THE “CORONATION” PICTURE
When Napoleon rose to power, David became his favourite painter. The erstwhile Jacobin was chosen to paint the official Coronation picture (No. 202a), an enormous canvas, which, like most ceremonial pictures of this kind, has more historical than artistic significance. The lifelike portraiture of the numerous personages surrounding the central group of Napoleon placing the crown on Josephine’s head, is the chief point of interest. On the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815, David was sent into exile. He died at Brussels in 1825; but his influence is reflected in official French art to this day. It was he who imposed upon the modern academic school a rigid canon of formal classic beauty which is fatal to evolution and progress, because it does not permit personal emotional expression.
Less severely classic in form, and showing at least an attempt at approaching a little nearer to truth than David, is the painting of the figures of The Three Graces (No. 769), by David’s rival, J. B. Regnault (1754–1829), in the La Caze collection. The worst type of academic art is represented in the bituminous reconstructions of classic antiquity by his pupil, P. N. Guérin (1774–1833), whose Return of Marcus Sextus (No. 393) enjoyed, perhaps owing to its supposed political allusion to the return of the emigrants, a success which cannot be accounted for on artistic grounds.
PLATE XLV.—JACQUES LOUIS DAVID
(1748–1825)
No. 199.—PORTRAIT OF MME. RÉCAMIER
(Portrait de Mme. Récamier)
The sitter wears a white Empire dress, the train of which hangs down to the ground from the Empire sofa on which she is half reclining, with her left elbow resting on a pair of round horse-hair bolsters. Her face is turned towards her right shoulder. A wide black riband is tied round her fair curled hair. A low footstool in front of the sofa on the right, and a standing candelabrum of classic design on the left.
The candelabrum is said to have been painted by Ingres.
Painted in oil on canvas (unfinished).
5 ft. 7 in. × 7 ft. 10½ in. (1·70 × 2·40.)