Why was Jacques-Louis David so determined to keep his drawings to himself?
Michael Prodger | Apollo | 25th February 2022
David was the “de facto official painter of the French Revolution”. His stern paintings shaped public perceptions of those dramatic events and then Bonaparte’s reign. Not only did he freely deploy art as propaganda, but his severe neoclassicism helped finish off frivolous rococo, setting French art on a new path. The clarity David achieved in his paintings owed much to detailed preparatory drawings – and a willingness to make his art unmistakably political.
