Anne Vallayer-Coster

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Anne Vallayer-Coster
Portrait of Anne Vallayer-Coster by Alexander Roslin (1783), Crocker Art Museum
Born(1744-12-21)21 December 1744
Paris, Kingdom of France
Died28 February 1818(1818-02-28) (aged 73)
NationalityFrench
Known forPainting
Anne Vallayer-Coster, Portrait of a Violinist, 1773
Anne Vallayer-Coster, Vase, Lobster, Fruits, and Game, 1817

Anne Vallayer-Coster (21 December 1744 – 28 February 1818) was a major 18th-century French painter best known for

Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1770, at the age of twenty-six.[1]

Despite the low status that still life painting had at this time, Vallayer-Coster’s highly developed skills, especially in the depiction of flowers, soon generated a great deal of attention from collectors and other artists.[1] Her “precocious talent and the rave reviews” earned her the attention of the court, where Marie Antoinette took a particular interest in Vallayer-Coster's paintings.[1]

Her life was determinedly private, dignified and hard-working. She survived the bloodshed of the Reign of Terror,[2] but the fall of the French monarchy, who were her primary patrons, caused her reputation to decline.

In addition to still lifes, she painted portraits and genre paintings, but because of the restrictions placed on women at the time her success at figure painting was limited.[3]

Biography

Queen Marie-Antoinette (1780)

Earlier years

Portrait of Marie-Adelaide-Louisa de France

Born in 1744 on the banks of the

Joseph Vernet.[6]

Anne Vallayer-Coster, Still Life with Brioche, Fruit and Vegetables, 1775
Anne Vallayer-Coster, Basket of Plums, 1769

Career beginnings

Still Life with Round Bottle
Anne Vallayer-Coster, Still Life with Game, 1782

By the age of twenty-six, Vallayer-Coster was still without a name or a sponsor; this proved to be a worrisome issue for her.

Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, as reception pieces in 1770.[7] She was unanimously elected into the Royal Académie once the Academicians saw her paintings, making her one of only fourteen women accepted into the Académie before the French Revolution.[8] This moment of success, however, was overshadowed by the death of her father. Immediately her mother took over the family business, quite commonly the case during this time, and Anne continued to work to help support her family.[7]

Along with her Attributes of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture and Attributes of Music paintings, nine more of Vallayer-Coster's paintings, some of which had previously been submitted to the academicians, were displayed in the Salon exhibit of 1771. Commenting on the Salon exhibit of 1771, the encyclopedist Denis Diderot noted that "if all new members of the Royal Academy made a showing like Mademoiselle Vallayer's, and sustained the same high level of quality, the Salon would look very different!"[1] Though she is known for still life paintings in this period, her portraiture grew in popularity, and her 1773 Portrait of a Violinist was purchased by the National Museum in 2015.

Vallayer-Coster exhibited her first floral still life in 1775, and subsequently became known especially as a painter of flowers.

noblesse de robe. With such a prestigious title came a state office which, traditionally during this time was bought from father to son, making them almost indistinguishable from the old nobility.[10]

Career Recognition

She received early recognition of her career after being elected as an associate and a full member of the Royal Académie in 1770. Her strategies in initiating and sustaining her professional career were brilliant. She was exceptional in achieving membership in the Academy and succeeding in a prominent, professional career late in the 18th century, when resistance to women in the public sphere was deepening and the Académie was as resistant as ever to welcoming women into its ranks.[11] A common image of Vallayer-Coster was not only as a virtuous artist but as a skilful diplomat and negotiator, sharply aware both of her potential patrons' interests and of her own unusual position as a prominent woman artist.[11]

Later years

With the

empress Josephine acquired two works from her in 1804, her reputation was diminished.[1] Vallayer-Coster concentrated on floral paintings in oil, watercolor and gouache.[13]

In 1817 she exhibited Still Life with Lobster in the

King Louis XVIII. There is some evidence that Vallayer-Coster gave it to the king as an expression of her joy as a loyal Bourbon supporter through the turbulent years of the Revolution and Napoleonic imperialism.[12]

Anne Vallayer-Coster, Madame de Saint-Huberty in the Role of Dido, 1785

She died in 1818 at the age of seventy-three having painted more than 120 still lifes, always with a distinctive colouristic brilliance.[1]

