David I. (d. 1203), a son of Prince Owen Gwynedd (d. 1169), came into prominence as a leader of the Welsh during the expedition of Henry II. in 1157. In 1170 he became lord of Gwynedd (i.e. the district around Snowdon), but some regarded him as a bastard, and Gwynedd was also claimed by other members of his family. After fighting with varying fortunes he sought an ally in the English king, whom he supported during the baronial rising in 1173; then after this event he married Henry’s half-sister Emma. But his enemies increased in power, and about 1194 he was driven from Wales by the partisans of his half-brother Llewelyn ab Iorwerth. The chronicler Benedictus Abbas calls David rex, and Rhuddlan castle was probably the centre of his vague authority.
David II. (c. 1208-1246) was a son of the great Welsh prince, Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, and through his mother Joanna was a grandson of King John. He married an English lady, Isabella de Braose, and, having been recognized as his father’s heir both by Henry III. and by the Welsh lords, he had to face the hostility of his half-brother Gruffydd, whom he seized and imprisoned in 1239. When Llewelyn died in April 1240, David, who had already taken some part in the duties of government, was acknowledged as a prince of North Wales, doing homage to Henry III. at Gloucester. However, he was soon at variance with the English king, who appears to have espoused the cause of the captive Gruffydd. Henry’s Welsh campaign in 1241 was bloodless but decisive. Gruffydd was surrendered to him; David went to London and made a full submission, but two or three years later he was warring against some English barons on the borders. To check the English king he opened negotiations with Innocent IV., doubtless hoping that the pope would recognize Wales as an independent state, but here, as on the field of battle, Henry III. was too strong for him. Just after Henry’s second campaign in Wales the prince died in March 1246.
David III. (d. 1283) was a son of Gruffydd and thus a nephew of David II. His life was mainly spent in fighting against his brother, the reigning prince, Llewelyn ab Gruffydd. His first revolt took place in 1254 or 1255, and after a second about eight years later he took refuge in England, returning to Wales when Henry III. made peace with Llewelyn in 1267. Then about 1274 the same process was repeated. David attended Edward I. during the Welsh expedition of 1277, receiving from the English king lands in North Wales; but in 1282 he made peace with Llewelyn and suddenly attacked the English garrisons, a proceeding which led to Edward’s final conquest of Wales. After Llewelyn’s death in December 1282 David maintained the last struggle of the Welsh for independence. All his efforts, however, were vain; in June 1283 he was betrayed to Edward, was tried by a special court and sentenced to death, and was executed with great barbarity at Shrewsbury in October 1283. As the last native prince of Wales, David’s praises have been sung by the Welsh bards, but his character was not attractive, and a Welsh historian says “his life was the bane of Wales.”
DAVID, FÉLICIEN (1810-1876), French composer, was born on the 13th of April 1810 at Cadenet, in the department of Vaucluse. As a child he showed unusual musical precocity, and being early left an orphan he was admitted into the choir of Saint Sauveur at Aix. He was for a time employed in an attorney’s office, but quitted his service to become chef d’orchestre in the theatre at Aix, and chapel-master at Saint Sauveur. Then he went to Paris, being provided with £100 a year by a rich uncle. After having studied for a while at the Paris Conservatoire, he joined the sect of Saint Simonians, and in 1833 travelled in the East in order to preach the new doctrine. After three years’ absence, during which Constantinople and Smyrna were visited and some time was spent in Egypt, he returned to France and published a collection of Oriental Melodies. For several years he worked in retirement, and wrote two symphonies, some chamber music and songs. On the 8th of December 1844 he suddenly leapt into fame through the extraordinary success obtained by his symphonic ode Le Désert, which was produced at the Conservatoire. In this work David had struck out a new line. He had attempted in simple strains to evoke the majestic stillness of the desert. Notwithstanding its title of “symphonic ode,” Le Désert has little in common with the symphonic style. What distinguishes it is a certain naïveté of expression and an effective oriental colouring. In this last respect David may be looked upon as the precursor of a whole army of composers. His succeeding works, Moïse au Sinai (1846), Christophe Colomb (1847), L’Éden (1848), scarcely bore out the promise shown in Le Désert, although the second of these compositions was successful at the time of its production. David now turned his attention to the theatre, and produced the following operas in succession: La Perle du Brésil (1851), Herculanum (1859), Lalla-Roukh (1862), Le Saphir (1865). Of these, Lalla-Roukh is the one which has obtained the greatest success. In 1868 he gained the award of the French Institute for the biennial prize given by the emperor; and in 1869 he was made librarian at the Conservatoire instead of Berlioz, whom subsequently he succeeded as a member of the Institute. He died at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on the 29th of August 1876. If David can scarcely be placed in the first rank of French composers, he nevertheless deserves the consideration due to a sincere artist, who was undoubtedly inspired by lofty ideals. At a time when the works of Berlioz were still unappreciated by the majority of people, David succeeded in making the public take interest in music of a picturesque and descriptive kind. Thus he may be considered as one of the pioneers of modern French musical art.
