Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France

by Thomas E. Crow

This book puts the life of the artist at the centre of innovative art history, narrating a biography of five painters at the centre of events in Revolutionary France: Jacques Louis-David and his extraordinarily precocious pupils Drouais, Girodet, Gerard, and Gros. Their shared ambition was to build an alternative, exalted life in art, one committed to rigorous classical erudition while suffused with the emotional depth of familial bonds. In this experiment of enlightened teaching, the roles of master and pupil were frequently reversed. Thomas Crow tells how the personal histories and aesthetic choices of these artists were played out within the larger arena in which a whole social order was being overturned, a king embodying all patriarchal authority was put to death, and a republic of equal male brotherhood was proclaimed.

Genres: Art, Art History, Nonfiction

366 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Nico · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recounts the stories and most important artworks of some of the most important French Neoclassicists, examining their work through a biographical perspective. The first half of the book is more focused on David and Drouais, and the second spends a fair amount of pages on Girodet and how the former affected him. There’s also a chapter at the very end about Gericault, which I very much enjoyed.

I knocked off one star because of what I (and actual scholars, see James Smalls’s article “Making Trouble for Art History: The Queer Case of Girodet” for example) believe is an overly heteronormative judgement of some of the major works featured. The Sleep of Endymion is homoerotic at the same time as it is everything else Crow describes it as, for one, and these artists were much less rigidly heterosexual than Crow discusses here. However, this book is from 1995, and scholarship on the homoeroticism of the period really wasn’t very far along yet.

Regardless of that issue, Emulation is a deeply important piece of scholarship on its subjects which deserves its place in the bibliographies of so many articles, essays, and books that have followed in its wake.

[Robert Lukins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great on David; brilliant on the period.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting scholarly approach to the studio of David. His use of biography as evidence of his arguments is coupled with in depth discussion of social, political and institutional history. The book is a compelling argument for using biography as source material!

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another book I read part way in graduate school for a class, and I think I appreciate even more now.