Painting of the week - Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his Wife by David

Jacques-Louis David, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his Wife, 1788

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
(Source)

Walking up the staircase of the Met and entering into the rooms displaying European Art, I'll admit I'm a big enough of a nerd to have gasped when I saw this painting. One of the great scientists of the Enlightenmnent, Lavoisier was involved in the development of stoichiometry and metric system, disproved phlogiston theory, and probably most famously determined that water consisted of hydrogen and oxygen. The inclusion of his wife in this portrait is also significant. A trained painter and student of David, she also assisted in his experiments, made drawings of his equipment, and most importantly kept strict records which validated a lot of the work.

David was one of the pioneers of Neoclassicism in Pre- and Post-Revolutionary France, and you can see that his style differs greatly from the Rococo, profiled in last week's painting. David and his work are intricately linked with the French Revolution. As a friend of Robespierre, he acted as an official artist, producing pictorial propaganda such as the portrait of a Marat dead in his bath and completed a sketch of Marie-Antoinette on her way to the guillotine. One of the great ironies of this painting is that while David was a supporter of the Revolution, Lavoisier was one of its famous victims - he was guillotined in 1794 for being a tax collector.