Anne Vallayer-Coster

December 21, 1744 – February 28, 1818

Active in: France

Biography

Anne Vallayer-Coster was a renowned still life painter. She was born to Louis-Joseph Vallayer, a goldsmith to the king of France. Vallayer-Coster was admitted to the Académie Royale in 1770. She was supported by the royal family, especially Marie-Antoinette and the aunts of Louis XVI. Vallayer-Coster participated in every Salon between 1771 and 1789, and then again sporadically after 1795. She remained loyal to the monarchy throughout the Revolution and died in Paris in 1818.

Selected Works

A blue vase of flowers is shown with a small flower arrangement. The central flowers are pale pinks and white, with other flowers that are yellow, light blue, or purple.

Anne Vallayer-Coster, Vase of Flowers, after 1781. Oil on canvas, 40 x 32 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy

An oval-shaped portrait of a woman with very light skin and very light blonde hair, who has her head turned away to the left. She wears a double necklace of pearls, a pale pink dress with puffy white sleeves, and a hat that is the same pale pink with large white feathers.

Anne Vallayer-Coster, Queen Marie-Antoinette, 1778. Watercolor on ivory, 8.89 cm. The Walters Art Museum, 38.323

A shallow wicker basket with a handle is shown on a table. It has a large pile of grapes, some lighter in color and others dark purple, heaped inside, with several small flowers poking out .

Anne Vallayer-Coster, Basket of Grapes, 1774. Oil on canvas, 38 x 46 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nancy

A light-skinned woman with light brown hair tied back with a lavender ribbon is seated in a chair. She wears a white dress trimmed with the same lavender ribbon as her hair. In her lap, she holds a violin upright with one hand and turns the page of a book of sheet music with the other, while the violin bow lays across her lap.

Anne Vallayer-Coster, Portrait of a Violinist, 1773. Oil on canvas, 116 x 96 cm. Nationalmuseum Sweden

An arrangement of produce is shown on a table. On the left is a glass dish with a reddish or orange colored food inside; next to it is a piece of round bread and a pile of pale orange fruit that may be peaches; and piled up on the far right is a bunch of long, skinny radishes.

Anne Vallayer-Coster, Still Life with Brioche, Fruit, and Vegetables, 1775. Oil on canvas, 45.5 x 55 cm. Nationalmuseum Sweden

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Selected works

Circle

Daughter of
Joseph Vallayer

Bibliography

Berman, Greta. “Focus on Art.” The Juilliard Journal Online 18, no. 6 (2003).

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

Cohen, Sarah R. “Anne Vallayer-Coster: Painter to the Court of Marie-Antoinette.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36, no. 4 (2003): 571–76.

Doy, G. Seeing and Consciousness: Women, Class and Representation. Oxford: Berg, 1995.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “Anne Vallayer-Coster.” http://art.famsf.org/anne-vallayer-coster.

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

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

Harris, Ann Sutherland, and Linda Nochlin. Women Artists, 1550–1950. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976.

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

Kahng, Eik. Anne Vallayer-Coster: Painter to the Court of Marie Antoinette. Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 2002.

Michel, Marianne Roland. “Tapestries on Designs by Anne Vallayer-Coster.” The Burlington Magazine 102 (1960): i–ii.

Michel, Marianne Roland. Anne Vallayer-Coster, 1744–1818. France, 1970.

Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Anne Vallayer-Coster.” https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search#!?q=Anne%20Vallayer-Coster.

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

National Museum of Women in the Arts. “Anne Vallayer-Coster.” https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/anne-vallayer-coster.

Olausson, Magnus. “Anne Vallayer-Coster, Portrait of a Violinist.” Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum Stockholm 22 (2015): 17–20.

RKD. “Anne Vallayer-Coster.” https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/79081.

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

Walters Art Museum. “Queen Marie Antoinette.” https://art.thewalters.org/detail/6926/queen-marie-antoinette/.

Zanella, Andrea. Trois femmes peintres dans le siècle de Fragonard. Grasse: Musée de la Parfumerie Fragonard, 1998.

Entry Notes

Contributions to timeline and bibliography provided by Indiana University A300 student