Jacques-Louis David and the Training of Professional Women Painters
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.
For a complete list of David's known women students, click here.
Further reading for this article
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Notes
(1) Elizabeth Guffey, Drawing an Elusive Line: The Art of Pierre-Paul Prud'hon (London, 2001): 169, 172.
* First name not known.
(2) Full letter in Daniel and Guy Wildenstein, Louis David: Recueil de documents complémentaires au catalogue complet de l'oeuvre de l'artiste (Paris, 1973) : 23-24.
(3) Guffey, 169-70.
(4) Gen Doy, Women and Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century France, 1800-1852 (London, 1998): 98.
(5) Existing evidence suggests that this began in 1813.
(6) Ann Sutherland-Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550-1950 (Los Angeles, 1976): 209.
(7) E. Bénézit, Dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et gravueurs Vol. 2. (Paris, 1999): 205.
(8) Charles Gabet, Dictionnaire des artistes de l'école française au XIXe siècle: Peintre, sculpture, architecture, gravure, dessin, lithographie et composition musicale (Paris, 1831): 267-68.
(9) Martin Rosenburg. "Rude, Sophie." Dictionary of Women Artists Vol. 2. ed. Delia Gaze (London, 1997): 1208.
(10) Doy, 101.
(11) Ibid.
(12) Wildenstein, 193.
(13) Vivian Cameron, Woman as Image and Image-Maker in Paris during the French Revolution unpub. Ph.D thesis. (Yale University, 1984): 81.
(14) Rosenburg, 1207-08.
(15) Qtd. in Wildenstein, 193.
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