Heading Towards the Revolution.
As the century neared to its close, many heads of the well-groomed entered the executioner’s basket. Images of dignitaries like Marie Antoinette and others who met the grim fate of the revolution abound, painted by members of the same caste like Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun (1755-1842). This is also an era of more female painters including her and artists like Adélaïde Labille Guiard (1749-1803) who was received in the Academy the same year as Vigée-Lebrun- 1783. Though they both had hyphenated surnames and suffered troublesome marriages, they were divided over the French revolution. Madame Guicard supported it; Madame Vigée-Lebrun abhorred and fled it. Even their pictures have been seen as oppositional in terms of their politics: Madame Guicard’s Madame Adélaïde of 1787 has been seen as “something of a moral and political ‘answer’ to Vigée-Lebrun’s more famous dynastic portrait of Marie Antoinette and her children of the same year.1 One cannot end this short exploration of portraiture without mentioning the exemplum of French revolutionary painting- Jacques Louis David (1748-1825). Though David is more noted for his neo-classical pictures of Roman and Greek history, he also painted some of the most accomplished portraits of the century. Chief amongst these are his portraits of the chemist Lavoisier (guillotined in 1794) and his Wife ( above), a celebration of science just as much as an aristocratic double portrait. Earlier is David’s equestrian portrait of the polish Count Potocki which seems a tribute to Rubens. But David’s most famous portrait is probably that of Madame Récamier (1800) which closes the century with a minor contribution from the leader of the next generation of painters, Ingres who painted the candlestick.
1Levey, 280.
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