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.
Ferdinand David (politician)
He was born Ferdinand-Conon David in Sault-au-Récollet, Lower Canada, the son of David-Fleury David and Cécile Poitras. He was educated locally, also learning the trade of carpentry, and later worked as a painter and coach-builder in Montreal. David then worked as a building contractor before joining a firm with Sévère Rivard, lawyer Gustave-Adolphe Drolet and architect Michel Laurent which specialized in real estate and house construction. He served on Montreal city council from 1861 to 1877; David served as chairman of the roads committee and ran unsuccessfully for the post of mayor. He was married twice: to Olive Boyer, dit Quintal in 1844 and to Sophie Homier, the widow of Joseph Papin, in 1868. David was involved in the temperance movement of the time. He also was vice-president of the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society at Montreal, president of the Société de l’Union Saint-Joseph de Montréal and the Société de Colonisation de Montréal, and a director of the Montreal Northern Colonization Railway. He died in Montreal at the age of 59 and was buried in the Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery.