A Space of Their Own

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard

April 11, 1749 – April 24, 1803

Active in: France

Biography

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard was born in Paris in 1749 and studied with François-Elie Vincent and Quentin La Tour. Although Labille-Guiard was admitted to the Academy in 1783 and made her debut at the Salon that year, it was at the Salon of 1785 that she captured the attention of the Mesdames Adélaïde and Victoire, the unmarried aunts of Louis XVI. Madame Adélaïde so admired Labille-Guiard’s Self-Portrait with Two Pupils that she offered to buy it for a generous sum; however, the artist refused.

When Madame Adélaïde learned that Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun had been commissioned to paint a portrait of Marie-Antoinette for the Salon of 1787, she commissioned portraits of herself, her sister, and their niece Madame Élisabeth from Labille-Guiard. These commissions reaffirmed the conservative values of the court of Louis XV in the context of the extravagance of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. In 1787, the catalogue published to accompany the opening of the official Salon identified the French painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard as “premier Peintre des Mesdames,” or First Painter for Mesdames Adélaïde and Victoire.

Labille-Guiard was married to Nicolas Guiard in 1769, and, following their divorce, to her former teacher François-Elie Vincent in 1800. Following the overthrow of the French monarchy, Labille-Guiard remained in Paris, creating a new identity for herself as an artist whose work helped conceptualize the new French republic. She and other reform-minded moderates hoped for the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. At the Salon of 1791, Labille-Guiard exhibited pastel portraits of fourteen deputies to the National Assembly, including members of a group that opposed the Jacobins’ rejection of the monarchy. She retreated to the French countryside during the Reign of Terror, a time when many of her patrons were guillotined and a number of her most ambitious paintings were destroyed. She died in Paris in 1803.

Selected Works

A light-skinned woman with rosy cheeks and a large, elaborate updo of gray hair stands in front of an easel with an artwork on it. She is wearing a red dress with a white ruffled front and skirt, a white cap over the top of her hair, and holds a white cloth in one hand. The image on teh easel shows the faces of three men, overlapping and in profile. The entire painting is framed in an elaborate gold frame with a crest and laurels at the top.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Portrait of Madame Adélaïde, ca. 1787. Oil on canvas, 273.7 × 187.3 cm. Speed Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Berry V. Stoll, restored by income from the Marguerite Montgomery Baquie Memorial Trust, 1993, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts, 1982.21

A woman with light skin and curly gray hair is shown from the chest up. She wears an outfit that includes a large dark gray hat with blue ribbons, bows, and feathers, along with a striped white shawl tied around her neck and decorated with a corsage of small flowers.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, A Fashionable Noblewoman Wearing a Plumed Hat, ca. 1789. Pastel on blue laid paper mounted on canvas, 55 x 46 cm. National Gallery of Art, 1999.92.1

A woman with very light skin, gray hair with a few curls that has been pulled into an updo with roses, and a shiny blue dress is seated, the top of her dress pulled down to allow an infant in her arms to breastfeed. The woman is turned to face another young child with light skin and blonde hair, who stands alongside her looking into her face with one arm on the back of her chair.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Portrait of Madame Charles Mitoire with Her Children, 1783. Pastel on three sheets of blue paper, mounted on canvas, 98.4 x 78.7 cm. The J. Paul Getty Museum

A young woman is depicted from the chest up, reclining against a blue background. She has very light skin, dark brown wavy hair with a blue ribbon tied in it, and blue eyes. She is wearing a white dress or shift, which has been pulled down to reveal her shoulders and both breasts. Her head is turned slightly away from the viewer, and she has a slight smile on her face.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Head of a Young Woman, 1779. Pastel on paper, mounted on canvas, 54.6 × 44.5 cm. The J. Paul Getty Museum

A light-skinned woman in a blue dress with a large feathered hat is seated at an easel, holding a paint palette and looking directly at the viewer. Behind her, two younger women, both with light skin and dressed in muted colors, look over the back of her chair at what the seated woman is painting.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Marie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond, 1785. Oil on canvas, 210.8 x 151.1 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 53.225.5

A sepia-toned drawing of two women from teh shoulders up. One is shown in side profile and has gray curly hair, while the other looks directly at the viewer and has lighter hair.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Marie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond, ca. 1785. Black chalk with stumping, red and white chalks on beige paper, 38.1 x 48.3 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998.186

A woman with light skin, pink cheeks, and a large, curly gray updo is seated at a writing table. She wears an all-white outfit including a shiny dress with 3/4 sleeves, a slightly see-through polka-dot shawl around her neck, and a see-through polka-dot cap over the top of her hair. In one hand she holds a white quill pen to a sheet of paper, while the other hand holds a white handkerchief.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Portrait de femme, 1787. Oil on canvas, 100.6 x 81.4 cm. Musée des beaux-arts de Quimper

