Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This fascinating and elegant book tells the story of five painters at the center of events in Revolutionary France: Jacques Louis-David and his extraordinarily precocious pupils Drouais, Girodet, Gerard, and Gros. Written by a major art historian, it interprets in a new and original way the relationships between these men and the paintings they created.
"Crow combines excellent formal and stylistic analysis of particular paintings with close attention to the psychological complexities and political and social contexts of the artists' lives. He delves deeply into David's and his students' thematic choices, compositional strategies and personal relations in order to make his overarching political and aesthetic arguments.... He brings the reader and the viewer into the picture in new and often surprising ways". -- Lynn Hunt, The New Republic