Paris,
Marat murdered, Bonaparte crossing the Alps, Napoleon’s coronation…Beyond the usual labels of Father of the French School either paint regeneratorJacques-Louis David has provided us with some of the fundamental scenes that today nourish the collective imagination around the French Revolution and the Empire, from classical rigor in form, but also from a certain sensationalism in depth.
On the occasion of the bicentenary of his death in exile, in Brussels in 1825, the Louvre Museum offers him a retrospective that highlights his inventiveness and the expressive force of his painting and that, by covering his extensive career, proposes us to review the six political regimes that the artist, who actively participated in the Revolution, knew during his life.
Only this museum (despite the turbulent days in which it is involved due to the spectacular theft of jewels, precisely, from the Napoleonic era) could meet the challenge of collecting exceptional loans from the author, including an imposing fragment of the Ball game oath -which the Louvre itself had given to the Palace of Versailles- and the original version of Marat murderedwhich comes from the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Only the Louvre, because it houses the largest collection of his history paintings and drawings, and because in 1989 it dedicated an extensive monographic exhibition to him, together with Versailles, to remember another second centenary: that of the Storming of the Bastille.
Based on the studies on his production carried out in the last thirty years, this anthology emphasizes the very close ties between art and politics when we talk about David. Not only did he live in that transformative time in French history (between 1748 and 1825), but he sought to become a main actor in the events; Perhaps no other painter exercised such a decisive influence in his time, both in the purely creative field and through the high political positions he held between 1793 and 1794 and alongside Robespierre; for whom, as we said, he paid the price of exile after the fall of Napoleon.
As a canonical retrospective, the exhibition is structured chronologically beginning with a prologue dedicated to David’s arduous quest for the prestigious Rome Prize, which he unsuccessfully tried to achieve on four occasions. But, apart from this academic review, the Louvre also proposes to discern what his painting tells us today: a man with a complex personality, adored by some and hated by others, he surely embodies the contradictions and hopes of a time as turbulent as it was defining (in part, for that reason) of European contemporaneity.
His political commitment had gradually increased during the Old Regime, participating in liberal circles in favor of a constitutional monarchy, for whom he painted Death of Socrates (today at the Metropolitan in New York).
Later he approached, as we noted, Robespierre; He was elected deputy for Paris and voted for the death of Louis XVI. During the two years of the Terror (1793-1794), he held several prominent positions, including member of the Committee of Public Instruction, president of the Jacobin Club, member of the Committee of General Safety, and even president of the National Convention. And as such, he organized the great revolutionary celebrations, the national funerals and the pantheonizationsand painted images of the victims of the Revolution: Le Peletier, Marat and the young Bara.
After the fall of Robespierre, he narrowly escaped the guillotine, was imprisoned in 1794 and placed under house arrest in 1795. From 1799, fascinated by the figure of Bonaparte – whom he portrayed on horseback crossing the Alps, as a product of the Revolution and the man who managed to put an end to it – he put himself at its service.
Once the Empire was proclaimed, he dreamed of being a new Le Brun, something that Napoleon would never grant him, but like his first painter he immortalized the scenery of his power in The coronationuntil with the return of the Bourbons to the throne, and as a regicide, he went into exile. The government quickly tried to bring him back to Paris, given his prestige, but to no avail: he settled into the role of commander to whom all of Europe, from the king of Prussia to Géricault, came to pay tribute, while his compositions inaugurated the exhibition of the first museum of contemporary art, the Museum of Living Artists, opened in Paris in 1818 at the Luxembourg Palace.
Sincere in the revolutionary period, and probably opportunistic during the Empire, his political commitment is completely inseparable from his work. His concept of ethics was linked to that of action and supported by the notion of glory: he stated that painting is acting. Knowledgeable of the thought of the intellectual elites, cultured himself, he conceived of art as an instrument for political and moral changes; Hence, he gave his works a fundamentally public meaning: he consciously sought, we would say today, to generate impact.
Knowledgeable of the thought of the intellectual elites, cultured himself, he conceived of art as an instrument for political and moral changes; Hence, he gave his works a fundamentally public meaning: he consciously sought, we would say today, to generate impact.
He transitioned, as is known, between two fundamental genres (history painting and portraiture) and, in terms of themes and formal choices, between heroic antiquity and his most vivid present. The label of neoclassicaltherefore, it only serves us halfway for David: he tends to reduce his compositions to a formal aspect, very important, but largely subordinate to his social, political, and also moral project.
His first great work was The Oath of the Horatii (1784), radically modern at the end of the 18th century, austere and bold at the same time. It anticipates that other oath, that of the Jeu de Paume, a monumental canvas dedicated to the celebration of the founding fact of the Revolution that it never completed (the evolution of history is faster than that of painting).
But his iconic work regarding this episode was, without a doubt, Marat murdered: Due to its compositional scheme and intentions, it draws on both historical and religious painting, portraiture and period documents. Half a century later, Baudelaire provided one of his illustrious texts to this scene; along with Bonaparte crossing the Alpswhich he carried out in 1800, constitutes one of the most striking images of modern political communication.
He returned to his classical avant-garde in 1799, with The Sabinesin which women play a central role, remembering that it was they who stopped the fratricidal wars between Romans and Sabines. This painting of reconciliation after the Revolution is contemporary with his most widespread female portraits, in particular that of Madame Récamier, unfinished after a dispute with her model, and that of Madame de Verninac, sister of Eugène Delacroix.
In these last works, he gave great importance to old fashion, of which he had been one of the promoters in the theater. His love for the latter discipline led him to produce what could be described as the first “immersive installations” in the history of art: he exhibited The Sabines, The Consecration and his last canvas, Mars and Venusin front of a large mirror so that visitors could immerse themselves in the painting.
David also finally approached experimentation. In the last years of his life, exiled in Brussels, he worked on mythological works, often biting, others sarcastic or disturbing, in which realism gradually erodes an ideal that dissolves in the prosaic and temporarily peaceful society of the 1820s.
Thanks to the combination of his talent as a painter and his political consciousness, he had the necessary authority to enforce a reform of the arts that went far beyond the “regeneration” desired by the authorities at the end of the Old Regime and that forced subsequent generations to position themselves in relation to his ideas. Like Rubens in the 17th century, he directed a vast workshop in which three batches of painters were formed who would dominate the European scene until the mid-19th century, among them Gros, Girodet and Ingres, who would betray his principles.
Through contact with his students (some, for the first time, women) David was able to reinvent himself, far from the monolithic image that we may have of him. Several works by these pupils are also part of this exhibition at the Louvre.
Jacques-Louis David
LOUVRE MUSEUM
Rue de Rivoli, 75001
Paris
From October 15, 2025 to January 26, 2026
