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The Question of Rivalry

© Jessica Cresseveur

The student of feminist art history is almost guaranteed to encounter a sensationalist anecdote concerning the Paris Salon of 1783, an exhibition featuring paintings by the two newest female members of the Académie Royale, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. Because they were the only women exhibiting, critics automatically pitted them against each other as "rivals." Some even took sides, arguing why one was better than the other. (1) Vigée-Lebrun was a royalist and enjoyed patronage and friendship with the young queen, while Labille-Guiard favoured the king's aunts and would later support the Revolution. The former, who was noted for her beauty, hailed from a bourgeois family, while the background of the latter, who was seen as less attractive, was working-class. This "rivalry" is still accepted as fact in the present day. For example, the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY, which houses Labille-Guiard's copy of her Portrait of Madame Adélaïde (1787), refers to Vigée-Lebrun as the artist's rival on the painting's label.

That Labille-Guiard and Vigée-Lebrun were acquainted goes without question, but were they really rivals? Whitney Chadwick notes that the former's attitude toward the latter is not known.(2) Vigée-Lebrun, on the other hand, mentions her fellow academician in her memoirs, but the passage is too brief to be concretely construed one way or the other.(3) Why is this issue even important? Perhaps it would be more appropriate to ask why art critics did not include paintings by male academicians in their comparisons.

According to Simone de Beauvoir, "no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself."(4) Historically, with some exceptions, men have largely enjoyed the status of "One," while women have been relegated to the status of "Other." By putting similarities in binary oppositions ("Activity/passivity...Culture/Nature... Intelligible/sensitive..."), Hélène Cixous points out their implicit hierarchy, which "subjects the entire conceptual organization to man."(5) Thinking in terms of binary oppositions, then, would result in the conclusion of polarising the sexes. After all, why would traditional thought allow the "Other" to compete with the "One" when, in this mindset, the former would never be good enough? It would be best to keep competition contained within one group.

But this gives rise to another question. Why are we lacking "rivalries" in the Salon reviews-real or invented-amongst male artists? Evidence abounds of rivalry amongst male art students within the atelier. One needs look no further than the school of David for examples: Philippe-Auguste Hennequin vs. Jean-Germain Drouais; Anne-Louis Girodet vs. Jean-Baptiste Topino-Lebrun, etc (competing for the master's favour). As participants in the best-known exhibition in France, these and other men would compete for various prizes, commissions, and recognition. Competitiveness and rivalry amongst men was well-known, so why did art critics choose to publicise a most likely invented rivalry between the only women exhibiting at the Salon?

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