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| Jacques Louis David |
They saw to it that he received an excellent education, but he was never a good student; he had a tumor that obstructed his speech, and he was always too busy drawing. Soon he wanted to become a painter, but his uncles and mother desired him to be a soldier.
He overcame their opposition, and became the pupil of François Boucher, who was a distant relative and a leading painter of the time. As Boucher was a Rococo painter (which was falling out of style at that time), he decided it would be better to send David to his friend Joseph-Marie Vien, a painter that embraced the classical reaction to Rococo.
David attended the Royal Academy, based in what is now the Louvre. David tried to win the Prix de Rome for four times. Once, he lost, according to legend, because a few other students had been competing for years, and the jury felt David’s education could wait for these other mediocre painters. In protest to this decision, David attempted to starve himself to death. In 1774, he finally won the Prix de Rome. Before leaving for Italy, he felt that the ancient style had become irrelevant, but while in Italy, David observed the Italian masterpieces, and the ruins of ancient Rome.
He filled sketchbooks with studies that he would derive from for the rest of his life. While in Rome, he studied great masters, and came to favor above all others Raphael. After his experience in Rome, he sought to revolutionize the art world with the eternal concepts of classicism.