I would also say that Beethoven, like David, continued to use form and
traditional mediums from the Classical era in music, but with more personal
flair and freedom. Do you think the same could be said of David?
This question suggests yet another reason that Beethoven tends to be
classified as a Romantic Neoclassicist composer while David tends to be
classified as a Neoclassicist artist whose work shows early Romantic
flourishes. Beethoven began his career with a more controlled use of sound,
while he gradually moved to displays of greater individualism, freedom, and
open emotionalism in his work. In contrast, David's earlier paintings,
especially the work he did that was inspired by the French Revolution, like
"The Death of Marat" shows a favoring of openly emotional themes, albeit
rendered with a formulaic and balanced Neoclassical sense of proportion.
However, as David's career wore on, to the modern eye, his work seems
more and more conservative in its subject and style. His depictions of
Napoleon, although they often have striking and emotional lines in places,
seem heroic in a fairly standard manner rather than challenging to the
status of the emperor in any way, while "Marat" is much more ambiguous in
terms of how the artist feels about the subject. Because David became a
court painter of Napoleon, he could not openly challenge the leader's
beliefs or position of authority. Art in the service of politics to some
extent requires the artist to stifle some of his or her iconoclastic
feelings. Neoclassicism shows a great deal of obedience to form, and as
David's ideology became more obedient to another man's will, he lost rather
than gained freedom as an artist. Unlike Beethoven, his flair and freedom
was dimmed, although he still remained a great artist and a master of his
technique and all of his works have the power to excite and inspire the
viewer, even if they did not challenge the artistic assumptions of the day,
as did Beethoven's later compositions, which often moved listeners to
unexpected tears.
