Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David was able to use his talents as an artist as propaganda and to convince people to side with him on political disputes. With many of his paintings in mind as examples of this, Schama's thesis in the video was that beautiful paintings are not seen as propaganda at first glance, but in reality, every painting has a sort of biased hidden in it.

In David's painting The Tennis Court Oath (1791), it is clearly a proponent of the Tennis Court Oath because of the light and celebratory scene it is portraying. People are throwing up their hats and raising their hands and cheering, and are clearly happy to have sworn such an oath. The central focus of the painting is the leader of the Tennis Court Oath, as people are looking towards him and pointing. This also shows how David was pro-revolution, because he acknowledges a knew leader stepping up and coming into power, one outside the clergy and nobility.