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.
Ignace Brice
Ignace Brice at first studied under his father and at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, where he was strongly influenced by Jacques-Louis David, then in exile in Brussels - Ignace became known as "le David bruxellois". He followed his father as a professor at the Academy, and exhibited in Brussels in 1815, 1824, 1827, 1830 and 1833. He also exhibited in Ghent, Antwerp and Amsterdam, and was one of the founders of the Société des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles.