EXTENSION ACTIVITIES –

Jacques-Louis David’s ‘Oath of the Tennis Court’, 1791

Read the discussion of Jacques-Louis-David’s ‘Oath of the Tennis Court’ (1791) on

p. 3-8 of this handout. Then complete the following extension activities:

1. One of the big problems which faced David as the Revolution progressed was that

many of the figures to whom he had given prominence in the 1791 drawing fell from

favour as political conditions changed. Using Liberating France (including the Who’s

Who) and other sources, find out what happened to Mounier, Mirabeau, Bailly,

Barère, Barnave, and Robespierre. Then research the clergymen, Abbé Grégoire

and Abbé Sieyès.

2. David alludes to the popular movement which became known as the sans-culottes

through the strong and robust figure in the red bonnet of liberty in the lower left hand

corner. Referring to Liberating France (including the Section B Timeline), write a

paragraph to outline the role played by the sans-culottes movement from 10 August

1792 until the days of Germinal and Prairial Year III, (1 April and 20-23 May 1795).

3. Using Liberating France (including the Who’s Who) and other sources, outline

David’s revolutionary career – both as a painter and as a politician. In your answer

consider the importance his paintings and drawings 1789-1795, and his role in

organising public ceremonies. Then investigate his political activities as a deputy in

the National Convention.

4. David uses at least eight revolutionary ideas in his 1791 study of the Tennis Court

Oath. Locate them and any other revolutionary ideas not mentioned in the summary

above. Where did these ideas come from and how did they develop through the

revolutionary period? How far did the revolution stray from some of these

foundational principles? To track these ideas it is useful to refer to a number of key

documents, including the Constitutions and some of the laws. Set your answer up in

a summary table like the one below:

Revolutionary

principle

shown in

David’s ‘Oath

of the Tennis

Court’

Source of the

idea – a

philosphe or

other?

Identify the

work and give

a quote.

How is this

revolutionary

principle laid

out in either the

Declaration of

Rights of Man

and Citizen or

the August

Decrees?

How is this

revolutionary

principle

implemented in the

earlier

Constitutions?

Consider both the

Constitution of 1791

and the Constitution

of 1793 as these

How far has the

revolution strayed

from this original

revolutionary

principle by 1793-

94?

Quote from either

the ‘Constitution of

the Terror’ (Law of

14 Frimaire, i.e. 4

How far

does the

revolution

re-constitute

this original

revolutionar

y principle in

the

Constitution

of Year III,

(1795)?

Quote the

relevant

clause.

differ on some

points, most notably

the definition of

citizenship.

Quote the clause.

December 1793) or

the other laws, such

as the Law of

Suspects, 17

September 1793, the

Law of 22 Prairial

(10 June 1794), the

de-Christianisation

campaign, and so

on.

Quote the

clause.

Revolutionary

principle 1

Revolutionary

principle 2

See over.

This is a working file – pay no

David’s Tennis Court Oath to

inconsistencies of footnotes-

endnotes etc.

The SOLE FUNCTION of this file

is to assist with the layout of

the images into the text – i.e.

working out which image goes

against which name. My

are byn perfect but the

layout was superbly done in

the 2010 edition. [The text

here has been altered slightly

from

2010 edition.]

Preparatory Study: Pen and brown ink, brown wash with white highlights and traces of chalk.

Height 66 cm – Width 101.2 cm

J-L David, 1791

Intentions and contradictions of David’s representation of the Tennis Court Oath

In March 1790, Jacques-Louis David, the leading artist of the French Revolution, began his study for a

large commemorative oil painting of one of the seminal revolutionary moments of 1789, the Oath of

the Tennis Court. To many in 1790, it must have seemed that the Revolution itself was now over, and

that all which remained to be done was to continue the implementation of the revolutionary principles

expressed in this image. David conceived a work on a grand scale, commensurate with the

magnitude of the historic event of 20 June. David intended this image to be read as an

immortalisation of a contemporary historical triumph and this had been the patriotic purpose of the

formal commission from the Jacobin Club. As an exposition of the great intellectual principles of the

Revolution, this is an exciting image indeed; but, as an accurate historical record of the event, we as

historians must be extremely cautious in accepting it at face value. Over time, political expediency

came to sully the purity of patriotic intent and historical reality, as many of the heroes depicted from

the 20 June 1789 fell from favour either through their own actions or through the rapid changes of

those who held political power.

