The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (130 page)

 
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Davey , Grenville
.

See
NEW BRITISH SCULPTURE
.

 
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(d. 1523).
Netherlandish painter. He was born at Oudewater, now in southern Holland, but he worked mainly in Bruges, where he entered the painters' guild in 1484 and became the city's leading artist after the death of
Memlinc
in 1494. At this time the economic importance of Bruges was declining, but it still maintained its prestige as a centre of art and David played an important role in the flourishing export trade in paintings that it developed in the first quarter of the 16th cent. His work—extremely accomplished, but conservative and usually rather bland—was very popular and his stately compositions were copied again and again. Among his followers were
Ysenbrandt
and
Benson
, who carried on his tradition until the middle of the 16th cent. Most of his work was of traditional religious themes, but his best-known paintings are probably the pair representing
The Judgement of Cambyses
(Groeningemuseum , Bruges, 1498), a gory subject to which his reflective style was not ideally suited.

 
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(1748–1825).
French painter, one of the central figures of
Neoclassicism
. He had his first training with
Boucher
, a distant relative, but Boucher realized that their temperaments were opposed and sent David to
Vien
. David went to Italy with the latter in 1776, Vien having been appointed director of the French Academy at Rome, David having won the
Prix de Rome
. In Italy David was able to indulge his bent for the
antique
and came into contact with the initiators of the new classical revival, including Gavin
Hamilton
. In 1780 he returned to Paris, and in the 1780s his position was firmly established as the embodiment of the social and moral reaction from the frivolity of the
Rococo
. His uncompromising subordination of colour to drawing and his economy of statement were in keeping with the new severity of taste. His themes gave expression to the new cult of the civic virtues of stoical self-sacrifice, devotion to duty, honesty, and austerity. Seldom have paintings so completely typified the sentiment of an age as David's
The Oath of the Horatii
(Louvre, Paris, 1784),
Brutus and his Dead Sons
(Louvre, 1789), and
The Death of Socrates
(Met. Mus., New York, 1787). They were received with acclamation by critics and public alike.
Reynolds
compared the
Socrates
with
Michelangelo's
Sistine Ceiling and
Raphael's
Stanze, and after ten visits to the
Salon
described it as ‘in every sense perfect’.
David was in active sympathy with the Revolution; he served on various committees and voted for the execution of Louis XVI. His position was unchallenged as the painter of the Revolution. His three paintings of ‘martyrs of the Revolution’, though conceived as portraits, raised portraiture into the domain of universal tragedy. They were:
The Death of Lepeletier
(now known only from an engraving),
The Death of Marat
(Musées Royaux, Brussels, 1793), and
The Death of Bara
(Musée Calvet, Avignon, unfinished). After the fall of his friend Robespierre (1794), however, he was imprisoned, but was released on the plea of his wife, who had previously divorced him because of his Revolutionary sympathies (she was a royalist). They were remarried in 1796, and David's
Intervention of the Sabine Women
(Louvre, 1794–9), begun while he was in prison, is said to have been painted to honour her, its theme being one of love prevailing over conflict. It was also interpreted at the time, however, as a plea for conciliation in the civil strife that France suffered after the Revolution and it was the work that re-established David's fortunes and brought him to the attention of Napoleon , who appointed him his official painter.
David became an ardent supporter of Napoleon and retained under him the dominant social and artistic position which he had previously held. Between 1802 and 1807 he painted a series of pictures glorifying the exploits of the Emperor, among them the enormous
Coronation of Napoleon
(Louvre, 1805–7). These works show a change both in technique and in feeling from the earlier Republican works. The cold colours and severe composition of the heroic paintings gave place to a new feeling for pageantry which had something in common with
Romantic painting
, although he always remained opposed to the Romantic school. With the fall of Napoleon , David went into exile in Brussels, and his work weakened as the possibility of exerting a moral and social influence receded. (Until recently his late history paintings were generally scorned by critics, but their sensuous qualities are now winning them a more appreciative audience.) He continued to be an outstanding portraitist, but he never surpassed such earlier achievements as the great
Napoleon Crossing the Alps
(Kunsthistorisches Mus., Vienna, 1800, one of four versions) or the coolly erotic
Madame Récamier
(Louvre, 1800). His work had a resounding influence on the development of French—and indeed European—painting, and his many pupils included
Gérard
,
Gros
, and
Ingres
.

 
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(1788–1856).
French sculptor, known after his birthplace as David d'Angers . In 1811 he won the
Prix de Rome
, and spent 5 years in Italy, where he met and admired
Ingres
and was also influenced by
Canova
and
Thorvaldsen
. However,
Neoclassical
influence was tempered by a strong inclination towards naturalism, and his contemporaries considered him a
Romantic
. His most prestigious commission was the high-relief pedimental sculpture of the Pantheon in Paris, which shows an allegorical figure of France distributing wreaths to great Frenchmen (1837), but his best works are to be found among his busts and medallions of famous men. He left a large collection of them to his native city to found the Musée des Beaux-Arts there.