# The Oath in the Tennis Court [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [DAVID, Jacques-Louis]() - Date: 1801-1850 - Technique: Pencil, pen and ink and oil on canvas, 358 x 648 cm ## Commentary On June 20, 1789 more than 500 deputies of the third estate took the oath of allegiance in the tennis court in Paris. It was apparent that only the revolutionary painter David could be commissioned to depict this event. David planned to produce a painting more than six metres long sublimating the historic oath and preserving it for posterity. He failed: the scrupulously detailed representations of the individual figures would not resolve into a unified composition. The time in which David was working was not ripe for the transmutation of a very profane present into a convincing history painting, and the work remained unfinished. ## Related artworks - [Allegory of the French People Offering the Crown and Sceptre to the King]() - [Andromache Mourning Hector]() - [Anne-Marie-Louise Thélusson, Comtesse de Sorcy]() - [Antiochus and Stratonica]() - [Belisarius Receiving Alms]() - [Bonaparte, Calm on a Fiery Steed, Crossing the Alps \(detail\)]() - [Bonaparte, Calm on a Fiery Steed, Crossing the Alps]() - [Brutus]() - [Christ on the Cross]() - [Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I and Coronation of the Empress Josephine]() - [Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I \(detail\)]() - [Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I \(detail\)]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()