VI

It is the fashion to think of David as the painter of the Revolution and
the Empire. Really he is Louis Seize. Historical critics say that he had
no fewer than four styles, but apart from obvious labels they would be
puzzled to tell to which of these styles any individual picture of his
belongs. He was from the beginning extremely, perhaps absurdly,
enamoured of the antique, and we usually associate addiction to the
antique with the Revolutionary period. But perhaps politics are slower
than the æsthetic movement; David's view of art and practice of painting
were fixed unalterably under the reign of philosophism. Philosophism, as
Carlyle calls it, is the ruling spirit of his work. Long before the
Revolution--in 1774--he painted what is still his most characteristic
picture--"The Oath of the Horatii." His art developed and grew
systematized under the Republic and the Empire; but Napoleon, whose
genius crystallized the elements of everything in all fields of
intellectual effort with which he occupied himself, did little but
formally "consecrate," in French phrase, the art of the painter of "The
Oath of the Horatii" and the originator and designer of the "Fête" of
Robespierre's "Être Suprême." Spite of David's subserviency and that of
others, he left painting very much where he found it. And he found it in
a state of reaction against the Louis Quinze standards. The break with
these, and with everything _régence_, came with Louis Seize, Chardin
being a notable exception and standing quite apart from the general
drift of the French æsthetic movement; and Greuze being only a
pseudo-romanticist, and his work a variant of, rather than reactionary
from, the artificiality of his day. Before painting could "return to
nature," before the idea and inspiration of true romanticism could be