The Changes of 18th Century Costume Depicted in the Portraitures of Painter Jacques-Louis David in Light of the Ideological Transition

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the change of men and women's costumes in late 18th century and early 19th century in view of its ideological streams by examining the portraits of the painter Jacques-Louis David. The method of investigation used was to select 29 pieces of portraits from 1766 to 1825, which showed the clear descriptions about the costumes and to analyze the costume's forms, ornaments and the headdress. The category was divided into 3 stages in terms of the changes in costume. The first stage, from 1766 until 1788, is the one of turnaround from the Rococo costume to the early neoclassical one. The typical Rococo costume was incrementally transformed into a simpler design without ornaments, and then natural silhouette in men and women's costumes started to appear from 1783 until 1788. This might be attributed to the neoclassical trend which was affected by the enlightenment ideology. The second stage, from 1788 until 1795, is the period of change from the costume of the early neoclassic style to the typical neoclassic style and also the time from the 1793 to 1795 was regarded as the peak of neoclassic style when the effect of enlightenment began to decrease while one of neoclassicism exerted its strong influence on the costume. The third stage, from 1795 until 1825, similar to the previous neoclassical style was also notable in its turning into producing the empire dress of Empire style. From 1820 on, it was a period that showed signs of influence from romanticism while the effect of neoclassicism started to become more diminished.