Françoise Basseporte
Madeleine Françoise Basseporte, (French pronunciation:
Life
Basseporte was born and died in Paris. Originally a portrait painter specializing in pastels, she apprenticed with the botanical illustrator Claude Aubriet, requiring her to shift from pastels to watercolors and to adopt a precise, near-photographic style. In 1741, she replaced the ailing Aubriet as "Peintre du Roy, de son Cabinet et du Jardin", making her the first female artist to occupy the office. She served for nearly 40 years in this capacity, employing not only scientific illustration skills, but also the capacity to dissect plants and reveal their internal structures.[1] The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau paid tribute to her, writing "Nature gives plants their existence, but Mademoiselle Basseporte gives them their preservation."[2]
She collaborated with the chemist
Genres
Basseporte was best known as a botanical illustrator. In contact with many of the major botanists and naturalists of her time, she gained recognition for her illustrations of plants, shells, animals, birds, and sea creatures. Though adept in pastel portraiture, Basseporte chose to pursue botanical illustration because it provided a steady income with which to support her family.[2] She worked more specifically in the genre of "peinture des plantes,[4]" taking a scientific approach to botanical illustration that focused more on plant structure than the flower. Her work stands at the intersection of art and science.[2]
Influences
Basseporte's first teacher was the painter and engraver Paul-Ponce-Antoine Robert (also known as Robert de Sery). Under the patronage of the
After Robert's death, Basseporte was apprenticed to Claude Aubriet and eventually succeeded him as the official painter of the Jardin du roi, and adding to Les Vélins du Roi. During her time at the Jardin du roi, Basseporte interacted with botanists Carolus Linnaeus and Georges-Louis Leclerc, the latter with whom she corresponded regularly.[2] Basseporte furthered her connections to the scientific community through Noel-Antoine Pluche, whose Spectacle de la nature she helped illustrate, and plant physiologist Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau. Monceau, working with the Académie des sciences, served to influence Basseporte's work during her tenure as an Académie dessinateur.[5]
In addition to teaching royals and nobility, Basseporte is thought to have taught and heavily influenced artists such as Marie Therese Vien and Anne Vallayer-Coster.[2]
Work
Basseporte was a teacher to
Many of Basseporte's botanical illustrations, including those featured in attached external links below, were done in watercolor over pencil on vellum and measure about 15 x 12 inches.[6] The ones included in below links belong to a series of 117 prints that were once incorrectly attributed to Pierre Joseph Redouté, an artist who worked much later than Basseporte, but are now believed to have been by the latter.[6] By viewing samples of Basseporte's work from this series, one can see the variety of content in which Basseporte both studied and depicted - from the leafy and green Polygonatum Multifloratum (Solomon's seal) and Nepeta Glechoma (ground ivy) to the bright red delicate petals of the Papaver (poppy).[6] Each of these are shown isolated as single specimens and are restricted within the confines of illustrated frames against a plain background.[6]
References
- S2CID 165126279.
- ^ a b c d e f g "May | 2012 | Broad Strokes: The National Museum of Women in the Arts' Blog". blog.nmwa.org. Retrieved 2018-04-07.
- ^ Londa L. Schiebinger (1991), The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science, pp.27-31.
- ^ ISSN 2258-093X.
- ^ a b Jeffares, Neil (10 February 2018). "Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, online edition" (PDF). Retrieved 7 April 2018.
- ^ a b c d "Circle of Madeleine Françoise Basseporte". The Morgan Library & Museum. 2014-08-20. Retrieved 2018-04-07.