On this day in 1748, famed artist Jacques-Louis David was born. Initially renowned for his history paintings, David eventually began to develop strong Revolutionary sensibilities and became closely allied to Marat, producing a famed painting depicting his death. He later grew close to Robespierre and enjoyed immense influence over French arts and culture during the Revolution and then the rule of Napoleon. Although known for his grand works and portraits, I have chosen instead to concentrate on a more simple sketch he produced, that of Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine.
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| Marie Antoinette on the Way to the Guillotine by Jacques-Louis David, 1793 |
When David sketched the doomed queen on 16th October 1793, she was a world away from the grand, glamorous figure memorialised in innumerable works of art. In her thirty seventh year, Marie Antoinette had been incarcerated for some time and David depicts her with an unflinching eye, showing an unremarkable woman, face haggard and toothless, hair shorn and her hands bound as she sits in the tumbrel on its way to the scaffold. One cannot help but notice how straight she sits, though the expression on her face is one of grim sadness.
In this simplest of sketches David shows not a queen, nor the hated figure so vilified by her persecutors, but a simple human in her final minutes. There was nothing remotely Royalist in David's work and yet his honest depiction carries with it a dignity of its own. He might have produced far finer works and laboured long hours over great canvasses but for me, this simple, human sketch is one of David's greatest works; it captures a singular moment in time and one that, as the tumbrel rolled on past the artist's window, was soon gone forever.
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Thanks, I hadn't realised it was David's birthday. He was really a propagandist, wasn't he? There's something almost scary about that whole Neoclassical movement.
ReplyDeleteHe was a very shrewd man and one who knew the value of self-promotion too. He seemed to have a second sense for which way the wind was blowing!
DeleteThat is a chilling and poignant sketch. It's real.
ReplyDeleteIt truly is, it captures such a dark moment.
DeleteBeautifully written, Catherine. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Mari!
DeleteThe memoirs of another great self-publicist, Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, working around the same time, are well worth a read...
ReplyDeleteThey certainly are!
Deletetragic Marie Antoinette.... sorrow and courage both apparent in this sketch....
ReplyDeleteI think so too; it tells so many stories.
DeleteStefan Zweig in his brilliant bio of Marie Antoinette describes David as "a typical specimen of this who lick the boots of the powerful, aways ready to flatter the successful but pitiless towards the vanquished" (567).
ReplyDeleteYes. I do not see a hint of the 'empathy', 'human feeling', etc. that some profess to see in this sketch. As great as the drawing is, it seems obviously to me to be an overtly political caricature.
ReplyDeleteagreed there is neither empathy or sympathy in this sketch by David not one minute merciful concession is given to her..... yet despite all that.... I think you can almost see her drawing on whatever small ounce of courage she had left to get her through this final awful ordeal of her life.... David, despite how lacking he was in altruism managed to portray a woman bereft of practically everything except bravery.... and I think it shows in this picture
ReplyDeleteIt shows her "Hapsburg lip," the protruding lower lip which many of her relatives also had, along with protruding jaws. Her earlier portraits were more flattering.
ReplyDelete