Art Appreciation: Art of the Revolution: From David to Delacroix;

This session examines the turbulent intersection of art and politics during one of the most transformative periods in French history. Spanning the final years of the Ancien Régime through the height of revolutionary fervour and into the early rise of Napoleon, we will explore how visual culture both reflected and shaped the revolutionary imagination. Key figures such as Jacques-Louis David, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Adélaide Labille-Guiard, and Hubert Robert will guide our study, as we investigate how artists navigated shifting allegiances, censorship, and the demand for politically charged imagery.

We’ll consider the stylistic transition from Rococo to Neoclassicism as not merely aesthetic, but deeply ideological part of a broader cultural realignment toward republican values and moral virtue. The session will also explore revolutionary iconoclasm: the destruction of royal and religious symbols, and how this erasure made way for new forms of public art and commemoration.

A key moment in this visual transformation was the opening of the Louvre as a public museum in 1793, symbolising both the democratisation of art and the repurposing of aristocratic collections for the nation. Through artworks, political prints, and cultural policy, we’ll uncover how art was mobilised as a force of both destruction and reconstruction in Revolutionary France.

Finally, as a conclusion we will study Delacroix’s Liberty Guiding the People (1830) and see how it expresses the revolutionary ideals.