Patriotism and Virtue:David to the Young Ingres

Thomas CrowEisenman Chapter 1

Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748-1825), Belasarius Begging Alms, 1781, oil on canvas, 9’5” x 10’3”

Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Horatii Between the Hands of their Father, 1785, oil on canvas, c. 10’10” x 13’11”

Elizabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun, Portrait of the Artist With Her Daughter, 1789, oil on canvas, c. 41 x 33 in.

Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Marie-Antoinette with Her Children, 1787, oil on canvas, c. 9 x 85 in.

Adélaide Labille-Guiard (French, 1749-1803), Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, 1785, oil on canvas, 83 x 59” Metropolitan MA, NYC

Jacques-Louis David (French, 1748–1825), The Death of Socrates, 1787, oil on canvas, 51 x 77 ¼ in. How has David’s representation of ideal masculinity changed since the Horatii of 1785? Why?

The subject is loosely based on Plato's Phaedo, but David also consulted Diderot's treatise on dramatic poetry of 1758, works by the poet André Chenier, and other sources.

Jacques-Louis David, Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, 1789, oil on canvas, c. 10’7” x 13’10”

What mix of emotions does David’s sketch for the face of Brutus portray? What might that say about the artist’s own changed political convictions since Horatii?

Jacques-Louis David, The Oath of the Tennis Court, 1791, pen, bistre wash, and white highlights on paper, c. 26 x 41 in

Jacques-Louis David, Marat at His Last Breath (Death of Marat), 1793, oil on canvas, c. 64 x 49 in.

Jacques-Louis Davis, The Intervention of the Sabine Women, 1799, oil on canvas, c. 12’8” x 17’

David, Napoleon at the St. Bernard Pass, 1800, oil on canvas, c. 8’10” x 7’7”

Anne-Louise Girodet (French, 1767-1824), The Sleep of Endymion, 1791, oil on canvas, c. 19 x 24 in. Endymion, a man of ideal beauty, put into a sleep of eternal youth, is being visited at night by the moon goddess Selene in the form of a moonbeam. Eros/Zephyr moves the foliage aside for her.

François Gérard, Cupid and Psyche, 1798, oil on canvas, 73 x 52in, LouvreExplain: “Endymion’s sealed envelope of flesh [delivered] to a strain of precious eroticism that sought a place beyond the vicissitudes of political orthodoxy.” (Crow)

Porcelain statues in a landscape?

Anne-Louis Girodet, Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Belley, 1797, oil on canvas, 63 x 45in . Belley wears the uniform of a Convention member. His elbow rests on a bust of the philosopher Guillaume-Thomas Raynal (1713–1796), author of A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies (1770). Raynal, who had just died, had been a supporter of the abolition of slavery in the colonies and full citizenship for blacks, secured in France in 1794.

John Flaxman (English, 1755-1826) “The Fight for the Body of Patroclus,” from Illustrations to Homer’s ‘Iliad’, 1793, engraving, 6.5 x 13 in. How influential was Flaxman on French painting and sculpture? Where did the French artists see his work and meet him?

John Flaxman, from Illustrations to Homer’s ‘Iliad’, 1793engraving, 6.5 x 13 in.

Constance Charpentier (French, 1767-1849) Melancholy, 1801, oil on canvas, 52 x 66 in. What meaning does Crow give to the high contrast of light and dark and the shift to allegory in the Davidian school?

Jean Broc (French, 1780-1850), The Death of Hyacinth, 1801, oil on canvas, 175 x 120 cmMusée Rupert de Chièvres, Poitiers. What is the effect of the “never-never land” backdrop and back lighting on the classical narrative?

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780-1867), Napoleon I on the Imperial Throne, 1806, oil on canvas, 259 x 162 cm, Musée de l'Armée, Paris

Ingres, The Turkish Bath, 1862, oil on canvas, 42 ½ in diameter. “Licked” finish as a shield against the self- exposure of overt Romanticism?

What is orientalism?

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, The Valpincon Bather, 1808, oil on canvas, 146 x 97 cm, Louvre, Paris. Painted almost 50 years before The Turkish Bath.

Charles Meynier (French, 1768-1832), Adolescent Eros Weeping over the Portrait of the Lost Psyche, Salon of 1795, 60x79.5 in., Musée des Beaux-Artes, Quimper. According to Solomon-Godeau, what role does the cameo/mirror play? How does it signify “utopian erotics”?

Louis Lagrenée, (French, 1725-1805) Psyche Surprising the Sleeping Eros, 1769, oil on circular canvas, diam. 47 ½ in. Louvre, Paris.

How does Solomon-Godeau distinguish the masculinity of Lagrenée’s Rococo Psyche from Girodet’s Neoclassical Endymion (1791)?

Hippolyte Flandrin (French, 1809-1864) Theseus Recognized by his Father, 1832, oil on canvas. Paris, École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts.

How, according to Solomon-Godeau, does this painting signal the “end” of history painting and with it the neoclassical ephebe?