VIII.

Neoclassical Painting

A revolution in painting took place in the latter half of the 18th century, as chaste neoclassicism superseded the exuberant rococo style. This classical revival in the arts was brought about by several occurrences. First, much archaeological excavation began to be done in the mid-18th century in Italy and Greece; books were published containing drawings of ancient buildings, which were eagerly copied by English and French architects. Second, in 1755 the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann published his influential essay Gedanken über die Nachahmung der Griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture), praising Greek sculpture. This work impressed, among others, four foreign artists living in Rome. They were the Scotsman Gavin Hamilton, the German Anton Raphael Mengs, the Swiss Angelica Kauffmann, and the American Benjamin West; all were inspired to create paintings with themes based on classical literature.

It was, however, a French painter—Jacques-Louis David—who became the leading proponent of neoclassicism. He, too, was imbued with classical influences from his stay in Rome, as well as from an earlier source, the paintings of Poussin, the 17th-century French classicist. David's sober style was in harmony with the ideals of the French Revolution. Such a painting as the Oath of the Horatii (1784-1785, Louvre) inspired patriotism; others, such as the Death of Socrates (1787, Metropolitan Museum), preached stoicism and self-sacrifice. Not only did David's subject matter have its sources in ancient history and classical myth, but the form of his figures was based on ancient sculpture. David's great successor was Jean-August-Dominique Ingres, whose cool serenity of line and tone and painstaking attention to details—as in his striking portrait La comtesse d'Haussonville (1845, Frick Collection, New York City)—became identified with the academic tradition in France. Nevertheless, elements of the romantic trend soon to succeed neoclassicism can be found in Ingres's interest in non-European subjects, as demonstrated by several paintings of odalisques (concubines or women in a harem).

Among the many other French painters influenced by David were several women who figured prominently among his followers. Some of the most outstanding were Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Marie Guillemine Benoist, and Constance Marie Charpentier. Some of the works of these painters have in the past been mistakenly attributed to David; recent scholarship has been attempting to identify their individual contributions. See Neoclassical Art and Architecture.