698 



DAVID 



DAVIDSON 



and complete. David was declared a master at 

 once, ana his Desert was performed in all the 

 theatres. Subsequently, he travelled through 

 Belgium and Germany, and was everywhere 

 greeted with applause. Less successful works 

 were Mo'ise sur le Sinai ( 1846), Christophe Colombe 

 and Le Paradis (1847), La Perle du Bresil 

 (1851), Herculaneum (1859), and Lalla Rookh 

 (1862). He composed also a quartette for strings, 

 a nonette, a symphony, and songs. Appointed 

 an officer of the Legion of Honour in 1862, and 

 in 1869 librarian to the Paris Conservatoire de 

 Musique, David died 29th August 1876. 



David. FERDINAND, a distinguished violin 

 virtuoso, born 19th June 1810, at Hamburg, was 

 from thirteen a pupil of Spohr at Cassel, and 

 became in 1836 concertmeister at Leipzig, which 

 place he kept till his death at Klosters in the 

 Grisons, 19th July 1873. His remarkable talent 

 for teaching his instrument he showed after the 

 establishment of the Leipzig Conservatorium, and 

 many of the best violinists of his time were his 

 pupils. His compositions were equally esteemed. 



David, GERHARD, painter, born about 1450, 

 at Oudewater in Holland, in 1484 entered the 

 Painters' Guild of Bruges, of which he became 

 dean in 1501. He died in Bruges in 1523. The 

 National Gallery, London, contains an admirable 

 example of his work in ' A Canon and his Patron 

 Saints,' a wing from an altarpiece ; and among his 

 other pictures are a Madonna, in the museum at 

 Rome ; a Crucifixion, in Berlin ; and a Baptism of 

 Christ and a Descent from the Cross, both at Bruges. 



David, JACQUES Louis, historical painter, was 

 born at Paris, 31st August 1748. He received 

 his first instruction from Boucher, his uncle, 

 and at the age of twenty-one became a pupil 

 of Vien. After several unsuccessful attempts ne 

 gained the ' prix de Rome ' in 1774, and in the 

 following year he settled in Rome, where Vien had 

 been appointed director of the French Academy. 

 Here he produced little in colour, but devoted him- 

 self to making accurate drawings from the antique. 

 Six years later he returned to France, and his 

 'Belisarius' (1780) procured his admission to the 

 Academy. Soon afterwards he married, and again 

 visited Italy and also Flanders. It is in the works 

 executed during this period, such as the celebrated 

 ' Oath of the Horatii ' ( 1784 ), ' The Death of Socrates ' 

 ( 1788), ' The Loves of Paris and Helen ' ( 1788), and 

 'Brutus condemning his Son' (1789), that the 

 classical feeling founded upon sculpture and 

 possessing much of its hardness as well as its clear- 

 cut accuracy of form which was the painter's chief 

 characteristic is first clearly visible. During the 

 Revolution David entered with enthusiasm into 

 the political conflicts of the period. In 1792 he 

 became a representative for Paris in the Con- 

 vention. He voted for the death of Louis XVI., 

 and was a member of the Committee of Public 

 Safety ; and he was the artistic director of the 

 great national fetes of the republic, which were 

 Founded on classical customs. After the death 

 of Robespierre he was twice imprisoned, and nar- 

 rowly escaped with his life. On his release in 

 1795 he devoted himself to his art, producing 'The 

 Rape of the Sabines' (1799), which is usually 

 ranked as his masterpiece. He was an original 

 member of the Institute, and in 1804 was appointed 

 court painter by Napoleon. After the restoration 

 of the Bourbons, he was banished in 1816 as a 

 regicide, and retired to Brussels, where, having 

 declined an invitation to unde/take the director- 

 ship of Fine Arts at Berlin, he died, 29th Decem- 

 ber 1825. 



David's productions are distinguished by a cer- 

 tain austere dignity of conception and by elaborate 



accuracy of form. On the other hand they are 

 often cold and unreal in sentiment, unpleasantly 

 monotonous in colouring, and defective in their 

 arrangements of light and shade. His art and 

 example exercised the most powerful effect upon 

 the French school of painting ; among his pupils 

 were Girodet, Gros, Leopold Robert, Ingres, and 

 Gerard ; and the classicism which he introduced 

 reigned supreme until the rise of the Romantic 

 school headed by Gericault and Delacroix. The 

 influence which in his later days he exercised upon 

 the school of Belgium was hardly less marked and 

 powerful. Fourteen of his works are in the Louvre, 

 and five including ' Bonaparte crossing the Alps ' 

 (1805) are at Versailles. See Le Pemtre David, 

 by his grandson, J. L. Jules David (1880). 



David, PIERRE JEAN, a French sculptor, known 

 as David d'Angers, was born at Angers, 12th March 

 1789. In spite of the opposition of his father, a 

 talented wood-carver, he resolved to become an 

 artist ; and after studying in the art schools of 

 his native town, he made his way on foot to Paris 

 in 1808, and placed himself under Jacques Louis 

 David, the painter. In 1811 his 'Death of Epami- 

 nondas' gained the 'grand prix,' and David pro- 

 ceeded to Rome, where, though he became intimate 

 with Canova, he preserved his own individuality, 

 and produced works modern in feeling and full of 

 strongly marked character. In 1816 he returned 

 to France. A statue of the Great Conde, which 

 he executed about this time, established his repu- 

 tation. In 1826 he was named a member of the 

 Institute, and appointed a professor in the School 

 of the Fine Arts ; in 1828, and again in 1834, he 

 visited Germany. During the July revolution, 

 David fought in the ranks of the people, and in 

 consequence he was employed by the new govern- 

 ment to execute the pediment of the Pantheon 

 (1835-37). By many it is considered his chef 

 d'ceuvre. In 1848 the well-known republicanism 

 of the artist procured for him the honour of a seat 

 in the Constituent Assembly. After the coup d'ttat 

 he was sent into exile, and went to Greece, but 

 soon after returned to France. He died 5th 

 January 1856. In the museum of Angers about 

 two hundred of David's works in relief and the round 

 are preserved, as well as some four hundred of his 

 medallions and many of his drawings. Besides its 

 artistic value this collection possesses the greatest 

 historical interest, as including portraits of the 

 most eminent of the sculptor's contemporaries. 

 See his Life by Jouin (1878). 



Davidson, ANDREW BRUCE, D.D., LL.D., 



born in Aberdeenshire in 1831, was educated at 

 Marischal College, Aberdeen, and at the Free 

 Church College, Edinburgh, where in 1863 he 

 was appointed to the chair of Hebrew and Old 

 Testament exegesis. In this capacity he has 

 since laboured quietly, but has exercised a quite 

 unusual personal influence upon his students, 

 and through them has done much to leaven the 

 Free Church with a critical spirit that is fearless 

 in method, but reverent in spirit, and in the best 

 sense conservative of the real essentials of faith. 

 With a singular reticence and self-repression, Dr 

 Davidson, beyond an occasional sermon or article 

 in the Expositor, has seldom spoken outside his 

 lecture-room, and has published little, and that 

 rather suggestive than demonstrative of his power 

 as an exegete. He was throughout a member 

 of the Old Testament Revision Committee. His 

 books are a short treatise on Hebrew accentuation 

 (1861), an unfinished commentary on Job (1862), 

 a thoroughly serviceable Introductory Hebrew 

 Grammar (1874), and admirable short school Com- 

 mentaries on Job, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and 

 Ezekiel. 



