A Space of Their Own

Françoise Duparc

October 15, 1726 – October 2, 1778

Active in: France and England (?)

Biography

An exceptionally gifted painter, Françoise Duparc created powerful images of working-class people. Her work anticipates the clarity, simplicity, and power of later eighteenth-century artists. Though she was prolific and traveled widely, little is known about Duparc’s career. She is thought to have spent considerable time in England, where she exhibited and found success. An inventory at her death lists forty-one works, four of which were bequeathed to the Musée des beaux-arts, Marseille. These paintings are her most securely known works.

Selected Works

Bibliography

Billioud, Joseph. “Un peintre des types populaires: Francoise Dupard de Marseilles (1726–1778).” Gazette des beaux-arts 20 (1938): 173–84.

Chapman, Caroline. Eighteenth-Century Women Artists: Their Trials, Tribulations, and Triumphs. London: Unicorn, 2017.

Greer, Germaine. The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979.

Harris, Anne Sutherland and Linda Nochlin. Women Artists, 1550–1950. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984.

Heller, Nancy G. Women Artists: An Illustrated History. New York and London: Abbeville, 2003.

Petersen, Karen. Women Artists: Recognition and Reappraisal from the Early Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. New York: New York University Press, 1976.