GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Unlike most women artists of the 18th century, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, born into a non-artistic family in Paris, did not begin her training within the family workshop. She instead sought her early artistic education from François-Elie Vincent, a portrait miniaturist whose studio was next to her father’s haberdashery shop, and Maurice-Quentin de la Tour, a pastelist who also primarily worked in portraiture. By 1769 she was elected member to the Académie de Saint-Luc in Paris, a painter’s guild that offered important exhibition opportunities for both men and women who were not members of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Labille-Guiard exhibited both her portrait miniatures and pastels (genre and media considered appropriate for young women) at the Académie de Saint-Luc exhibitions, yet the young artist held grander ambitions to study oil painting and, eventually, to enter the Royal Academy as a full-fledged member. After the Académie de Saint-Luc’s closure in 1776, Labille-Guiard entered the studio of history painter François-André Vincent to study oil painting—a path traditionally reserved for male artists.
By 1783, she had established her own painting studio with nine female pupils and was admitted to the prestigious Royal Academy as a portrait painter on the same day as Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun. Critics constantly compared the two artists, casting them as rivals and contrasting Labille-Guiard’s “masculine” style with Vigée-Lebrun’s “feminine” style. Labille-Guiard exhibited consistently at the Academy’s Salon for the next nine years, received prestigious commissions, and was named the official painter of the “Mesdames de France” (King Louis XV’s daughters) in 1787.
During the 1789 French Revolution, Labille-Guiard managed to distance herself from her aristocratic patrons and adopted the revolutionary cause by exhibiting portraits of revolutionary leaders and members of the National Convention. She also attended Academy meetings during the 1790s in order to petition for women artists’ admission in “unlimited numbers” (the limit of women who could become members at the time was four), but her request was ultimately denied. As the Revolution grew more radical and violent, Labille-Guiard fled Paris for the countryside with several of her students and her teacher Vincent, whom she married in 1800. Those in power destroyed several of her portraits of royal family members and she gradually disappeared from public life, dying at the age of 54 in 1803.
Excerpt from
Kelsey Martin and Nicole Myers, DMA exhibition text Women Artists in Europe from the Monarchy to Modernism, 2018.
NOTES
2017.18
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- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Read this essay titled Eighteenth-Century Women Painters in France from the Met.
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General Description
Unlike most women artists of the 18th century, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, born into a non-artistic family in Paris, did not begin her training within the family workshop. She instead sought her early artistic education from François-Elie Vincent, a portrait miniaturist whose studio was next to her father’s haberdashery shop, and Maurice-Quentin de la Tour, a pastelist who also primarily worked in portraiture. By 1769 she was elected member to the Académie de Saint-Luc in Paris, a painter’s guild that offered important exhibition opportunities for both men and women who were not members of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. Labille-Guiard exhibited both her portrait miniatures and pastels (genre and media considered appropriate for young women) at the Académie de Saint-Luc exhibitions, yet the young artist held grander ambitions to study oil painting and, eventually, to enter the Royal Academy as a full-fledged member. After the Académie de Saint-Luc’s closure in 1776, Labille-Guiard entered the studio of history painter François-André Vincent to study oil painting—a path traditionally reserved for male artists.
By 1783, she had established her own painting studio with nine female pupils and was admitted to the prestigious Royal Academy as a portrait painter on the same day as Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun. Critics constantly compared the two artists, casting them as rivals and contrasting Labille-Guiard’s “masculine” style with Vigée-Lebrun’s “feminine” style. Labille-Guiard exhibited consistently at the Academy’s Salon for the next nine years, received prestigious commissions, and was named the official painter of the “Mesdames de France” (King Louis XV’s daughters) in 1787.
During the 1789 French Revolution, Labille-Guiard managed to distance herself from her aristocratic patrons and adopted the revolutionary cause by exhibiting portraits of revolutionary leaders and members of the National Convention. She also attended Academy meetings during the 1790s in order to petition for women artists’ admission in “unlimited numbers” (the limit of women who could become members at the time was four), but her request was ultimately denied. As the Revolution grew more radical and violent, Labille-Guiard fled Paris for the countryside with several of her students and her teacher Vincent, whom she married in 1800. Those in power destroyed several of her portraits of royal family members and she gradually disappeared from public life, dying at the age of 54 in 1803.
Excerpt from
Kelsey Martin and Nicole Myers, DMA exhibition text Women Artists in Europe from the Monarchy to Modernism, 2018.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Web Resources
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York~Read this essay titled Eighteenth-Century Women Painters in France from the Met.
Notes
2017.18
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artists_and_designers-0024.xml.nores