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Jacques-Louis David and the Training of Professional Women Painters - Page 2

© Jessica Cresseveur

Despite these restrictions, David encouraged his women pupils to pursue history painting(4) and,and, later in his career, may have allowed them to attend life-drawing classes.(5) In fact, at least four women of the Paris atelier can be named as history painters: LaVille-Leroulx-Benoist, Mlle Bertaud (later Cherdame),* Marie-Anne-Julie Forestier, and Angélique Mongez. After David's exile to Brussels in 1816, he began teaching Sophie Frémiet-Rude. While LaVille-Leroulx-Benoist eventually turned to portraiture and genre,(6) Cherdame-Bertaud to portraiture,(7) Forestier to portraiture and religious subjects,(8) and Frémiet-Rude to portraiture, religious subjects, and the Troubadour style,(9) Mongez continued to produce history paintings throughout most of her career and sought to enter the canon of major French history painters.(10)

The encouragement that David gave Mongez can be discussed in relation to two instances in her career. For the 1806 Salon, she exhibited Theseus and Pirithoüs, which generated controversy among the Parisian public due its depiction of two male nudes; however, with the help of her teacher, she was able to sell the painting to the Russian Prince Youssoupov, a significant art patron, for 6,000 francs.(11) The second instance occurred in 1813 when Mongez produced a copy of David's portrait of Napoleon for the city of Avignon. In a letter to a Monsieur Artaud, director of the Musée de Lyon, he praised his student for adding her own innovations to the portrait, rather than producing a "servile copy."(12)

In addition to encouraging his women students in the production of their own works, David enlisted their help in the production of his own. Vivian Cameron notes that the head of one of the women in his famed Brutus painting of 1789 is the work of LaVille-Leroulx Benoist.(13) Later, in Brussels, Frémiet-Rude contributed to the production of several of his paintings, including the portrait of Wolf (which has recently been partially attributed to her), as well as producing copies of The Wrath of Achilles and The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis.(14)

Given these examples, we can safely conclude that David supported the idea of women as professional artists. While we will never know the exact reason for this support, it is interesting to speculate. Some scholars argue that his taking women students was an act of rebellion against the Bourbon monarchy, with which he disagreed. Others argue that it was a way of showing that he was in accordance with the teachings of the Enlightenment, the intellectual movement that spawned the American and French Revolutions. What is clear from close study of David's life is that he was not a feminist. This is evident from his close alliance with the notoriously misogynist Jacobin government, which ruled France from 1793 to 1794, and from his mentioning to Monsieur Artaud that Angélique Mongez's talent was "unique for a woman" ("unique pour une femme").(15) Despite this, however, he went to lengths that few of contemporaries went to give women an equal chance of succeeding as professional painters. At a later date, I plan to discuss these women's careers in better detail.

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