painter, producing Napoleon Crossing the Alps in several versions and the vast Coronation of Napoleon, now in the Louvre.

After Napoleon’s fall he went into exile in Brussels, where he died in 1825. In Bonaparte Crossing the St Bernard Pass, look at the rearing horse, the billowing cloak, and the names of Hannibal and Charlemagne carved on the rocks below.