The French Revolution And Its Influence On Art

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

The Work Of David, Vigée Lebrun, Gros, Ingres, And Goya

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To look at the calm and serene British portraits in the last two chapters, it is difficult to realize that England was engaged in warfare almost continuously during the century in which they were painted. While Reynolds, Gainsborough, and their successors were building up the reputation of English art, statesmen, soldiers, and sailors were laying the foundations of the present British Empire, Wolfe in Canada, Clive in india, and Nelson on the high seas. We have seen how profusely art flowered in England while her empire abroad was expanding, and we must not turn our attention to the progress of art in that country which throughout the century was England’s constant foe.

To appreciate the effect of the French Revolution on the painters of France, it is advisable to consider briefly the condition of artists in the eighteenth century. The French Academy, founded in 1648 for the advancement of art, had become a close body, exercising a pernicious tyranny. Artists who were neither members nor associates wer not allowed to exhibit their works in public, and even Academicians were not supposed to show elsewhere: one of them, Serres by name, was actually expelled from the Academy because he had independantly exhibited his picture ‘The Pest of Marseilles’ for money. The only concession the Academy made to outsiders was to allow them once a year, on the day of the Fête Dieu, to hold an ‘Exhibition of Youth’ in the Place Dauphine, which was open for only two hours.

At last Salon held under the old monarchy in 1789 only 350 pictures were exhibited: in 1791 the National Assembly decreed that an exhibition open to all artists, French and foreign, should be held in the Louvre, and the number of pictures show was 794. In the year of the Terror (1793) the number of exhibits exceeded 1000: in 1795 the number of pictures shown increased to 3048. These figures tell their own story, and show that the first thing the French Revolution did for art was to give painters a fuller liberty to display their work to the public. Further, notwithstanding the exhausted state of the finances, the Revolutionary Government encouraged artists by distributing annual prizes to a total value of 442,000 francs, and began the systematic organization of public museums. On the 27th July 1793 the Convention decreed that a museum should be open in the Louvre, and that art treasures collected from the royal palaces, from monasteries, and from the houses of aristocrats who had fled the country should be placed there. At the same time a sum of 100,000 francs was voted for the further purchase of works of art.

While in some parts of the country an ignorant and savage mob ruthlessly destroyed many precious monuments, libraries, and art treasures, the leaders of the Revolution throughout showed a special solicitude not only for contemporary art but also for the monuments of the past. Yet while the Revolution did everything it could to foster contemporary art, and to preserve and popularize the best art of the past, it could not produce one really great master of painting or sculpture. Now, if ever, we might expect to find a realism and a rude, savage strength in art; yet the typical painting of the French revolutionary period is cold and correct, and its chief defect is its bloodlessness. While in England the taste, as we have seen, was all for a happy Romanticism in art, the taste of revolutionary France was for a stern Classicism. A nation aspiring to recover the lost virtues of antiquity was naturally disposed to find its ideal art in the antique, and just as politically its eye was on republican Rome rather than on Athens, so its Classicism in art was Roman rather than Greek. The man who gave a new direction to French painting was Jacques Louis David (1748-1825), who, curiously enough, was a distant relative of Boucher, and, for a time, worked under that master, whose art in later years he cordially detested. Later he became the pupil of Vien (1716-1809), whom he accompanied to Rome when Vien was appointed director of the French Academy in that city. In Rome David became absorbed in the study of the antique; and began painting pictures of classical subjects, which were well received when exhibited in Paris. During the Revolution David became a enthusiastic supporter of Robespierre, and though he was in danger for a time after the fall of Robespierre, he escaped the perils at the end of the Terror by wisely devoting himself to art and eschewing politics. When the Directory created the Institute of France on the ruins of the old monarchical academics, David was appointed one of the two original members of the Fine Arts section and charged with the delicate mission of selecting the other members.

Henceforward David was omnipotent in French art. Like so many other revolutionaries, he was completely carried away by the genius of the First Consul, who seemed to him the right Caesar for the new Romans. One morning, after Bonaparte had give him a sitting for a head. David spoke enthusiasitically of the General to his pupils. ‘He is a man to whom altars would have been erected in ancient times; yes, my friends, Bonaparte is my hero.’ But the portrait of his hero was never completed, and only the head remains today, for Napoleon disliked long sittings and did not care for exact likeness. What he demanded from an artist was a picture to rouse the admiration of the people, and to satisfy this demand David painted ‘Bonaparte crossing the Alps,’ ‘Napoleon distributing the Eagles to his Army,’ and similar pictures which, though correct and precise in drawing, seem cold, strained, and dull today.

The best works of David are not his official pictures, but some of his portraits, which have more force and life. The most celebrated of these portraits is his ‘Madame Recamier,’ now in the Louvre, though the painter himself did not regard it as more than an unfinished sketch which he once threatened to destroy. The sitter greatly displeased David by leaving him when the portrait was half finished and going to his pupil Gerard (1770-1837), who had suddenly become the fashion, to have another portait of herself painted by him. A few years later Madame Recamier, tired of Gerard’s flattering portraiture, came back to David and begged him to go on with his picture. ‘Madame,’ he replied, ‘artists are as capricious as women. Suffer me to keep your picture in the state where we left it.’

After Waterloo and the restoration of te Bourbons, David, who had taken so prominent a part in the Revolution, was exiled from France in 1816, and not being allowed to go to Rome as he wished, he settled in Brussels, where he continued painting classical pictures, now chiefly of Greek subjects, till he died in 1825. Even in exile David was still regarded as the head of his school, and few painters of so moderate a talent have so profoundly influenced the art of Europe. He completely crushed for the time being the ideals of Watteau and his school and of Boucher—‘cursed Boucher,’ that Boucher of ridiculous memory’—as he called him; and as a good republican he delighted other republicans by maintaining that the art of the last three Louis represented ‘the most complete decadence of taste and an epoch of corruption.’ To David and his pupils Europe owes that revival of classical subjects which was a feature of nineteenth century painting in all north-western Europe, and France owes him in addition that tradition of fine drawing which has characterized her art for the last century.

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