What was french art like in paris – 1800?
Neo-classical is right. Like other tyrannical régimes, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic governments in France at the time fancied themselves to be the heirs of ancient Greece and Rome. David and his set-piece historical paintings is only one example. Architecture is also an art, and there was a neo-classical vogue there too. The French built a triumphal arch in imitation of the ones the Romans put up. Hitler and Mussolini did exactly the same sort of thing. If you check out the neo-classical decorations of the stadium for the 1936 Olympics or Mussolini’s architectural revamp of Rome you will see the parallel. The pictorial art of their régimes explicitly and officially rejected modernist trends and looked backwards to the classics. Similarly, the posters in Bolshevik Russia present an heroic and classicised image of the subjects. Moral: whatever you do, don’t go and live in a country where they are putting up Roman-looking buildings!
