VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents a MFAH Special Lecture -Rivals, Rebels, and Revolutionaries in Jacques-Louis David´s Studio, 1785-1816, Sunday, May 1, 2011, at 3:00 pm, in the American General Conference Roo of the Audrey Jones Beck Building. Presented by Dr. Kathryn Calley Galitz, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

No sooner had the paint dried on Jacques-Louis David´s Oath of the Horatii of 1784—a work that became an icon of Revolutionary brotherhood—before a group of his students were vying with one another for their master´s favor and with the master himself, challenging his supremacy as the preeminent painter of the era. Others rebelled by subverting David´s Neoclassical ideal and sowing the seeds of Romanticism.

The dramas that played out in David´s studio provide the backdrop against which Dr. Kathryn Calley Galitz will consider works by David and a constellation of his most gifted students, including Gérard, Girodet, and Gros, who became the leading artists of their generation.

This lecture is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Antiquity Revived: Neoclassical Art in the Eighteenth Century, on view at the MFAH through May 30, 2011.  This program is open to the public and free with general museum admission. Seating is limited.

A reception to meet the speaker follows the program.

Image: Jacques-Louis David, French, 1748-1825, The Oath of the Horatii, 1786,  Oil on canvas, Lent by the Toledo Museum of Art; Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey. (detail above, full image below).