The Spence School welcomed Katharine Baetjer, a curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, to speak to Upper School students for the Margaret Scolari Barr Lecture, which honors the former Spence teacher and her contribution to arts education by inviting an annual speaker to Spence.

 

“We are lucky to have such an expert in the art field speak to us today about Jacques-Louis David, a 19th-century French painter who was considered to be the pre-eminent artist of the era,” Hayley W. ’18 said in her introduction of Baetjer.

 

Baetjer, whose specialty is British and French paintings, pastels and portrait miniatures, briefly talked to students about how she got into the field, and throughout the talk she demonstrated the depth of her curatorial work.

 

“When your mothers were little girls, I went to work for The Metropolitan Museum, which has been a great pleasure to work for, for more than 40 years,” Baetjer said. “I expected to study something other than 18th-century painting but when I found it, it grew very important to me, and I’ve been quite occupied with these studies for a quarter of a century now.”

 

Baetjer focused her talk on David and two of his paintings on view at The Met: “The Death of Socrates,” which was publicly exhibited in 1787, and “Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and His Wife,” painted the following year. In her biography of David, Baetjer talked about his interests in antiquity and the classicizing style, his membership in the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, his brief forays in jail during the Terror in France, his work as Napoleon’s court painter and his voluntary exile in Brussels.

 

“The Death of Socrates,” which Baetjer described as David’s “most perfect neoclassical work,” depicts Socrates in jail, surrounded by forlorn men. One man holds a cup of poisonous hemlock, which Socrates was ordered to drink or else renounce his beliefs. Baetjer told the students some of the research behind the painting, such as evidence that David wrote to a history scholar named Jean Félicissime Adry for his advice on what to include in the painting. Adry was the one who suggested that David include Plato in the painting even though he was not present at the time of Socrates’ death.

 

Baetjer also provided context for “Antoine Laurent Lavoisier and His Wife,” which is a portrait of “the father of modern chemistry,” alongside his wife, Marie, who studied chemistry, Latin and English; helped translate scientific materials; and made scientific drawings.

 

Baetjer posited that the enormous portrait showed the couple’s hubris, but the portrait was actually seen by few people because of an incident that was misinterpreted by the public and discouraged the couple from showing it at a salon opening.

 

“The scale is absolutely exceptional for a portrait of two private persons, even if they belonged to the governing classes, and he was a scientist, an academician and a minor noble,” Baetjer said. “Such huge canvases were reserved for members of the royal family and for ministers and military heroes on horseback.”

 

Baetjer ended her talk noting that she thought the portrait showed a professional partnership, not exactly a loving relationship between husband and wife. Marie, in fact, had a lover who was a member of the DuPont family—the father of the founder of the American chemical company.   

 

“Generally when you work with portraits, either the artist is interesting or the sitter is interesting, but it’s not terribly often the case that both are equally so,” Baetjer said. “But this is case with Jacques-Louis David and a number of his sitters.”