In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Marianne is a painter in 1770, working mostly in the shadow of her father's name. She's fictional. But the world she moves through was real, and so were the women who managed, against the odds, to make careers as painters in eighteenth-century France.
For much of that century, the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture admitted only a handful of women, and from 1770 it officially limited their number to four at a time. Women couldn't study the nude model, which closed the door to the most prestigious kind of painting. Some of them found a way in anyway.
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842)
Marie Antoinette's favorite portraitist painted the queen many times, and hundreds of other sitters across Europe. Her self-portraits, warm and direct, still feel modern. She was admitted to the Academy in 1783.
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749–1803)
Admitted the same day as Vigée Le Brun, and often cast as her rival. Her Self-Portrait with Two Pupils (1785, Metropolitan Museum of Art) shows her at her easel with two young women behind her: a quiet argument that women should be trained as painters too.
Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744–1818)
A master of still life, admitted to the Academy in 1770. Her flowers, shells, fruit and musical instruments are so precise and calm you can almost hear the silence around them.
Marguerite Gérard (1761–1837)
She trained in the studio of her brother-in-law, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and became known for intimate scenes of women and children at home, painted with great delicacy.
Marie-Guillemine Benoist (1768–1826)
A pupil of Vigée Le Brun and later Jacques-Louis David. Her Portrait of Madeleine (1800, Louvre) is one of the most striking portraits of its time: a young Black woman, calm and dignified, looking straight at the viewer.
Looking at their work
Next time you're at the Louvre or Versailles, look for their names on the labels. Spend a few minutes with one of their paintings, and imagine the woman holding the brush, in a world that told her to stay out of the room.
A portrait of your own
My print Anthropos, whose title is the Greek word for human being, is a deeply personal piece, originally a watercolor, whose meaning has changed for me over time. Each print is revived by hand with fresh brushstrokes, so no two are alike, and comes with a meditation letter. A small portrait of what it means to keep becoming yourself.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi