Adèle Romany

December 7, 1769 – June 6, 1846

Active in: France
Alternate names: Adèle Romanée; Citizen Adel-Romany

Biography

Adèle Romany was a painter active in France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. She is most known for her portraits of other artists, although she did produce some allegories and genre scenes. Romany studied under Jean-Baptiste Regnault and exhibited regularly at the Salon between 1793 and 1833. She died in Paris in 1846.

Selected Works

A young person with light skin and pale blonde hair is shown from the waist up. They wear a dark blue coat, brown gloves, a high white collar, and a black hat that may be of fur. Their arms are crossed at the wrist and in one hand the end of a cane is grasped and held up under the opposite armpit.

Adèle Romany, Portrait of Auguste Vestris, 1793. Oil on canvas, 95.2 x 77.5 cm. RISD Museum, Purchased with the Edith C. Erlenmeyer Bequest and the Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund, 2009.9

A group of five people are gathered outside near a piano. At the center, a light-skinned young woman with a red necklace, white dress, and dark hair in an updo leans one arm on a stack of books on the piano, a sheet of paper in the other hand. Next to her, a light-skinned and dark-haired boy behind the piano points at the sheet music. On the woman's other side, two women are seated on benches, one an older light-skinned woman with slightly hunched posture and a cream-colored shawl and the other a light-skinned woman with dark hair, a white bonnet, and a bright red dress. Behind the two seated women, a man with light skin, white hair, and a dark coat stands holding a print or drawing.

Adèle Romany, Une jeune personne hesitant a toucher du piano devant sa famille, 1804. Oil on canvas, 113.03 x 146.05 cm. Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Gift of Mary Bridges Boynton, class of 1936, 2009.5

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Selected works

Circle

Student of
Jean-Baptiste Regnault

Bibliography

“Adèle Romany.” RKD. https://rkd.nl/explore/artists/67867.

Chavignerie, Émile de la. Dictionnaire general des artistes de l’école française depuis l’origine des arts du dessin jusqu’à nos jours: Architectes, peintrs, sculpteurs, graveurs et lithographes. Paris, 1882.

Checklist of painters c.1200–1994 Represented in the Witt Library, Courtauld Institute of Art, London. London: Mansell, 1995.

Coman, Sonia. “A Community of Women Artists and Actresses at the End of the Ancien Régime: The Portrait of Madame Thénard mère in Hermione by Adèle Romany.” S & F Online 15 (2019): 1.

Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture et gravure exposés au salon du Louvre. Paris, 1793.

Jeannerat, Carlo. “L’auteur du portrait de Vestris II, Adèle de Romance, et son mari, le miniaturiste François-Antoine Romany.” Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de l’art français (1923): 52–63.

Oppenheimer, Margaret A. “Women Artists in Paris, 1791–1814.” PhD Dissertation, New York University, 1996.

“Romany, Adèle.” Oxford Art Online. https://doi-org.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.B00155247.

Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections. Washington, DC: National Museum of Women in the Arts, 2012.

Thieme, Ulrich, and Felix Becker. Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler: von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Leipzig: Seemann, 1907–50.