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Authorship and the Woman Painter II: Two Case Studies - Page 3

© Jessica Cresseveur

Finally, in 1971, a study of Georges Wildenstein's compilation of Salon livrets led scholars to question the current attribution. The entry in the livret of the 1799 Salon lists the portrait as a work by David's contemporary (yet not student, as some scholars have claimed) Adélaïde Labille-Guiard.(9) Upon this discovery, the portrait was subject to ultraviolet inspection, during which her "badly mutilated, chipped, and overpainted" signature was finally discovered on the manuscript near Dublin-Tornelle's pointing finger.(10) Unlike the Val d'Ognes portrait, the authorship was no longer in question.

While we can only speculate as to the exact purpose of the forged signature, an attempt to raise the painting's value is likely. By the mid-nineteenth century, with the growth of capitalism and the increased wealth of the bourgeoisie, fewer and fewer women of that social class worked outside the home.(11) Likewise, the number of professional women painters declined. Given social expectations of women at this time, it is hardly surprising that the value of their art would decrease and that a collector with enough cunning would alter the signature on a woman's painting if it was stylistically similar to one of "greatest" artists in recent history.

These are only two examples of many paintings whose correct authorship was distorted due to the patriarchal construction of the art historical canon. It goes without saying that there are countless others both in public and private collections mistakenly attributed to male artists. The process of reattributing them to the women who produced them will undoubtedly be long and arduous--but well worthwhile.

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Works Cited

(1) Charles Sterling, "A Fine `David' Reattributed." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 9:5 (1951):121-32.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Valerie Mainz, "Charpentier, Constance." The Dictionary of Women Artists ed. Delia Gaze. Vol I. (London, 1997):381-82.

(4) Charles Gabet, Dictionnaire des artistes de l'école française au XIXe siècle. Peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure, dessin, lithographie et composition musicale (Paris, 1831) : 132-3. Gabet uses the French "Une jeune Fille [sic] dessinant un paysage." (Translation mine).

(5) Margaret Oppenheimer, "Nisa Villers, Née Lemoine (1774-1821)." Gazette des Beaux-Arts (April 1996): 170.

(6) Ibid., 169.

(7) Elsa Honig-Fine. Women and Art: A History of Women Painters and Sculptors from the Renaissance to the 20th Century (Montclair, NJ, 1978): 48.

(8) Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society 3rd ed. (London, 2002): 25.

(9) The exact wording in the livret is "Citoyenne [Citizen] Labille dit Guiard."

(10) Andrew Kagen, "A Fogg `David' Reattributed to Madame Adélaïde Labille-Guiard." Acquisitions Report 1969-1970 (Fogg Art Museum, 1971): 38.

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