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Portrait of André-Antoine Bernard, called Bernard de Saintes

Creator

French Artist · 1748–1825

Jacques-Louis David studied drawing and the literary classics before being accepted into the Académie Royale at the young age of eighteen. After eight years of struggle, he finally won the coveted Prix de Rome. Visits to ruins, exposure to Neoclassical doctrines, and study of Nicolas Poussin's classicism encouraged him to adopt a style and subject matter derived from antiquity. Returning in Paris

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Date: July 24, 1795
Medium: Pen and black ink and brush and gray wash over graphite, heightened with white opaque watercolor, on paper
Culture: French
Department: Drawings
Institution: Getty Museum

During the French Revolution, Jacques-Louis David was imprisoned twice for his support of Robespierre and for signing arrest warrants while serving as a member of the Committee for Public Safety. While in prison, David made numerous portrait drawings of fellow prisoners, one of which is this drawing of André-Antoine Bernard, known as Bernard des Saintes, a lawyer who was eventually exiled for voting to execute Louis XVI. The portrait conveys the intensity of his subject's political beliefs. Bernard, who was forty-four at the time, poses stiffly in a high-backed chair with his arms folded resolutely across his chest. David captured the lawyer's forceful character in the determined set of his mouth, his fixed gaze, and his strong profile.

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