A smiling, light-skinned young man with thin, wavy brown hair that nearly reaches his shoulders. He is seated sideways on a chair with his arms crossed to rest on its back, and he looks away slightly to the right. He is wearing a brown coat, a red-and-black striped waistcoat, and a white shirt with a tall collar.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Portrait of Joachim Lebreton, 1795. Oil on canvas, 73.03 x 59.69 cm. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 94-34

A seated woman with light skin, pink cheeks, and gray curly hair looks out with a serious expression. She is wearing a blue dress, green gloves, a whie scarf and collar that reach her chin, and a white lace cap with ribbon bows on her hair, so that only her face and part of her hair is uncovered.In one hand, she holds a closed folding fan.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Portrait of Madame de Genlis, 1790. Oil on canvas laid down on board, 73.98 x 60.01 cm. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 91.2

A sepia-toned drawing of a seated woman, shown from the waist up in a side profile view. Her dress or shirt has slipped down, revealing her bare upper arm and back, and her dark wavy hair is partially wrapped in a light-colored turban. She has a dangling earring in her ear, and she her head is turned so that she can look out the corner of her eye to the right.

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Study of a Seated Woman Seen from Behind (Marie-Gabrielle Capet), 1789. Red, black, and white chalk on toned laid paper, 52 x 48 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008.538.1

Continue Exploring

View artist timeline
Selected works
 

Circle

Student of
François-Elie Vincent

Student of
Quentin de la Tour

Teacher of
Marie-Gabrielle Capet

Bibliography

Auricchio, Laura. Adélaïde Labille-Guiard: Artist in the Age of Revolution. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2009.

Auricchio, Laura. “Adélaïde Labille-Guiard.” Harvard Magazine. 2009. https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2009/09/adelaide-labille-guiard.

Baetjer, Katharine. “Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749–1803).” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art. June 2016. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/lagui/hd_lagui.htm.

Borzello, Frances. Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits. New York: Harry Abrams, 1998.

Cailleux, J. “Portrait of Madame Adélaïde of France, Daughter of Louis XV.” Burlington Magazine 111 (1969): 1–6.

Chadwick, Whitney. Women, Art, and Society. London: Thames and Hudson, 2012.

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

De Jesus, Mary Sprinson. “Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s Pastel Studies of the Mesdames de France.” Metropolitan Museum Journal 43 (2008): 157–72.

Fine, Elsa Honig. Women & Art: A History of Women Painters and Sculptors from the Renaissance to the 20th Century. London: Allanheld & Schram, 1978.

Fripp, Jessica L. Painting Community in Eighteenth-Century France: Labille-Guiard’s Portraits of Artists. Williamstown: Williams College, 2005.

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.

Hohenzollern, Johann George Prinz von. “Das Bildnis der Marquise de la Valette von Mme Adelaide Labille-Guiard.” Pantheon 26 (1968): 474–82.

Hyde, Melissa. “‘Peintre par elle-même?’ Women Artists, Teachers and Students from Anguissola to Haudebourt-Lescot.” Arts et Savoirs 6 (2016): 1–19.

Jallut, M. “Le Portrait du prince de Bauffremont par Madame Labille-Guiard.” Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France (1962): 217–22.

Keener, Frederick M., and Susan E. Lorsch. Eighteenth-century Women and the Arts. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.

National Museum of Women in the Arts. “Adélaïde Labille-Guiard.” https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/ad%C3%A9la%C3%AFde-labille-guiard.

Nicholson, Kathleen. “Labille-Guiard, Adélaïde.” Grove Art Online. 2003. https://doiorg.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T048514.

Münch, Birgit Ulrike, et al. Künstlerinnen: Neue Perspektiven auf ein Forschungsfeld der Vormoderne. Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2017.

Parker, Rozsika, and Griselda Pollock. Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981.

Passez, Anne-Marie. Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 1749–1803: biographie et catalogue raisonné de son œuvre. Paris: Arts et Métiers Graphiques, 1973.

Portralis, R. “Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, 1749–1803.” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 2, no. 26 (1901): 353–67, 477–94, and no. 17 (1902): 100–18, 325–47.

Quinn, Bridget, and Lisa Congdon. Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order). San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2017.

Weidemann, Christianne, Petra Larass, and Melanie Klier. 50 Women Artists You Should Know. Munich: Prestel, 2016.

Entry Notes

Contributions to timeline and bibliography provided by Indiana University A300 student Alyssa Joyal