Marie-Guillemine Benoist

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Self-portrait, oil on canvas, 1790

Marie-Guillemine Benoist born when Marie-Guillemine de Laville-Leroux (* 18th December 1768 in Paris ; † 8. October 1826 ibid) was a French painter of Classicism .

Marie-Guillemine Benoist was a woman from an aristocratic family. She belonged to a small group of professional painters at the time , which also included Anne Vallayer-Coster , Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun , Marguerite Gérard , Adélaïde Labille-Guiard and Marie-Gabrielle Capet .

Life

Portrait d'une négresse , oil on canvas, 1800

Marie-Guillemine de Laville-Leroux was born the daughter of a Paris civil servant. Her parents recognized her daughter's talent at an early age and in 1781 she began training with the famous painter Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun . Together with her younger sister Marie-Élisabeth Laville-Leroux (1770–1842) she worked in the studio of Jacques-Louis David .

In 1793 she married the French aristocrat and lawyer Vincent Pierre-Benoist, Count of Benoist (1758-1834). During the French Revolution , the couple fled to the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe . With the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy , she was awarded a state pension and her husband was made a member of the Conseil d'État .

Madame Benoist showed her best-known painting Portrait d'une négresse in 1800 in the Paris Salon. Six years earlier, slavery had been abolished and this image became a symbol of female emancipation and human rights . In 1818, the French King Louis XVIII. the picture. Today the painting hangs in the Musée du Louvre .

Works (selection)

  • 1791 Psyché faisant ses adieux a sa famille
  • 1791 L'Innocence entre la vertu et le vice , private collection
  • 1800 Portrait d'une négresse , Louvre
  • 1804 Portrait de Napoléon , Ghent
  • 1805 Portrait du Maréchal Brune , destroyed, copy in the Palace of Versailles
  • 1805 Portrait de Marie-Élise, grande duchesse de Toscane , Pinacoteca Nazionale, Lucca
  • 1807 Portrait de Pauline Borghèse
  • 1810 Portrait de l'impératrice Marie-Louise , Fontainebleau Castle
  • 1810 La lecture de la Bible , Municipal Museum, Louviers

literature

  • Marie-Juliette Ballot: Une élève de David. La Comtesse Benoist. L'Émilie de Demoustier, 1768-1826. Plon, Paris 1914 (Paris, Univ., Diss.).
  • Astrid Reuter : Marie-Guilhelmine Benoist. Design spaces of an artist around 1800. Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-931836-86-X (also: Dissertation University of Freiburg im Breisgau 2000).
  • Susan Waller: Women artists in the modern era. A documentary history. Scarecrow Press, Metuchen NJ et al. 1991, ISBN 0-8108-2405-1 .

Web links

Commons : Marie-Guillemine Benoist  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ James Smalls: Slavery is a Woman: Race, Gender, and Visuality in Marie Benoist's Portrait d'une négresse (1800)
personal data
SURNAME Benoist, Marie-Guillemine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Laville-Leroux, Marie-Guillemine de (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French neoclassicist painter
DATE OF BIRTH December 18, 1768
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1826
Place of death Paris