Jacques-Louis David
Also called: David
Neoclassical painter and Convention deputy who painted The Tennis Court Oath and The Death of Marat, staged the revolutionary festivals and later became Napoleon’s court painter
Born in Paris in 1748, he won the Prix de Rome in 1774 and studied classical art in Italy, and with the Oath of the Horatii (1784) became the leading Neoclassical painter. A Jacobin in the Revolution, he began The Tennis Court Oath, entered the Convention in 1792 and voted for the execution of Louis XVI. He painted The Death of Marat (1793), staged revolutionary festivals such as the Festival of the Supreme Being and abolished the Royal Academy. Imprisoned twice after Thermidor and released, he became Napoleon’s first painter and painted The Coronation of Napoleon. Exiled as a regicide after the Restoration, he died in Brussels in 1825.