Jacques Louis David
JacquesLouis David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward a classical austerity and severity, heightened feeling harmonizing with the moral climate of the final years of the Ancien Rgime.
JacquesLouis David was born into a prosperous family in Paris onAugust 1748. When he was about nine his father was killed in a duel and his mother left him with his welloff architect uncles. They saw to it that he received an excellent education at the Collge des QuatreNations, University of Paris, but he was never a good student he had a facial tumor that impeded his speech, and he was always preoccupied with drawing. He covered his notebooks with drawings, and he once said, I was always hiding behind the instructors chair, drawing for the duration of the class. Soon, he desired to be a painter, but his uncles and mother wanted him to be an architect. He overcame the opposition, and went to learn from Franois Boucher , the leading painter of the time, who was also a distant relative. Boucher was a Rococo painter, but tastes were changing, and the fashion for Rococo was giving way to a more classical style. Boucher decided that instead of taking over Davids tutelage, he would send
Source: Wikipedia