Artwork

Still Life with Mackerel, 1787

Style and technique

Anne Vallayer-Coster, Joseph-Charles Roettiers, 1777

Vallayer-Coster worked principally in the varieties of still life developed over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries.[11] Conventional morality precluded women artists from drawing from the nude model, which was the necessary foundation for the higher genres. Still life, considered the least intellectual of the genres and the lowest in the academic hierarchy, was therefore deemed the appropriate subject for female artists. While accepting this limitation in order to gain admission to the academy, the main conduit of royal patronage, Vallayer-Coster devoted her formidable technical abilities to the still life, creating works of undeniable seriousness and real visual interest.[14]

Anne Vallayer-Coster, Bouquet of Flowers in a Terracotta Vase with Peaches and Grapes, 1776
Anne Vallayer-Coster, Victorie of France, 1779-1781

Vallayer-Coster used oil on canvas for most of her paintings. She achieved a great verisimilitude in the representation of materials and textures by the use of precise, finely blended brush strokes.

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, as well as 17th-century Dutch masters, whose work has been far more highly valued, but what made Vallayer-Coster’s style stand out against the other still life painters was her unique way of coalescing representational illusionism with decorative compositional structures.[11][14] Her objective was to give an aspect of grandeur to everything that she painted; in doing so, she created an additional sense of stability and plenitude. The critic John Haber, who describes her work as lacking inwardness, says that the solidity and reassuring materiality of her compositions appealed to elite bankers and aristocrats, who could appreciate her rendering of "contrasting veneers of different woods" or "an extravagant collection of coral and shells, things that took years to come into being and will last for decades to come."[2]

Exhibition

In 2002-2003 more than thirty-five of Vallayer-Coster’s paintings, which were provided by both museums and private collectors of France and the United States, were exhibited at the

Chardin, her elder and the celebrated master of still life painting, and her contemporary Henri-Horace Roland Delaporte, among others.[1] In June 2015, the Nationalmuseum added Vallayer-Coster’s 1773 Portrait of a Violinist to its collection of 18th-century French painting. The Nationalmuseum is also in possession of Vallayer-Coster’s 1775 Still Life with Brioche, Fruit, and Vegetables and her undated miniature Floral Still Life.[16] In March 2019, the Kimball Art Museum acquired Vallayer-Coster's 1787 painting titled Still Life with Mackerel.[17]

Works by Anne Vallayer-Coster

  • A Bust of Minerva with Armour and Weapons on a Stone Ledge (1777)
    A Bust of Minerva with Armour and Weapons on a Stone Ledge (1777)
  • A Lady Writing, and her Daughter (1775)
    A Lady Writing, and her Daughter (1775)
  • Attributes of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1769)
    Attributes of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (1769)
  • Attributes of Music (1770)
    Attributes of Music (1770)
  • Still Life with a Ham (ca. 1767)
    Still Life with a Ham (ca. 1767)
  • Still Life with Peaches and Grapes
    Still Life with Peaches and Grapes
  • Still-Life with Tuft of Marine Plants, Shells and Corals (1769)
    Still-Life with Tuft of Marine Plants, Shells and Corals (1769)
  • Bouquet of flowers in a glass of water (ca. 1774)
    Bouquet of flowers in a glass of water (ca. 1774)
  • Still Life with Lobster (ca. 1781)
    Still Life with Lobster (ca. 1781)
  • Vase of Flowers and Conch Shell (1780)[18]
    Vase of Flowers and Conch Shell (1780)[18]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i McKinven 2002
  2. ^ a b Haber 2003
  3. ^ a b c Greer 2001, p. 244
  4. ^ Roland-Michel, Marianne (1970). Anne Vallayer-Coster. C.I.L., Paris. pp. 148–154.
  5. ISBN 9780394411699
    .
  6. ^ a b Cohen 2003, p. 572
  7. ^ a b c d Greer 2001, p. 247
  8. ^ McKinven, 2002
  9. ^ Michel, Oxford Art Online
  10. ^ a b c d Doy 2005, p. 33
  11. ^ a b c d e f g Michel 1960, p. i
  12. ^ a b c d e "Woman painter rescued from obscurity.” 2003
  13. ^ a b Michel 1960, p. ii
  14. ^ a b Berman 2003
  15. ^ "Anne Vallayer-Coster: Painter to the Court of Marie-Antoinette". Dallas Museum of Art.
  16. ^ Olausson, Magnus (2015). "Anne Vallayer-Coster, Portrait of a Violinist" (PDF). Art Bulletin of Nationalmuseum. 22.
  17. ^ "Anne Vallayer-Coster | Kimbell Art Museum". www.kimbellart.org.
  18. ^ The Metropolitan Museum of Art

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Anne Vallayer-Coster.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Anne_Vallayer-Coster&oldid=1213497462"