'Empire to Exile:' history through art

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - His horse is wild-eyed and muscular, a gallant force galloping toward a mountain top as soldiers in the background push a cannon alongside a rocky ledge.\nBut the horseman himself is a study in calm. His right hand is stretched above the horse's mane and his smooth face looks confident. A golden-sheathed sword dangles alongside his impeccable uniform.\nHe is Napoleon Bonaparte, framed by the painter Jacques-Louis David in a scene that reinterprets the general crossing the Alps to invade Italy.\nThe painting was commissioned by the king of Spain, who thought a flattering portrait would curry enough favor to keep Napoleon from taking over his country.\n"Bonaparte Crossing the Alps" was a nice gesture, but it didn't work. Napoleon, who later would crown himself emperor, soon crossed the Pyrenees and conquered Spain.\n"Empire to Exile," an exhibit of David's work on view at the Clark Art Institute through Sept. 5, traces Napoleon's rise from general to emperor in the early 19th century and ends with the painter's work that was done when he left France.\nIt's a collection of both stunning artwork and political propaganda. Take, for example, "Bonaparte Crossing the Alps." Despite its overwhelming majesty and the details David painted into the general and his stallion, the painter had a few things off.\nFor one, the portrait doesn't really look like Napoleon. And the general actually traversed the Alps on the back of a mule, not a fiery steed.\n"He wasn't trying to capture historical accuracy as much as he was concentrating on painting Napoleon as a conquering hero," said Michael Cassin, the Clark's curator of education.\nDavid's political and artistic careers had long been intertwined. Active in the French Revolution, he was frequently commissioned to design banners for revolutionary parades and create paintings to inspire the political upheaval. But his revolutionary commitment landed him more than commissions. He was imprisoned for a year in 1794, and took advantage of the time to try reasserting himself as a painter.\nIn a self portrait he painted while in jail, David -- who hides an embarrassing facial tumor -- is clutching a paintbrush and palette, as if defining himself as an artist instead of a politico. Still, France -- and more important, Napoleon -- recognized him as both. He left prison as one of Europe's leading artists, and when Napoleon became emperor, he gave David the title of First Painter.\nThe neoclassical works he began churning out soon influenced French society and style. The designs he used to paint his subjects' clothing and their surroundings were soon copied by furniture makers and clothing designers.\n"When Napoleon became emperor, David became a kind of visual czar," Cassin said. "He was not only the person who recorded Napoleon's victories, he also created the visualization of everything to do with Napoleon's style."\nWithin years of giving himself the title of emperor, Napoleon's image moved from warrior to statesman.\n"Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries," which was commissioned in 1811 by a Scottish nobleman, still shows Napoleon as a military man. He's clad in a dress uniform as his sword is cradled in a chair, still within easy reach. But just as noticeable as his weapon is a draft of the Code Napoleon, which became the cornerstone of French law.\nA clock behind him shows the time at almost quarter past four, and the candles in the rooms are burned down to the last of their wax.\nWithin a few years, France would be invaded by a new European alliance, and Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba. He returned to France in 1815, but went into exile again after his defeat at Waterloo at the hands of the British general Wellington.\nAfter Napoleon's fall, David moved to Brussels, where he began painting portraits of fellow exiles. While some of his subjects still proudly wear their French uniforms, the paintings are more austere than his earlier works. He seems to meet his subjects eye-to-eye, many of their gazes staring straight off the canvas.\nDavid also spent his later years painting mythological scenes, sometimes using his new political contacts as his models. In "Cupid and Psyche," he had the son of an American diplomat to pose as a nude, winged Cupid awkwardly leaving a bed he shared with Psyche. The painting offended some critics who were put off by David's depiction of Cupid as a gangly teenager coupled with placid and serene lover. But the work, although not traditional, captures the essence of Cupid's representation of love's physical side, while his Psyche embodies love's emotional aspect.\nLike his interpretation of Napoleon about to invade Italy, David also took liberties at delivering the stories in his later works.\n"He's like a contemporary moviemaker who rethinks an old story and puts a new twist on it," Cassin said.