Prud'hon's evolving classicism

In my dissertation, I seek to demonstrate that Pierre-Paul Prud’hon’s embrace of Romantic Classicism situates his stylistic choices and subject matter in the contexts of the artistic, literary, aesthetic, philosophical, and cultural developments of Revolutionary France. I challenge the notion of Prud’hon as an isolated Romantic artist, full of elegance, going against the virile masculine academic traditions of his day. Rather, Prud’hon’s graceful classicism was a major direction in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century painting, decorative arts, and sculpture, and one that has been either largely ignored or misunderstood by art historians. My study will also reposition Prud’hon’s aesthetics vis- à-vis his contemporaries, particularly the other prominent artists from the school of Jacques-Louis David, whose works are often placed in opposition to Prud’hon’s art.

The significant political changes from the Ancien Régime through the Revolution and Empire had a considerable impact on the various moments examined in my study. The Revolutionary period is particularly understudied in most projects on Prud’hon, so my research hopes to revitalize an examination between revolutions and their artistic messages. My dissertation will reconsider Prud’hon’s aesthetics and allegorical subject matter as related to the Revolutionary and Imperial’s effect on art and power. The ultimate intersection of art and power during the Empire is explored in the relationship between the Empress Josephine and Prud’hon, in an analysis of her patronage. My dissertation illuminates the Prud’hon’s context to present a more nuanced understanding of his relationship to the cultural phenomena from 1784 to 1808.