1748–1825
○ Died in Brussels
Neoclassical painter of the French Revolution
His Death of Marat, depicting his friend Jean-Paul Marat after Charlotte Corday assassinated him on 13 July 1793, became a leading image of the Revolution. After Napoleon's fall the painting long disappeared from public view before its rediscovery.
French painter born in Paris in 1748 and died in Brussels in 1825. He was the preeminent Neoclassical painter of his era, winning fame in the 1780s with The Oath of the Horatii, and an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Robespierre as a member of the Jacobin Club. As a deputy to the National Convention he voted for the execution of Louis XVI, and as a member of the Committee of General Security he took part in the Reign of Terror. After Robespierre's fall he was imprisoned twice in 1794 and 1795, then released. After the Empire was proclaimed in 1804 he became Napoleon's court painter and painted The Coronation of Napoleon. After Napoleon's fall in 1815 he lived in exile in Brussels, where he died. His pupils included Girodet, Gérard, Gros and Ingres.
Activities and affiliations
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1793–1794
French First Republic state institutionsMember of the Committee of General Security
Government and administration -
–1794
Literature and arts
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French First Republic state institutionsMain
Literature and arts
Career Timeline
- 1784Won fame with The Oath of the Horatii
- 1789–1794Supported the Revolution; deputy to the National Convention and member of the Committee of General Security
- 1794–1795Imprisoned twice after Robespierre's fall
- 1804Napoleon's court painter
- 1815–1825Exile in Brussels, where he died
Related historical events
Exile in Brussels: a workshop and a community of regicides
After Waterloo, anticipating reprisals for his revolutionary record and his support for Napoleon, David moved The Sabine Women, The Coronation, The Distribution of the Eagles and Leonidas to safety and took refuge in Switzerland; he returned to France in August 1815. The law of 12 January 1816 excluded from amnesty and banished from the realm the regicides who had signed the Additional Act, and although the minister of police, Elie Decazes, offered to exempt him from its application, David chose to submit to it instead. Entrusting the running of his studio to Antoine-Jean Gros, he left France for good, and two months later his name was struck from the register of the Academie des beaux-arts. Accounts differ on the cause of the exile. The English-language account holds that Louis XVIII granted him amnesty and even offered him the post of court painter, which David refused, preferring self-exile in Brussels. The French-language account holds that under the Restoration his past as a regicide revolutionary and imperial artist earned him exile. The two accounts are not in conflict: he was legally subject to proscription, and he also chose to refuse the offer of leniency.
Rome at first refused the asylum he sought, and Belgium took him in, receiving him on 27 January 1816. In Brussels he met again former regicide deputies such as Barere, Alquier and Sieyes, whose portrait he painted, and former Belgian pupils who assisted him in completing several works. Gros and his pupils petitioned for his return, Louis XVIII offered pardon, and the Prussian king Frederick William III proposed to make him his minister of arts, but he chose to remain in Belgium.
In Brussels he became a regular spectator at the La Monnaie theatre, and the works of the Dutch and Flemish masters he saw there enthused him and revived his palette. He painted many portraits of exiles and Belgian notables, portrayed Joseph Bonaparte's daughters, and gave drawing lessons to one of them, Charlotte Bonaparte. In this period he painted mythological subjects including The Wrath of Achilles (1819), The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis (1822) and Cupid and Psyche (1817). In 1824, at the age of seventy-five, he completed Mars Being Disarmed by Venus and the Graces, his last great history painting; its Paris exhibition drew 9,500 visitors.
His health deteriorated from 1820, and in 1824, returning from La Monnaie, he was knocked down by a carriage, which caused an oedema; in November 1825 a stroke paralysed his hands and he could no longer wield a brush. He died in bed at his home in the rue Leopold on 29 December 1825. When the French government refused to repatriate his remains, he was first buried on 11 October 1826 in the Leopold district cemetery at Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, with only his heart laid in Paris at Pere-Lachaise beside his wife. In 1882 his remains were transferred to Brussels Cemetery in Evere.