Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David was born into a prosperous French family in Paris on 30 August 1748. When he was about nine his father was killed in a duel and his mother left him with his well-off architect uncles. They saw to it that he received an excellent education at the Collège des Quatre-Nations, University of Paris, but he was never a good student-- he had a facial tumor that impeded his speech, and he was always preoccupied with drawing. He covered his notebooks with drawings, and he once said, "I was always hiding behind the instructor's chair, drawing for the duration of the class". Soon, he desired to be a painter, but his uncles and mother wanted him to be an architect. He overcame the opposition, and went to learn from François Boucher (1703–1770), the leading painter of the time, who was also a distant relative. Boucher was a Rococo painter, but tastes were changing, and the fashion for Rococo was giving way to a more classical style. Boucher decided that instead of taking over David's tutelage, he would send David to his friend, Joseph-Marie Vien (1716–1809), a painter who embraced the classical reaction to Rococo. There, David attended the Royal Academy, based in what is now the Louvre.
Jean-Jacques Blaise d'Abbadie
Born at Château d'Audaux near Navarrenx, France in 1726, d'Abbadie was educated at College d'Harcourt in Paris, from which he graduated in 1742 (age sixteen). He entered the royal service as a clerk in the lumber-receiving department of the Rochefort naval yard. During the next two years he worked as a scribe in the comptroller's office and clerk in the naval repair shop. In 1745-46 Jean-Jacques served aboard a French man-of-war in the Antilles and in Canadian waters. Captured by English forces in 1746, he was held as a prisoner of war until the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle set him free, whereupon he returned to working in the French naval bureaucracy. He was promoted to chief clerk of the artillery department in 1751 and to commissary-general in 1757 (at approximately 31 years of age).
Commissioned "ordonnateur" (administrative chief and first judge of the colonial tribunal) of Louisiana on December 29, 1761, d'Abbadie was ordered by the French crown to improve relations between the colony's feuding religious orders, the Capuchins and Jesuits, and to efficiently administer the colony's financial, police and judicial affairs. Shortly after departing Bordeaux, his ship was captured by English warships. He was again held as a prisoner of war, this time for three months. Following his release in Barbados, d'Abbadie returned to France.