Marie Laurencin (French, 1883–1956)

GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Born in 1883 and raised by her mother in Paris, Marie Laurencin began her artistic career by studying porcelain painting at the Sèvres factory in 1902 and drawing from the French flower painter Madeleine Lemaire. From 1904 she attended the Académie Humbert, where she changed her vocation to oil painting and became good friends with Georges Braque and Georges Lepape.

Jeanne Mammen (German, 1890–1976)

GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Born Gertrud Johanna Louise Mammen in Berlin in 1890, Jeanne, as she was called, was raised and educated in Paris. From 1906 until 1911, she studied art at the Académie Julian (a private art school) in Paris and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, as well as in Rome.

Anne Vallayer-Coster (French, 1744-1818)

GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Anne Vallayer-Coster was born into an upper class, artistic family in Paris in 1744. Her mother was a painter and her father was a goldsmith. Vallayer-Coster likely received her early artistic instruction studying drawing with Madeleine Basseporte, a family friend and godmother to her sister Madeleine, and painting with the celebrated landscapist Joseph Vernet.

Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun (French, 1755-1842)

GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Born into an established middle-class Parisian family in 1755, Elisabeth Louise Vigée‑Lebrun first took drawing lessons from her father, Louis Vigée, a reputable pastelist and member of the Académie de Saint-Luc (the prominent painter’s guild in Paris). Showing real potential from a young age, she had access to her father’s studio where she learned to draw and paint from artists including Pierre Davesne and Gabriel François Doyen.

Berthe Morisot (French, 1841–1895)

GENERAL DESCRIPTION
Berthe Morisot was born in Bourges, a town in central France, in 1841 and moved with her family to Paris in 1852. Raised in a well-connected, upper-middle class family, Morisot started taking drawing lessons in her teens. In Paris, Morisot and her sister Edma trained under Joseph-Benoit Guichard and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and furthered their studies by copying Old Master paintings at the Louvre.