DAVID, GERARD [Gheeraert Davit], (?-1523), Netherlands painter, born at Oudewater in Holland between 1450 and 1460, was the last great master of the Bruges school. He was only rescued from complete oblivion in 1860-1863 by Mr W. J. H. Weale, whose researches in the archives of Bruges brought to the light the main facts of the master’s life. We have now documentary evidence that David came to Bruges in 1483, presumably from Haarlem, where he had formed his early style under the tuition of Ouwater; that he joined the gild of St Luke at Bruges in 1484 and became dean of the gild in 1501; that he married in 1496 Cornelia Cnoop, daughter of the dean of the Goldsmiths’ gild; became one of the leading citizens of the town; died on the 13th of August 1523; and was buried in the Church of Our Lady at Bruges. In his early work he had followed the Haarlem tradition as represented by Dirck Bouts, Ouwater and Geertgen of Haarlem, but already gave evidence of his superior power as colourist. To this early period belong the “St John” of the Kaufmann collection in Berlin, and Mr Salting’s “St Jerome.” In Bruges he applied himself to the study and the copying of the masterpieces by the Van Eycks, Van der Weyden, and Van der Goes, and came under the direct influence of the master whom he followed most closely, Hans Memlinc. From him he acquired the soulful intensity of expression, the increased realism in the rendering of the human form and the orderly architectonic arrangement of the figures. Yet another master was to influence him later in life when, in 1515, he visited Antwerp and became impressed with the life and movement of Quentin Matsys, who had introduced a more intimate and more human conception of sacred themes. David’s “Pietà” in the National Gallery, and the “Descent from the Cross,” in the Cavallo collection, Paris (Guildhall, 1906), were painted under this influence and are remarkable for their dramatic movement. But the works on which David’s fame will ever rest most securely are the great altar-pieces executed by him before his visit to Antwerp—the “Marriage of St Catherine,” at the National Gallery; the triptych of the “Madonna Enthroned and Saints” of the Brignole-Sale collection in Genoa; the “Annunciation” of the Sigmaringen collection; and, above all, the “Madonna with Angels and Saints” which he painted gratuitously for the Carmelite Nuns of Sion at Bruges, and which is now in the Rouen museum. Only a few of his works have remained in Bruges—“The Judgment of Cambyses,” “The Flaying of Sisamnes” and the “Baptism of Christ” in the Town museum, and the “Transfiguration” in the Church of Our Lady. The rest were scattered all over the world, and to this may be due the oblivion into which his very name had fallen—partly to this, and partly to the fact that with all the beauty and soulfulness of his work he had no new page to add to the history of the progressive development of art, and even in his best work only gave new variations of the tunes sung by his great precursors and contemporaries. That he is worthy to rank among the masters was only revealed to the world when a considerable number of his paintings were assembled at Bruges on the occasion of the exhibition of early Flemish masters in 1902. At the time of his death the glory of Bruges, and also of the Bruges school, was on the wane, and Antwerp had taken the leadership in art as in political and commercial importance. Of David’s pupils in Bruges, only Isenbrandt, A. Cornelis and Ambrosius Benson achieved importance. Among other Flemish painters Joachim Patinir and Mabuse were to some degree influenced by him.
Eberhard Freiherr von Bodenhausen published in 1905 a very comprehensive monograph on Gerard David and his School (Munich, F. Bruckmann), together with a catalogue raisonné of his works, which, after careful sifting, are reduced to the number of forty-three.
(P. G. K.)