Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux

1761–1802

Active in: France and present-day Haiti

Biography

Born in Paris in 1761, Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux was the eldest daughter of the French painter Joseph Ducreux (1735–1802). She studied painting in her father’s atelier and in 1786, she exhibited a pastel self-portrait at Pahin de la Blancherie’s (1752–1811) biweekly Salon de la Correspondance. She would go on to exhibit at the Salon in 1791, 1793, 1795, 1798, and 1799. She was also an accomplished performer and composer; her portraits and self-portraits often included artistic or musical imagery. Now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts Roeun, Portrait of the Artist, painted in 1799, may be a self-portrait and has also been attributed to Adèle Romany (1769–1846).

Ducreux did not sign her work and so many of her paintings have been previously attributed to her contemporaries, including Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842) and Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825). Ducreux moved to Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) in 1802 and married François-Jacques Lequoy de Montgiraud, a maritime prefect. She died that same year.

Selected Works

A full-length portrait of an artist in a classical costume, holding an oval canvas and making a pastel portrait of a young woman. The artist looks out at the viewer with a smile, her curls spilling out from two blue ribbons. The setting features eighteenth-century furniture and an elaborate marble floor.

Attributed to Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux or Adèle Romany, Portrait of the Artist, ca. 1799, Oil on canvas. Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen.

A full-length portrait of a young woman standing at a harp, with the fingers of her left hand resting on the strings and her right hand resting on the frame. She is wearing an elaborate eighteenth-century gown and a gray wig. Behind the harp there is sheet music and a Greek vase arranged on a table draped in red cloth.

Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux, Self-Portrait with a Harp, 1791, Oil on canvas, 193 x 128.9 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art.

A three-quarters portrait of a young woman sitting at a table, turned away from the viewer but looking back directly over her right shoulder. Her hair is tied with a blue ribbon and on the other side of the table is an elaborate gold and black harp. She holds papers–perhaps sheet music– in her right hand.

Rose-Adélaïde Ducreux, Portrait of Marie Thérèse Diane Andrault (née Maignard de la Vaupalière, 1768–1790), Comtesse de Langeron, ca. 1790. Oil on canvas, 130.2 x 97.5 cm. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

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Selected works

Circle

Daughter of
Joseph Ducreux (1735–1802)

Bibliography

Allard, Sébastien, Robert Rosenblum, Guilhem Scherf, and MaryAnne Stevens. Citizens and Kings: Portraits in the Age of Revolution, 1760–1830. New York: Harry Abrams, 2007.

Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: die bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker. Munich: Saur, 1992.

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

Baetjer, Katharine. European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995.

Baillio, Joseph. “Une artiste méconnue, Rose Adélaïde Ducreux.” L’oeil 399 (1988): 20–27.

Blanc, Olivier. Portraits de femmes artistes et modèles à l’époque de Marie-Antoinette. Paris: D. Carpentier, 2006.

Bonnet, Marie-Josèphe. Liberté, égalité, exclusion: femmes peintres en revolution, 1770–1804. Paris: Editions Vendémiaire, 2012.

Borzello, Frances. Seeing Ourselves: Women’s Self-Portraits. London: Thames and Hudson, 2016.

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

Chrisman-Campbell, Kimberly. Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.

Hyde, Melissa. America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2017.

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

Kahng, Eik and Marianne Roland Michel. Anne Vallayer-Coster: Painter to the Court of Marie-Antoinette. Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.

Kisluk-Grosheide, and Jeffrey Munger. The Wrightsman Galleries for French Decorative Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2010.

Koda, Harold, and Andrew Bolton. Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006.

Lemoine-Bouchard, Nathalie. Les peintres en miniature actifs en Farnce, 1650–1850. Paris: Editions de l’Amateur, 2008.

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

Pomeroy, Jordana, Laura Auricchio, Melissa Lee Hyde, and Mary D. Sheriff. Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and other French National Collections. London: Scala, 2012.