David. From Wikipedia Great Artists - David Jacques-Louis David (30 August 1748 – 29 December 1825) was a highly influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era.
In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward a classical austerity and severity, heightened feeling chiming with the moral climate of the final years of the ancien régime. David later became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), and was effectively a dictator of the arts under the French Republic. Emperor Napoleon In His Study. About Executive Editors Awards & Conferences Contributors Create & Teach.
David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps. Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon Crossing the Alps or Bonaparte at the St Bernard Pass, 1800-1, Oil on canvas, 102" x 87" (260 x 221 cm), Chateau de Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison Some find it stiff and lifeless, proof of David’s ineptness at capturing movement.
Some see it not as art, but propaganda, pure and simple. Some snigger at its overblown, action-packed, cliff-hanging momentousness, with shades of “Hi ho Silver, away!” Some have it down as a sort of beginning of the end moment in David’s career, before he officially became Napoleon’s artist-lackey. Whatever one might say, though (and a lot has been said about Napoleon Crossing the Alps), it is still arguably the most successful portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte that was ever made. Images of Napoleon by Ben Pollitt on Prezi.