Elisabeth Sophie Chéron

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Elisabeth Sophie Chérons self-portrait from 1672

Elisabeth Sophie Chéron ( French Élisabeth-Sophie Chéron ; born October 3, 1648 in Paris ; † September 5, 1711 ibid) was a French painter , engraver , poet and translator. In her youth she had already earned the reputation of a talented portraitist . She later switched to making copperplate engravings and ran a literal salon . Of her innumerable works that have been handed down, only a small part has been preserved in the original.

Life

Elisabeth Sophie Chéron was born in Paris as the eldest of five children of the Huguenot painter Henri Chéron († 1677) , who came from Meaux , and his Catholic wife Marie Lefebvre. She was brought up in the Reformed faith and received lessons in painting and drawing from her father, who ran a workshop for miniature and enamel painting, from an early age. When she was 14, she stayed at Notre-Dame de Jouarre Abbey to complete her education . Her portraits of noble classmates were so popular that the abbess Henriette de Lorraine at the time had her painted her. Through their mediation, further lucrative commissions from members of the French nobility followed, such as the portraits of Jeanne Pélagie de Rohan-Chabot , princesse d'Épinoy, and Madame des Ursins .

The well-paid jobs turned out to be a stroke of luck for the Chéron family, because Elisabeth Sophie's father had emigrated in 1664 due to the increasing reprisals against the French Huguenots and his eldest daughter now provided for the livelihood of the mother and the two younger siblings Louis (1655 –1713) and Anne (1649–1718), who married the painter Alexis Simon Belle in 1701 . The order situation was so good that the young professional artist was able to finance her brother's study visit to Rome for several years.

On March 25, 1668 Elisabeth Sophie converted to Catholicism together with her sister Anne in the Paris church of Saint-Sulpice . It is uncertain whether this was influenced by the mother or whether career opportunities played a role under the strict Catholic Louis XIV . Her brother Louis, however, remained true to the Reformed faith and had to leave France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and went to England.

In a dispute about painting, which was held mainly between Charles Le Brun and Pierre Mignard , Chéron sided with Le Brun by publishing La coupe du Val-de-Grâce anonymously in 1669 . The more than 870 line poem was a response to the poem La gloire du Val-de-Grace , which Molière had written shortly before in support of Mignard. In her work, Elisabeth Sophie demonstrated for the first time that she not only had a talent for painting, but also an extraordinary poetic talent.

At the recommendation of Le Bruns, she was accepted into the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture on June 11, 1672 at the age of 24 . In the history of the Academy, this honor has only been bestowed on 15 women. The recording made it possible for Elisabeth Sophie to show her works in the regular salon exhibitions in the Louvre , which brought her more wealthy customers. Her artistic focus shifted more and more from portraiture to copperplate engraving. Because of its widespread use and the opportunity for reproduction, this work offered better earning potential. Chéron specialized in reproductions of well-known works, for example by Raffael and Michelangelo . From 1700 she also received an annual pension of 500 livres from the king  .

At the age of 44, Elisabeth Sophie surprisingly married the engineer Jacques Le Hay in 1692, but the connection was more rational thinking than romantic feelings. In her house on Paris' Rue de Grenelle, she ran an artistic and literary salon, which Mademoiselle de Scudéry , Anne Dacier , Antoinette Deshoulières and Roger de Piles also attended. Their knowledge of Hebrew , Greek and Latin, she used to biblical texts and psalms translated into French. Elisabeth Sophie's artistic skills were recognized on February 9, 1696 when she was accepted into the Accademia dei Ricovrati in Padua under the name Erato . In addition, her contemporaries also attested a great musical talent. She passed on her knowledge of painting and drawing techniques to her younger sister Anne at an early age. Her two most famous students, however, were Anne and Ursule de Lacroix, her husband's nieces.

Elisabeth Sophie Chéron died on September 5, 1711 in her home in Paris and was buried in the Saint-Sulpice church. Her grave there shows her portrait and the inscription written by Abbé Bosquillon:

De deux talents exquis l'assemblage nouveau,
Rendra toujours Chéroil l'ornement de la France;
Rien ne peut de sa plume égaler l'excellence,
Que les grâces de son pinceau.

German translation:

The new combination of two exquisite talents
Makes Chéron an ornament of France forever.
Nothing else can match the excellence of her pen
Than the graceful movements of her brush.

