JACQUES LOUIS DAVID.

This great painter was born at Paris in 1750. His countrymen have conferred upon him the distinguished title of The Head and Restorer of the French School, which he brought back from its previous gaudy and affected style, to the study of nature and the antique. His reputation was established as the first painter in France when the French Revolution broke out, and filled with an ardent love of liberty, he lent all his powers in overturning the government, and establishing the Republic. For this purpose, in 1789, he executed his Brutus condemning his sons to death. He also executed the designs for the numerous republican monuments and festivals of the time. He was chosen a deputy to the National Convention, and voted for the king’s death. During the Reign of Terror, he was one of the most zealous Jacobins, wholly devoted to Robespierre; and on the fall of that monster, he was thrown into prison, and his great reputation as a painter alone saved him from the guillotine. At length, disgusted with the excesses and revolting scenes transpiring on all sides, and seeing no hopes of the Republic being established on a permanent basis, he retired to private life, and devoted himself exclusively to his pencil. When Napoleon came into power, perceiving the advantage of employing such a painter as David to immortalize his glorious victories on canvass, he appointed him his chief painter, showed him every mark of his favor, and endeavored to engage him to paint the successes of the French armies. But these subjects were not congenial to his taste, which ran to the antique. “I wish,” said he, “that my works may have so completely an antique character, that if it were possible for an Athenian to return to life, they might appear to him to be the productions of a Greek painter.” He however painted several portraits of the Emperor and the members of the Imperial family, and other subjects, the chief of which were, Napoleon as First Consul crossing the Alps, and pointing out to his troops the path to glory, and the Coronation of Napoleon.

On the restoration of the Bourbons, David was included in the decree which banished all the regicides forever from France, when he retired to Brussels, where he continued to practice his profession till his death in 1825.