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

A light skinned young woman wearing a long-sleeved white jacket and white bonnet with blue band is doing needlework in her lap.

Françoise Duparc, Jeune femme à l'ouvrage, n.d. Oil on canvas, 78 x 64 cm. Musée des beaux-arts, Marseille, BA 406

A light-skinned young woman with a long cloth cap and brown adn blue dress is looking out at the viewer. She is wearing some kind of rucksack or pack on her back with items inside it barely visible in the background.

Françoise Duparc, La marchande de tisane, n.d. Oil on canvas, 73 x 58 cm. Musée des beaux-arts, Marseille, BA 407

A light-skinned woman with a lined face and gray hair is seated with her arms crossed, looking out at the viewer. She wears a white dress, off-white apron, and white cap.

Françoise Duparc, La vieille, n.d. Oil on canvas, 72 x 58 cm. Musée des beaux-arts, Marseille, BA 408

A light-skinned man with whispy gray hair and a receding hairline looks out at the viewer, holding a sack over his shoulder with one hand. He wears a faded blue coat with brass-colored buttons.

Françoise Duparc, L'homme à la besace, n.d. Oil on canvas, 78 x 64 cm. Musée des beaux-arts, Marseille, BA 405

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Selected works

Circle

Daughter of
sculptor Antoine Duparc

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.