returned to classical subjects: “Amor quitting Psyche,” “Mars disarmed by Venus,” &c. He rejected the offer, made through Baron Humboldt, of the office of minister of fine arts at Berlin, and remained at Brussels till his death on the 29th of December 1825. His end was true to his whole career and to his nationality. While dying, a print of the Leonidas, one of his favourite subjects, was submitted to him. After vaguely looking at it a long time, “Il n’y a que moi qui pouvais concevoir la tête de Léonidas,” he whispered, and died. His friends and his party thought to carry the body back to his beloved Paris for burial, but the government of the day arrested the procession at the frontier, an act which caused some scandal, and furnished the occasion of a terrible song of Béranger’s.
It is difficult for a generation which has witnessed another complete revolution in the standards of artistic taste to realize the secret of David’s immense popularity in his own day. His style is severely academic, his colour lacking in richness and warmth, his execution hard and uninteresting in its very perfection. Subjects and treatment alike are inspired by the passing fashion of an age which had deceived itself into believing that it was living and moving in the spirit of classical antiquity. The inevitable reaction of the romantic movement made the masterpieces, which had filled the men of the Revolution with enthusiasm, seem cold and lifeless to those who had been taught to expect in art that atmosphere of mystery which in nature is everywhere present. Yet David was a great artist, and exercised in his day and generation a great influence. His pictures are magnificent in their composition and their draughtsmanship; and his keen observation and insight into character are evident, especially in his portraits, notably of Madame Récamier, of the Conventional Gérard and of Boissy d’Anglas.
See E. J. Delécluze, Louis David, son école et son temps (Paris, 1855), and Le Peintre Louis David. Souvenirs et documents inédits, by J. L. Jules David, the painter’s grandson (Paris, 1880).
DAVID, PIERRE JEAN (1789–1856), usually called David
d’Angers, French sculptor, was born at Angers on the 12th of
March 1789. His father was a sculptor, or rather a carver, but
he had thrown aside the mallet and taken the musket, fighting
against the Chouans of La Vendée. He returned to his trade
at the end of the civil war, to find his customers gone, so that
young David was born into poverty. As the boy grew up his
father wished to force him into some more lucrative and certain
way of life. At last he succeeded in surmounting the opposition
to his becoming a sculptor, and in his eighteenth year left for
Paris to study the art upon a capital of eleven francs. After
struggling against want for a year and a half, he succeeded in
taking the prize at the École des Beaux-Arts. An annuity of
600 francs (£24) was granted by the municipality of his native
town in 1809, and in 1811 David’s “Epaminondas” gained the
prix de Rome. He spent five years in Rome, during which his
enthusiasm for the works of Canova was often excessive.
Returning from Rome about the time of the restoration of the Bourbons, he would not remain in the neighbourhood of the Tuileries, which swarmed with foreign conquerors and returned royalists, and accordingly went to London. Here Flaxman and others visited upon him the sins of David the painter, to whom he was erroneously supposed to be related. With great difficulty he made his way to Paris again, where a comparatively prosperous career opened upon him. His medallions and busts were in much request, and orders for monumental works also came to him. One of the best of these was that of Gutenberg at Strassburg; but those he himself valued most were the statue of Barra, a drummer boy who continued to beat his drum till the moment of death in the war in La Vendée, and the monument to the Greek liberator Bozzaris, consisting in a young female figure called “Reviving Greece,” of which Victor Hugo said: “It is difficult to see anything more beautiful in the world; this statue joins the grandeur of Pheidias to the expressive manner of Puget.” David’s busts and medallions were very numerous, and among his sitters may be found not only the illustrious men and women of France, but many others both of England and Germany—countries which he visited professionally in 1827 and 1829. His medallions, it is affirmed, number 500. He died on the 4th of January 1856. David’s fame rests firmly on his pediment of the Panthéon, his monument to General Gobert in Père Lachaise and his marble “Philopoemen” in the Louvre. In the Musée David at Angers is an almost complete collection of his works either in the form of copies or in the original moulds. As an example of his benevolence of character may be mentioned his rushing off to the sickbed of Rouget de Lisle, the author of the “Marseillaise Hymn,” modelling and carving him in marble without delay, making a lottery of the work, and sending to the poet in the extremity of need the seventy-two pounds which resulted from the sale.
See H. Jouin, David d’Angers et ses relations littéraires (1890); Lettres de P. J. David d’Angers à Louis Dupré (Paris, 1891); Collection de portraits des contemporains d’après les médaillons de P. J. David (Paris, 1838).
DAVIDISTS, a fancy name rather than a recognized designation
for three religious sects. It has been applied (1) to the followers (if he had any) of David of Dinant, in Belgium, the teacher or
pupil of Amalric (Amaury) of Bena, both of whom taught apparently
a species of pantheism. David’s Quaterni, or Quaternuli,
condemned and burnt at Paris (1209), is a lost book, known only
by references in Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. Its
author would have been burnt had he not fled. The name has
been given (2) to the followers of David George or Joris (q.v.),
and (3) to the followers of Francis Dávid (1510–1579), the apostle of Transylvanian unitarianism. (See Socinus, Unitarianism.)
DAVIDSON, ANDREW BRUCE (1831–1902), Scottish divine,
was born in 1831 at Kirkhill in Aberdeenshire, where his father
Andrew Davidson had a farm. The Davidsons belonged to the
congregation of James Robertson (1803–1860) of Ellon, one of
the ministers of Strathbogie Presbytery, which in the controversy
which led to the disruption, resisted the “dangerous claims
of the established church to self-government.” When the disruption
came the principles at stake were keenly canvassed in
Ellon, and eventually Andrew Davidson, senior, went with the
Free Church. In 1845 the boy, who had been a “herd” on the
farm, went for six months to the grammar school at Aberdeen
and was there prepared for a university bursary, which was
sufficient to pay his fees, but no more. During his four years at
the university his mother supplied him fortnightly with provisions
from the farm; sometimes she walked the whole twenty
miles from Kirkhill and handed the coach fee to her son. He
graduated in 1849. At the university he had acquired a distrust
of philosophy, and found it difficult to choose between mathematical and linguistic studies. A Free Church school having
been opened in Ellon, he became master there for three years.
Here he developed special aptitude for linguistic and philological
studies. Besides Hebrew he taught himself French, German,
Dutch, Italian and Spanish. In November 1852 he entered New
College, Edinburgh. There he took the four years’ theological
course, and was licensed in 1856. For two years he preached
occasionally and took vacancies. In 1858 the New College
authorities appointed him assistant to the professor of Hebrew.
He taught during the winter, and in the long vacation continued
his preparation for his life work. One year he worked in Germany
under Ewald, another year he went to Syria to study Arabic.
In 1862 he published the first part of a commentary on Job. It
was never finished and deals only with one-third of the book, but
it is recognized as the first really scientific commentary on the
Old Testament in the English language. In 1863 he was appointed
by the general assembly professor of oriental languages at New
College. He was junior colleague of Dr John Duncan (Rabbi
Duncan) till 1870, and then for thirty years sole professor. He
was a member of the Old Testament revision committee, and his
work was recognized by several honorary distinctions, LL.D.
(Aberdeen), D.D. (Edinburgh), Litt.D. (Cambridge). Among
his students were Professors Elmslie, Skinner, Harper of Melbourne, Walker of Belfast, George Adam Smith of Glasgow and
W. Robertson Smith. He understood it to be the first duty of an
exegete to ascertain the meaning of the writer, and he showed
that this could be done by the use of grammar and history and the
historical imagination. He supplied guidance when it was much
