![Auguste Couder - Le Serment du Jeu de Paume, June 20, 1789 [1848]](http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7510/15672220183_3de4146691_o.jpg)
Auguste Couder (Paris, April 1, 1790 - Paris, July 21, 1873) was a French painter. He joined the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1839 and was an officer of the Légion d'Honneur. He married Cornélie Stouf, daughter of the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Stouf. Couder was buried in the cemetery of Père-Lachaise.
At the dawn of the French Revolution, just steps away from the seat of the Monarchy, the founding act of French democracy took place. On June 20, 1789, in the Jeu de Paume room near the Palace of Versailles, the deputies took an oath not to adjourn before adopting a Constitution for France. “We swear not to separate and to reassemble wherever circumstances require, until the Constitution of the Kingdom is established and built on solid foundations.” The founding event of French democracy, the Jeu de Paume Oath is the origin of the separation of powers and national sovereignty. It led to the creation of the National Constituent Assembly which, in August 1789, voted to abolish the feudal system and adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.
[Musée National du Château de Versailles et du Trianon - Oil on canvas]