Advisor: Karen Lloyd

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Marat, 1793

Jacques-Louis David, the pageant-master of the first French Republic and Napoleon’s court painter, is a famed neoclassical artist. Works like the Death of Socrates, The Oath of Horatti, and the Invention of the Sabine Women have immortalized the great artist and have subjected his works to countless studies by art historians. One such work is The Death of Marat. Jean-Paul Marat was an avid revolutionary and writer who claimed himself the friend of the people. His pamphlet, L’Ami du Peuple, conveyed radical rhetoric that garnered supporters like David and enemies like Charlotte Corday. His assassination inspired the National Convention to call upon David to immortalize the martyr through painting. A work as old and iconic as Marat has years of studies to its name. It is to be expected, at the very least, the genre of such a work to be defined. In the late eighteenth century, Marat was placed alongside David’s great history paintings. Yet, at the beginning of the late twentieth-century contemporary art historians have declared it a portrait. This paper explores the shift in Marat’s classification and how this masterful work reveals how genre affects one’s understanding of a painting. 

ARH Senior Honors Project- Defying the lines of Painting What is The Death of Marat