Jacques Louis David

In France art, like society, was totfcering to its fall when the revolntioa burst and hasteneu the end. The spirit of which the revoiution was the political outcome had also, as in the pictures of Greuze and Vien, been working beneath the surface of the art world, and with the fall of the empire these aspirations took definite shape. The art so long dedicated to whims and caprices of the aristocracy began, under the impulse of the new environment, to express the sentiments and ideáis of the common people. Cnt off from the past by the sword of retribution, in the turmoil of the present they sought inspiration for the future in the great acts of patriotism of the Romans. And the general intelligence of Europe, interested in the discoveries at Pompen, gave it form on its artistio side. These feelings and aspirations seemed to become incarnate in the work of Jacqnes Louis David. A friend of Robespierre and a leader in the revolution party, he on the collapse of the moveruent narrowly escaped with his life. But with the rise of Napoleon, who appointed him his painter in chief, his influence again became paramount, and despite the many phases art has undergone and the innumerable diques into which painters have divided in the interval it is still, modified and touched by reality, a living force in French art. David 's conception of pictorial art was somewhat cold and lifeless. He led his confrères back not to nature, but to antiquity, as expressed in sculpture. Respect for the achievements of the past underlay all his work and paralyzed his