In her will, the artist had designated her niece Anne de Lacroix as the sole heir after her brother Louis Chéron had rejected the inheritance because of the associated demand for a conversion to Catholicism.

Works

Portrait presumably Antoinette Deshoulières'
Engraving with the portrait of the Comtesse d'Aulnoy, by Pierre-François Basan

Paintings and prints (selection)

Although Elisabeth Sophie Chérons enjoyed high esteem among contemporaries during her lifetime, she and her work fell into oblivion soon after her death. Of the numerous paintings and engravings from her nearly 50-year creative period, only a comparatively few originals have survived, including:

However, many no longer preserved works are known through copies or publications in which they are dealt with. These include, for example:

  • Portrait de Madame d'Aulnoy
  • before 1664: Portrait de Louis de Machaut
  • 1693: Portrait d'Antoinette Deshoulières
  • 1703: Portrait du Père Sébastien Truchet

Unlike many other female artists of her time, Chéron also made history pictures , copies of ancient paintings as well as allegories and religious representations.

Poems and translations

  • La coupe du Val-de-Grâce, response au poème de Molière "la gloire du Val-de-Grâce" ; Published anonymously in 1669
  • 1694: Essay de Pseaumes et cantiques mis en vers ; with engraved illustrations by her brother Louis Chéron
  • 1696: Traduction d'une ode latine, ou Description de Trianon
  • 1717: Les Cerises renversées ; released after her death
  • 1717: Le Cantique d'Habacuc et le psaume 103 traduits en vers françois ; published by her husband after her death

literature

  • René Démoris (Ed.): Hommage à Elizabeth Sophie Chéron. Texts et peinture à l'âge classique . Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris 1992, ISBN 2-87854-033-6 , pp. 9-54 (excerpts online ).
  • Clara Erskine Clement: Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century BC to the Twentieth Century AD Houghton, Mifflin & Company, Boston, New York 1905, pp. 81–83 ( digitized version ).
  • Léon Gréder: Elisabeth-Sophie Chéron: de l'Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture . Henri Jouse, Paris 1909.
  • Marie-France Hilgar: Chéron, Elisabeth-Sophie (1647-1711) . In: Eva Martin Sartori: The feminist encyclopedia of French literature . Greenwood Press, Westport, Conn. [u. a.] 1999, ISBN 0-313-29651-0 .
  • Marie-France Hilgar: Les multiples talents d'Élisabeth Sophie Chéron . In: Cahiers du dix-septième . No. II / 1, 1988, ISSN  1040-3647 , pp. 91-98 ( online ).
  • Andrea Weisbrod: Elisabeth Sophie Chéron . In: Margarete Zimmermann , Roswitha Böhm (Hrsg.): Significant women. French poets, painters, patrons of the 16th and 17th centuries . Piper, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-492-24906-5 , pp. 245-258 ( online ( Memento of March 22, 2008 in the Internet Archive )).

Web links

Commons : Elisabeth Sophie Chéron  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ In older publications, September 3rd is often given as the date of death. Newer publications consistently indicate September 5th as the date of death.
  2. ↑ M.-F. Hilgar: Les multiples talents d'Élisabeth Sophie Chéron , p. 91.
  3. ^ A. Weisbrod: Elisabeth Sophie Chéron , p. 250.
  4. ^ A. Weisbrod: Elisabeth Sophie Chéron , p. 251.
  5. ^ A. Weisbrod: Elisabeth Sophie Chéron , p. 252.
  6. ^ A. Weisbrod: Elisabeth Sophie Chéron , p. 246.
  7. ↑ a b c Essay on Elisabeth Sophie Chéron by Véronique Meyer in the Dictionnaire des femmes de l'ancienne France , accessed on November 25, 2011.
  8. ↑ According to A. Weisbrod: Elisabeth Sophie Chéron , p. 250. Véronique Meyer gives an amount of 400 livres in her essay.
  9. ^ Short biography on the Brooklyn Museum website , accessed November 25, 2011.
  10. ^ A. Weisbrod: Elisabeth Sophie Chéron , p. 245.
personal data
SURNAME Chéron, Elisabeth Sophie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French painter, engraver, poet and translator
DATE OF BIRTH October 3, 1648
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH September 5, 1711
Place of death Paris