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.
Jacques Durand
Durand was born in Paris on 28 June 1920 and grew up at the family's summer home in Antony. He attended the Lycée Lakanal in Scéaux and then the École des Atelier des Postes, télégraphes et téléphones, graduating with a CAP (certificat d'aptitude professionnel) de mécanique de précision. Upon his return to Paris he took steps to avoid being conscripted by the STO (service de travail obigatoire) being run by the German forces then occupying France.