Online resource of custom wood and metal picture frames available in a variety of styles and colors.
|
Go Back
Adelaide Labille-Guiard ( April 11, 1749 - April 24, 1803)
Adelaide Labille-Guiard
( April 11, 1749 - April 24, 1803) |
|
Portraiture Art Work
| Name: |
Adelaide Labille-Guiard |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
France |
| Nationality: |
French |
| Birth: |
April 11, 1749 |
| Death: |
April 24, 1803 |
| Website: |
|
| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
|
|
Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Portraiture |
| Medium: |
|
| Method: |
|
| Style: |
|
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painter
|
|
|
Biography
In a self-portrait the painter Adelaide Labille- Cuiard depicted herself dressed in strikingly fashionable clothes among her pupils. At the time, an appearance of this kind was a sine qua non of social acceptance. Labille-Guiard, a resourceful woman with a keen sense of reality, fought for the rights of women artists. As a child, she had observed how high-ranking women fitted themselves out with bows, ribbons and other extravagant accoutrements in her father's elegant haberdashery. Later, as a sought-after portraitist, she excelled at rendering the sheen on silk, the fineness of lace and other features of clothing. Her chief interest, however, lay in the character of her sitters.
Labille-Guiard's father doubtless entertained no thoughts of his daughter becoming a successful artist when he arranged for her to receive training from a nearby miniature painter Why shouldn't she paint a little to pass the time, like other middle-class girls and noblewomen? She might even be able to make some money by decorating tobacco boxes, medallions and so forth. Adelaide Labille- Guiard had set her sights higher than this. At the age of twenty, shortly after marrying a finance official, she studied pastel with a great exponent of the medium, the elderly Maurice- Quentin de La Tour. When a friend of her youth, Francois-Andre' Vincent, returned from a study trip to Italy she decided to learn oil painting from him.
The decisive step in the artistic career of this ambitious woman was her election to the Academy in Paris, which then numbered only two female members: Madame Vien and the still-life painter Anne Vallayer-Coster. Labille- Guiard had proceeded cannily. First, she produced pastel portraits of some Academy members as proof of her ability. Then, on 31 May 1783, she submitted two of these portraits as her test pieces and was accepted by a large majority. At the request of the Queen, Labille- Guiard's keenest rival among women artists, Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Lebrun, was admitted on the same day. The Academy now included four women among its members. That august institution reacted a short time later by restricting female membership to precisely that number.
The French royal family commissioned Labille-Guiard in 1788 to paint this richly colored life-size portrait of Princess Louise- Elisabeth of France, who had died thirty years previously - a fact hinted at by the striking shadow on the wall at the right and by the sad expression on the face of her young son. As a result of the turmoil caused by the Revolution the fee of 4,000 livres for the picture was never paid and it remained in the possession of the artist, who exhibited it as an anonymous portrait at the Salon of 1791. At that Salon she also showed portraits of Robespierre and other revolutionaries as a way of demonstrating her progressive political sympathies.
Labille-Guiard's hopes that the Revolution would bring about improved opportunities for women artists were soon dashed: in 1793 the reorganized Academy resolved not to admit women at all. In 1795 she and her pupils were at least permitted to occupy artists' quarters in the Louvre, after their request for such rooms had been turned down for years on the grounds that the presence of young women would endanger the morals of the male artists living in the same building.
-----
The youngest of eight children born to a Parisian haberdasher and his wife, Adelaide Labille-Guiard was receiving praise for her skillfully crafted portraits by her early twenties. Despite periods of financial distress, an unhappy first marriage (and subsequent divorce), and the inevitable comparisons with her younger, more socially prominent fellow painter Elisabeth-Louise Vigee-Lebrun, this talented and ambitious artist remained dedicated to building a successful career. She worked for numerous royal and aristocratic patrons, won admission to the French Royal Academy in 1783, and was ultimately awarded the title peintre des mesdames (painter to the king's aunts), a government pension, and an apartment at the Louvre.
Labille-Guiard worked with several accomplished teachers, learning how to make miniature portraits and work with pastels. She also studied oil painting with Francois-Andre Vincent, whom she married in 1800. Labille-Guiard herself became an influential teacher, known for her devotion to her female pupils, many of whom went on to establish their own careers as painters.
A lifelong champion of women's rights, Labille-Guiard worked toward reforming the Academy's policies toward women. Unlike Vigee-Lebrun, she supported the French Revolution and remained in Paris during this tumultuous era, winning new patrons and creating portraits of several deputies of the National Assembly. Although she also produced some history paintings, it was with her carefully crafted portraits that Labille-Guiard made her mark.
|
Samples of Work
|
|
|
|
