Between 1780 and 1810 many female artists were very successful for their time and reached professional recognition. Although the number of girls admitted to the prestigious Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture was scarce, in Paris of 1780 they were the ones receiving the most commissions, specially to portrait the women in Court, who became their main patrons.

Anne Vallayer-Coster (France, 1744–1818), who entered the Académie in 1770, painted portrait and social scenes, but gained success through her still lives of flowers, sea shells and fruits. She was much admired by Queen Marie-Antoinette and the ladies of the Court Adélaïde y Victoire, both daughters of King Louis XV.

Vase of flowers, by Anne Vallayer–Coster (1780)

Technique: oil on canvas / Measures: oval, 50.2 x 38.1 cm

Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York

Those same ladies commissioned paintings to Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (France, 1749–1803) and Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (France 1755–1842), both admitted to the Palace on May 31st,  1783. Such was their success that, in 1787, Labille-Guiard was given the title Royal Painter of Mesdames.

Self-portrait with two pupils (Mademoiselle Marie Gabrielle Capet and Mademoiselle Carreaux de Rosemond), by Adélaïde Labille–Guiard (1785)

Technique: oil on canvas / Measures: 210.8 x 151.1 cm

Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York

Marie Antoinette played a key role in the admission of Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, one of her favourite portrait painters. The simultaneous admission of two female painters to Court caused such a commotion in those days (and the following years) that the Press said they were rivals. Vigée Le Brun was said to have a more feminine style, with looser brush-strokes and a larger color palette, while Labille-Guiard's paintings looked more masculine, with shorter strokes and more subdued tones.

Madame Grand (Noël-Catherine Verlée), later Madame Talleyrand-Périgord, Princesse de Bénévent,  by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1783)

Technique: oil on canvas / Measures: oval, 92.1 x 72.4 cm

Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York

However, with the French Revolution in 1789, all Court-artists had difficulties adjusting to the new social norms. Vigée Le Brun and Vallayer-Coster left Paris for the Courts of England and Russia.  Labille-Guiard stayed in France, trying to become artist to the new Republic. She gave classes and even painted portraits of the new leaders, such as Robespierre. But in 1793, the Government destroyed many of the portraits of her Court years and her career never recovered.

With the opening of the Art Salons in 1790, where all artists could display their works (not only those belonging to the Académie), a new group of female artists becomes renown. This is the case of Rose Adélaïde Ducreux (France, 1761–1802).

Self-portrait with harp, by Rose Adélaïde Ducreux (ca. 1790)

Technique: oil on canvas / Measures: 193 x 128.9 cm

Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York

Ducreux's work, as that of sisters Marie Victoire Lemoine (France, 1754–1820) and Marie-Denise (Nisa) Villers (France, 1774-1821), whose careers began in 1790, are seen under a new light these days. According to recent studies at the MET in New York, it is said that many paintings originally  assigned to other artists, belong in fact to them.

The Interior of an Atelier of a Woman Painter, by Marie Victoire Lemoine

Technique: oil on canvas / Measures: 116.5 x 88.9 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York

In our country, one of the first women artists was lithographer Andrea Macaire de Bacle (Switzerland, 1796-1855). She was followed by sculptor Lola Mora (Tucumán, 1866-1936) and, later in time, by the pioneer of Abstraction Yente (Eugenia Crenovich – Buenos Aires, 1905-1990) and   Raquel Forner (Buenos Aires, 1902-1988), who depicted the pains of the world.

Keep reading... "Eighteenth-Century Women Painters in France", by Laura Auricchio, at the The Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2000. (October, 2004).