The Tennis Court Oath (David)

Political reversals and financial difficulties meant that David was never able to finish the canvas, which measures 400 by 660 cm and is now in the Musée national du Château de Versailles.

The tennis court oath – pre-Romantic, near-unanimous, almost totally middle-class, and with no popular violence – above all was considered the forerunner of the 1789 revolution and also showed that national sovereignty was made up of each individual's personal will.

This painting shows the Third Estate gathered together at an indoor tennis court after King Louis XVI locked the meeting hall at Versailles once he rejected to change the voting system.

The first engravings showing The Tennis Court Oath only appeared in 1790, the year David convinced the Jacobin Club to launch a national subscription to fund a painting to depict the event.

However, by 1793, he was too busy as a deputy himself to complete his sketch for the painting and French political life was no longer conducive to the work – Mirabeau, one of the heroes of 1789, had been declared an enemy of the Revolution on the discovery of his secret correspondence with Louis XVI and was now considered as a traitor by public opinion.