He looked at the world very originally
through and over those round, horn-bowed spectacles of his, with a very
shrewd and very kindly and sympathetic glance, too; quite untinctured
with prejudice or even predisposition. One can read his artistic
isolation in his countenance with a very little exercise of fancy.
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 aesthetic 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.
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