Tea at Trianon: Old Mistresses: Adelaïde Labille-Guiard

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, December 5, 2020

Old Mistresses: Adelaïde Labille-Guiard

Portrait of Madame Adélaïde

Comte de Provence

From Mutual Art:

Born in 1749, Adelaïde Labille-Guiard lived her entire life in Paris. As the daughter of a shopkeeper, she wasn’t immediately immersed into the art world via family ties. However, she grew up studying art with a family friend, miniaturist painter François-Elie Vincent. At the age of twenty, she married Louis Nicolas Guiard, a financial clerk, but decided to continue her artistic pursuits, later joining the Paris guild, Academié de Saint-Luc. Her decision to stay in the workforce rather than start a family bode well for her, as the couple were known to have an unhappy marriage. Over the course of the next few years, Labille-Guiard acquired new skills from pastelist Maurice Quentin de La Tour, ultimately deciding to show a miniature and pastel at the guild exhibition in 1774. With her growing success, she decided to join the studio of François-André Vincent, the academically trained history painter, portraitist, and Neoclassical pioneer, who also happened to be the son of her former teacher and family friend.

Three years into their work together, in 1779, Labille-Guiard got divorced from her husband and dedicated her life to art. With the help of Vincent, she transitioned from pastels and miniatures to oil paints and full-size works, all the while continuing to show her art at exhibitions and Salons, and searching for opportunities to impact the art world in ways beneficial to women. It was during this time that she decided she wanted to share her skills with young women who had aspirations of becoming artists themselves. She accepted young women into her studio for training, and later became the first woman artist permitted to set up a studio for herself and her students in the Louvre. As an advocate for women’s inclusion, recognition, and respect in the arts, she was incredibly passionate about teaching and was responsible for the fame of otherwise unknown artists like Marie-Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond. (Read more.)