Neo-Classicism Paintings & Artworks

Featured Neo-Classicism Fine Artists

Jacques-Louis David was born in 1748 in Paris, France. He initially planned to study painting under the Rococo master Francois Boucher, but Boucher passed him onto Joseph-Marie Vien, a relatively minor artist, but whose classical style influenced David's development as a Neo-Classicist. After winning the Prix de Rome in 1774, he studied for five years in Italy, where he was able to observe the Renaissance masters, as well as the ruins of Rome and Pompeii. Even though the king had granted him the privilege of living in the Louvre, and he had gained support and patronage from the established order, David was an early supporter of the French Revolution and voted in the National Assembly to send Louis the XVI to the guillotine. After the Reign of Terror was over, he switched his allegiance to Napoleon. He died in 1825 at the age of 76 while living in exile in Brussels, Belgium. [More...]

Jean-Auguste-Dominque Ingres was born in 1780 in Montauben, in southwest France. He died in 1867 in Paris at the age of 87. His father was a painter of miniatures and it was from him that Ingres gained his early art training. During the Revolution, his father took him to Toulouse, where he studied at the Royal Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. After 1797, he studied under Jacques-Louis David. Ingres didn't achieve critical acclaim until 1824, when he was seen as the supporter of the classical ideal over against the Romanticism of Eugene Delacroix and Theodore Gericault. Among Ingres' students were Theodore Chasseriau, Henri Lehman, and Hippolyte Flandrin. Degas, Matisse and Picasso all expressed a debt to Ingres' influence. [More...]