The Tennis Court Oath (David) The Tennis Court Oath (David) The Tennis Court Oath (French: "Le Serment du Jeu de paume") is an incomplete painting by Jacques-Louis David, painted between 1790 and 1794 and showing the titular Tennis Court Oath at Versailles, one of the foundational events of the French Revolution. Political reversals and financial difficulties meant that David was never able to finish the canvas, which measures 400 by 660 cm and is now in the Musée national du Château de Versailles. All the deputies are shown looking at Bailly, as a device to show their support of him. The only man to refuse
Tennis Court Oath the Third Estate, such as reforms that threatened the privileges of the nobility and clergy. In France at that time, the deputies' fears, even if wrong, were reasonable and the importance of the oath goes above and beyond its context. The oath was both a revolutionary act, and an assertion that political authority derived from the people and their representatives rather than from the monarch himself. Their solidarity forced Louis XVI to order the clergy and the nobility to join with the Third Estate in the National Assembly in order to give the illusion that he controlled the National Assembly.