Marie Guillet studied with the painter Jean Charles Cazin, whom she married. She spent most of her career working in her studio in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Exhibiting at the Paris Salons for the first time in the 1870s, she was elected onto the jury of the Societe National des Beaux Arts, alongside Rodin. Cazin also won medals at the Expositions Universelles in 1889 and 1900, and showed her work at the Royal Academy, London.Cazin had begun to work as a painter, but then moved to sculpture, making large-scale public monuments often featuring women. The School 1893, bronze relief, Musee de Tours, shows a woman teaching a child how to read, while Helping the Sick 1893, Musee de Tours depicts a midwife with a newborn baby. These pieces are thrown into relief against the background of the French Republic and its creation of a free school system, and the work of French feminists of the time, who were arguing for acknowledgement of women's roles.Cazin also sculpted male figures. Her 1883 bronze bust of the biblical figure David is now in the Louvre, and her last major work, a memorial to her husband, was erected in Bormes, Cazin's work can be understood in the context of French Symbolist art. She painted atmospheric, melancholy sunsets, and sculpted works representing states of mind and emotions. Her bronze Regret, a female figure, her head in her hands, was admired by Odilon Redon in 1885.
|