In fact, the political integrity of the work was compromised even by the time it was first shown in public

in September 1791. The choice of the topic of the Oath of the Tennis Court was designed to celebrate

a great revolutionary and patriotic moment on the road to constitutional monarchy. But, in the wake of

the flight of the royal family to Varennes in June 1791, this enterprise now seemed flawed at its very

heart. The Paris Salon exhibition opened on 11 September and Louis XVI formally accepted the 1791

Constitution on 13 September. But, by this time some of the contemporary revolutionary heroes

shown by David had already begun their tragic fall: Mirabeau, the great advocate for constitutional

monarchy, had died in April 1791 under strong suspicion of spying for the court and Bailly, as mayor

of Paris, had been blamed for ordering the National Guard to fire on the assembled crowed at the

Champ de Mars on 17 July. As the Revolution progressed the number of David’s subjects who had

fallen from revolutionary grace steadily mounted. Eventually, David had to abandon the work.

Revolutionary personalities and symbolism in the image In the general composition and the particular detail, David’s 1791 pen and ink drawing is rich

in revolutionary symbolism. The floor space of the tennis court seems to be a seething mass

of exhilarated men, excitedly throwing their hats in the air and raising their arms in a salute

of loyalty to the new nation and its new assembly, which, they vow, will not disband until it

has written a constitution for the new body politic. Michael Adcock has pointed out how

strongly this contrasts with the formal pomp and rigid hierarchy shown in the engraving by

Helman of the opening ceremony of the Estates-General less than eight weeks before.1

At the compositional heart of this image is the figure of Jean-Sylvain Bailly, who had been

appointed early in May to control the debates of the Third Estate. As

President of the three-day-old National Assembly, he stands on the

table, hand raised, reading out the draft of the Oath as it was

proposed by the young deputy from Grenoble, Jean-Joseph Mounier.

Throughout the body of deputies, David depicts many of them taking

the oath with their arms raised in the classical salute of civic loyalty

used in the ancient Republic of Rome.

Directly below Bailly is the trinity of clergy, representing religious

tolerance and reconciliation: in the centre the ordained priest, Abbé

Henri Grégoire, fraternally puts his arms about the shoulders of the

Capuchin monk, Dom Gerle, (in the white robe to the left, who was not actually at the Tennis

Court on that day)2; while the Protestant clergyman, Rabaut Saint-

Etienne, is seen to the right. Seated at the table,

somewhat aloof, is the Abbé Sieyès, author of the

seminal pamphlet, ‘What is the Third-Estate?’, whose

‘strong and robust man’ had ‘within itself all that

[was] necessary to constitute a complete nation.’3 It

was Sieyès’ key idea which had provided the

theoretical rationalisation of popular sovereignty and

representational democracy which had formed the

basis of the declaration of the National Assembly on

17 June.

To the left of the trinity of clergy sits the lawyer

Bertrand Barère, deputy from Bigorre, who was already acting as a

journalist, pen in hand, reporting on the events.4

1 The Opening of the Estates-General in May 1789 by C. Monet (Painter to the King), engraved by Helman (‘Engraver to

the Queen’) in Michael Adcock, A Student Handbook, p.41-42. 2 J.M. Thompson, The French Revolution, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1964, p.20. 3 AbbéSieyès, What is the Third Estate? Chapter 1, in John Hall Stewart, A Documentary Survey of the French Revolution,

The Macmillan Company, 1951, p.44. 4 J.M. Thompson, The French Revolution, p.20.

Another fraternal embrace expressing uninhibited and open expression of feeling occurs at the left

hand edge of the image. The deputies Rewbell and Curé Thibault clasp each

other’s shoulders and exchange a direct but warm gaze. They seem delighted

to see each other. The openness of this expression of sentiment, the art

historian Philippe Bordes has argued, may be directly attributed to the ideas of

Rousseau: ‘In becoming free, man approaches nature and simplifies his

relations with others’.5 This was Rousseau’s response to the stultifying, rigid

and artificial social etiquette of the old regime, and the hypocrisy of manners of

which Diderot had complained.6 Upon viewing the drawing of the Tennis Court

Oath in 1791, the contemporary art theorist and critic, Quatremère de Qincy,

approved of the ‘greater expression of frankness and openness, more natural manners, … more

poses which are not wooden or affected, more open emotion and more warmth in the artistic

language.’7 Thus David sought to depict the triumph of natural emotion over artifice of the deputies

and brotherly relationships which, it was hoped, would mark the new revolutionary society. Other figures in the foreground to which David draws our attention are the as-yet unremarkable

