The Tennis Court Oath

David painted The Tennis Court Oath around 1791, attempting to record the founding moment of the Revolution — the oath sworn by the Third Estate deputies in the Versailles tennis court on June 20, 1789, not to separate until a constitution had been established. The ambitious project to record some six hundred individual portraits in a single composition proved too vast to complete, and the work remained unfinished. The surviving completed central section — the group of oath-swearers around the central standing figure of Bailly — demonstrates David's mastery of the large-scale historical group portrait, the composition organized around the raised arms of the oath in a pattern of civic solidarity.

The surviving canvas and preparatory drawings show David's ambitious composition of hundreds of figures in the indoor tennis court at Versailles. The dramatic moment of collective oath-taking is rendered with the documentary precision and monumental scale appropriate to the historical event.