Sharjah: Aladdin Mahmoud
The French painter Jacques Louis David, “1748 1825”, presented elegant and timeless creations. He is one of the most prominent artists of the neoclassical school. He was born into a middle-class family. He studied art at the Royal Academy. In 1774, he won the Rome Prize, after which he traveled to Italy, where he He was influenced by classical art and the work of the seventeenth century artist Nicolas Poussin. And he stayed there for six years, David created a new classic style of his own, and was considered the outstanding photographer of this stage.
David was an active supporter of the French Revolution and a friend of Maximilian Robespierre (1758-1794), and was practically the absolute ruler of the arts under the rule of the French Republic. The artist developed his imperial style, which is characterized by the use of the warm colors of Venice, and after the decline of Napoleon’s imperial authority and the recovery of the Bourbons, David exiled himself to Brussels, then to the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, where he remained until his death, and David had many students, which guaranteed him The strongest influence on French art at the beginning of the nineteenth century, especially academic salon photography, and among his most famous works: “The Fighting Oath,” “Mara’s Death,” “The Sabine Women,” and “Napoleon Crossing the Alps.” David died in Brussels, and one of his most famous students was the Belgian artist François-Joseph Neves.
The painting “Lavozier and his wife” is one of the most prominent and famous works of art by David. Rather, it was considered one of the rare pieces of art that document a historical stage in the life of the French, in addition to documenting two famous personalities in Paris society at the time, namely the scientist Antoine Lavozier, and his wife and assistant, Mary Anne. Pierret, as David was commissioned to paint this painting in 1788, and the artist’s genius, ingenuity, and style that he created through his employment of multiple artistic methods are evident in this work. The painting belongs to the imperial style that David worked on, and added a lot to it, especially with regard to touches and color treatments, and the use of warm colors that are appropriate for depicting scenes of the middle class and aristocracy.
*a description
The painting was painted in oil colors on canvas, and shows the Lavoisier couple, inside the husband’s luxurious office, and the painting monitors the details of the room accurately, there are wooden planks for the floors, marble walls with three classic columns, and many details of the office of an important figure at the time, and in the middle of the painting The couple appears in a position that indicates understanding, serenity, and mutual love between them, as the wife stands in a slanting way towards her husband, and she looks forward, so that the scenes of the painting imagine that she is looking at him, and she wears a dress that belongs to that era from the end of the eighteenth century, and she wears a wig that appears to be colored White, the same color as the dress, with a “lace” collar and a blue belt that wraps her waist, and she leans on her husband’s shoulder with her left hand, and her right hand is leaning on the table.
As for the husband, Antoine Lavoisier, he appears in a sitting position, wearing a black jacket and pants with socks, and shoes that appear to be twisted at the end, and he wears a white shirt, and above him a black lace robe and wears a wig, and his face is towards his wife looking at her with love and tenderness, while his left arm appears placed on the table, and with his right hand he writes something with a quill, while the table is covered with crimson velvet, and there are many newspapers, and a box of jewels, and an inkwell with a number of quills and pens, and a gauge of gas and atmospheric pressure, and a large spherical flask on the floor to the right of the painting, And a number of tools that are used for practical and research purposes, and in the far left of the painting there is a chair with documents and a black robe, and critics note that the position of the couple was unusual in the late eighteenth century, which is different from the traditional standards at the time.
It is noted in the painting that the extreme skill in employing and distributing colors and using lighting in different degrees, so that it appears to the viewer that the scene is completely natural, and the colors used are consistent with the relationship between the loving couple. Love, just before the French Revolution.
*Dignitaries
The importance of the painting is due to the characters that stand out in its scene, as the couple are important and influential figures in the society of that time, and both enjoy intelligence and culture. He was the first to formulate the law of conservation of matter, identify oxygen and name it, and refuted the “phlogiston” theory. He is credited with understanding the role of oxygen in the combustion process, and explaining the composition of air from two gases, the first helps combustion and breathing and called it “the air of life,” and the other He called it “nitrogen”, which later became “nitrogen”, and in 1777 Lavoisier published his research and renamed the element that helps combustion by its name now known as “oxygen”, and Lavoisier is usually referred to as one of the fathers of modern chemistry.
As for the wife, she was also a chemist and a noble lady in French society, and she had a great deal of culture, intelligence, and knowledge, and she continued to help her husband in his chemical studies and discoveries. She also played a pivotal role in translating many scientific researches, and she had a fundamental role in unifying the scientific method. And after the French Revolution, the husband, Antoine Lavoisier, was sentenced to death by hanging, but it was his wife who saved him, and at the trial she applied for his pardon, and the judge refused her request, saying: “The revolution does not need geniuses.” But a colleague of his, Joseph Lagrange, intervened in a decision The judge dissuaded him from that ruling when he told him: “It does not take one minute to cut off Lavoisier’s neck, but 100 years is not enough to compensate us for one like him.” The painting is currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