deputy from Arras, Maximilien Robespierre, and the Comte Riquetti de Mirabeau,

who was one of the most prominent personalities of the

Assembly in 1789. Mirabeau was elected a deputy for

the Third Estate, not the Second, (which his rank

allowed). He was a member of the Society of Thirty, an

advocate for the civil rights of Jews and a member of

Abbé Grégoire’s Society of the Friends of the Blacks,

which was arguing for abolition of slavery or, at the very

least, for civil rights for free people of colour in France’s

colonies. While the Comte de Mirabeau had a taste for

the dramatic gesture, Robespierre was a highly

controlled and socially undemonstrative man. To see

him represented in such an uninhibited pose, described by Schama as

‘the body language of Rousseauean sincerity and virtue’, stretches our

credulity to the extreme.8 The artist explained this pose by claiming it was as if ‘Robespierre had two

hearts beating for liberty.’9 In 1789, Robespierre was an obscure deputy from the provinces, not yet of

great importance among the Third Estate deputies. David assigns Robespierre

prominence in his composition because, by 1791, Robespierre had become the

acknowledged leader of the radical element of the Jacobin Club, the faction with which

David was increasingly associating himself.10

Behind Mirabeau, David depicts the only peasant representative at the Estates – General,

the delegate from Rennes, an old man called ‘Père’ Michel Gérard, with his hands

clasped in prayer. ‘Père’ Gérard refused to wear the black and white costume of the Third

Estate, instead dressing as he usually did in brown cloth. A peasant proprietor from

Brittany, Gérard was a foundation member of the Breton Club, later to become the

5 Philipe Bordes, Le Serment du Jeu de Paume, p.64. 6 Denis Diderot, Essais sur la peinture and Pensées detaches, in Philippe Bordes, p 64. 7 Bordes, Le Serment du Jeu de Paume, p.64. 8 Simon Schama, Citizens, p. 569. 9 J.M. Thompson, The French Revolution, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1964, p. 20. 10 To read more of David’s political career and friendship with Robespierre, see the Who’s Who entry on p. x

Jacobins. His rough common sense was admired as the voice of popular wisdom, and his

countryman's waistcoat and plaited hair were later to become the model for the Jacobin fashion.11

Opposition and Exclusions

It is at the edges of the image that David portrays those who are either excluded from the action or in

opposition to it.

At the right-hand edge of the image is the deputy Martin d’Auch, famously the

only deputy who opposed the Oath, arguing that he could not ‘conscientiously

support measures not sanctioned by the King’.12 We see him seated with arms

crossed in a refusal to stand and take the oath. Camus, the deputy in front of

d’Auch urges him to his feet, while Tronchet behind restrains his excited

colleague. The right to freedom of opinion, one of the great underpinning

values of the new ideas, is thus expressed in a revolutionary cameo within a

great revolutionary image.

In the right hand public gallery above d’Auch, excluded from

the action in June 1789 but passionately involved as observers, are elements

Schama has identified as ‘The People’ i– women, children

and curious members of the Royal Guard.ii Bordes has

claimed that their metaphorical role was to ‘transmit the spirit

of the oath to the whole nation’,iii while Schama has

described them as ‘audience, pupils and ideal citizens:

patriotic …but never threatening in their unruliness.’iv

Whatever role David conceived for this group in his drawing,

Michael Adcock has realistically reminded us that the largely

middle class and exclusively male deputies on the floor of the tennis court,

euphorically swept up in this fraternal moment, seem unaware of these

marginalised groups ‘merely looking in and observing a ritual theoretically

conducted on their behalf’. Adcock warns that ‘By 1793, this marginalisation

would become unacceptable, and these groups would challenge the very

idea of representative democracy.’v Finally, we know from David’s own

sketchbooks that the man writing on paper against the wall is one ‘Mr Maret,

(sic) newspaper editor, taking notes’.vi

Acting as a counterbalance in the lower left-hand gallery we see more of the People: the

deputy Maupetit de la Mayenne, who had been too ill to attend on that day, is carried in

by two men, one a robust worker, with bare legs and feet, but wearing the Phrygian

bonnet of liberty of the freed slave of ancient Rome. By 1792 this bonnet rouge had

become the pervasive symbol of the sans-culottes, worn by all in the popular movement

who wished publicly to demonstrate their revolutionary fervour. Schama has written that

David represented the People of 20 June 1789 as ‘audience, pupils and

11 Thompson, p.20. 12 Thompson, p.20.

ideal citizens: patriotic … but never threatening in their unruliness.’13 This ideal changed quickly, with

the popular movement of Paris acting decisively in defence of the National Assembly on 14 July 1789

and again on 5-6 October, when the women of Paris marched to Versailles to force the King to

approve its laws . By August 1792, the sans-culottes could be mobilised at short notice to take armed

action in the streets of Paris, as the Revolutionary Commune called upon them to do on the journée of

10 August, the day King Louis XVI fell from the throne. This was popular sovereignty in action. When,

in November and December of 1792, the new republican National Convention debated the legality of

putting the King on trial, Robespierre claimed, ‘Louis cannot be judged; he is already judged. …To

propose a trial for Louis XVI … is to put the Revolution itself on trial.’14 Robespierre held a deeply

rooted Rousseauean belief that the people ‘are always guided by purity of intention’ (a pamphlet of

December 1792) and ‘there is nothing so just or so good as the people, whenever they are not stirred-

up by the excesses of oppression’ (April 1791).15 As the people had exercised the general will through

action on the journée of August 10, in Robespierre’s mind, to call their sovereignty into question was

to challenge the right of the National Convention itself to exist.

David’s use of nature to heighten dramatic impact

Finally, David reminds the viewer of the elemental nature of the momentous shift in power and

perception which took place on 20 June 1789. In the left-hand upper gallery he

depicts one of the summer thunderstorms which broke over Versailles during that

month. On 20 June 1789 more heavy rain fell, as the

deputies of the newly named National Assembly,

barred from their meeting hall by royal guards,

adjourned to the nearby Royal Tennis Court where

they took their famous oath not to disband until they

had written a constitution for France. The significance

of this day was clear to all. Arthur Young, the English

commentator, recorded in his journal on 21 June,

‘The step that the Commons have taken is, in fact, an

assumption of all authority in the Kingdom.’16 This

overturning of old-regime conventions and traditional sovereignty is

suggested by David through the turbulence of the drapery and the

inside out umbrella. For those who believed in omens, the

thunderstorm was the physical harbinger (forewarning) of the end of the old regime. Although it is

difficult to see, David shows the lightning bolt that struck the Chappelle Royale at Versailles, which

Phillipe Bordes has interpreted this bolt of lightning as ‘a common evocation of the violence of the

Revolution, as well as a typical Enlightenment condemnation of the political-religious system on which

absolute monarchy was founded.’17

13 Schama, Citizens, p. 569. 14 Robespierre, ‘On the action to be taken against Louis XVI,’ Address to the National Convention, 3 December

1792, in George Rudé (ed), Robespierrre, Great Lives Observed, Prentice-Hall Inc., New Jersey, 1967, p.27. 15 Barrie Rose, Tribunes and Amazons, Ch. 12, ‘Robespierre and the Popular Movement,’ Macleay, Sydney,

1998, p. 211. 16 Thompson, The French Revolution, p. 20. 17 Phillipe Bordes, ‘Jacques-Louis David’s “Serment du Jeu de Paume”: Propaganda without a cause?’, Oxford

Art Journal, February, 1980, p.23.

For David’s contemporary audience, however, this lightning bolt had a further symbolism, directly

representing liberty. Benjamin Franklin, the American revolutionary who had drawn electricity from a

lightning bolt in his famous kite experiment of 1752, was the American ambassador to France 1779-

85 and a great celebrity in Paris, where a rage for scientific learning gripped the French élite. Franklin

exploited the French idealisation of the newly-independent America as a place of natural innocence,

candour and freedom. Simon Schama has claimed that ‘The image of Franklin, who could tap the

heavens for the celestial fire of electricity, became woven into the celebration of his other “American”

virtues, most especially that of liberty.’18 The references to liberty and scientific reason are extended

to encompass the Enlightenment itself through the swathe of light which seems to have accompanied

the lightning bolt and the winds which stir the drapery.

Identifying figures in The Oath of the Tennis Court

It is great fun to be able to identify specific individuals in David’s visual roll-call of the

National Constituent Assembly. But how do we know the identity of all these figures? First,

we have David’s own plan which is numbered and includes a key. It appeared in a number

of publications during the nineteenth century, including a book written in 1880 by the

painter’s son, Jules David.1 Then, we have a number of labelled sketch portraits which

David did of each deputy. There are the preparatory sketches in the Versailles Sketchbooks,

and then, in October 1791, he invited every deputy whom he had not previously sketched to

either pass by his atelier (workshop) at the Feuillants church for a portrait sitting, or to lend

him a previously done portrait of themselves for him to copy. Of course, in several cases

there are other portraits of notable individuals which we may use to compare, but it is

David’s own list which provides the definitive historical evidence.

i Schama, Citizens, 569. ii David, Versailles Sketchbook, (fo 62v) in Bordes, Le Serment du Jeu de Paume, 65. iii Bordes, Le Serment du Jeu de Paume , 65: ‘ Spectateurs qui devaient transmettre l’esprit du

serment à la nation entière’. iv Schama, Citizens, 569. v Michael Adcock in Adcock and Worrall, The French Revolution: A Student Handbook, 44.

vi David, Versailles Sketchbook, ((fo 64r)

18 Schama, Citizens, pp.43-44.