Ahead of her Time: Pioneering Women from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century

AHEAD OF HER TIME PIONEERING WOMEN FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

AHEAD OF HER TIME

PIONEERING WOMEN FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Catalogue by Virginia Brilliant with Helen Record On the occasion of the exhibition 5 December 2023 – 10 February 2024 at ROBILANT+VOENA 980 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10075 Full cataloguing for each work included in this volume, high-resolution and supplementary images, condition reports, and prices are available upon request.

For further details, please contact Virginia Brilliant, Director, Old Masters, New York, virginia@robilantvoena.com.

Introduction

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AHEAD OF HER TIME INTRODUCTION Robilant+Voena is pleased to present the exhibition Ahead of her Time: Pioneering Women from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century. The exhibition features works created by women artists as well as portraits of, and works belonging to, women of artistic, cultural, or intellectual significance.

As it has been for women throughout the course of history, each protagonist highlighted in this exhibition faced challenges which frustrated and often hindered them in their quest for creative expression and exploration. Nevertheless, each one created or induced the production of works of art which rival those of their male counterparts, or undertook intrepid adventures and entrepreneurial endeavours which defied the socially codified roles of the eras in which they lived. Their intellectual curiosity and creative impulses propelled them to extraordinary achievements despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

The exhibition begins with a celebration of the women painters of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque periods, including Lavinia Fontana, Fede Galizia, Orsola Caccia, and Artemisia Gentileschi. Each one had the good fortune to receive their initial artistic training from their fathers, though each one evolved a distinctive personal style.The eighteenth century, during which women were increasingly permitted to undertake the formal academic study of art alongside their male contemporaries, is also well represented. Nevertheless, despite their advocacy for equal rights, in particular seeking the opportunity to learn to draw from life, many of these women, from Adélaïde Labille-Guiard to Angelica Kauffmann, found their efforts stymied, with LabilleGuiard limiting herself to the genre of portraiture, and Kauffmann leaving England for the Continent where history paintings found greater acceptance. Exceptional during this era were the women painters of Sèvres, who produced some of the finest works in porcelain to emerge from the Royal Manufactory, sophisticated examples of which are represented here. More prolific were women artists across nineteenth-century Europe, who in many cases explored genres and styles distinct from their male colleagues. American women painters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries embraced the developments forged by their European forbearers, and in many cases infused their works with subtle expressions of their burgeoning struggles for political equality.

Whether poised before an easel or a porcelain plaque, performing on Europe’s most exalted stages, putting pen to paper in authoring works now considered masterpieces, or setting off on dangerous voyages to discover new worlds, the women highlighted in this volume still offer inspiration today through the beauty of their creations, through the risks they took, and through the agency they claimed, in order to achieve their intellectual ambitions and aesthetic dreams.

On behalf of Robilant+Voena, I would like to thank Camille Leprince (Paris), Galleria Cesare Lampronti (London), Christopher Bishop Fine Art (NewYork), Moretti Gallery (London, MonteCarlo, Paris), Guy Stair Sainty (London), Emanuel von Baeyer (London), and Zebregs&Röell (Amsterdam), for their generous contributions to this exhibition.

Virginia Brilliant 5

AHEAD OF HER TIME – PIONEERING WOMEN FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

CATALOGUE

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Lavinia Fontana Bologna 1552–1614 Rome

Portrait of Gerardo Giavarini at Twenty-Five Years Old, 1598 Oil on canvas 130 x 104 cm (511/8 x 41 in.)

The dashing young knight portrayed here by Lavinia Fontana, one of the leading artists in Bologna, is Gerardo Giavarini. The portrait was likely painted on the occasion of Pope Clement VIII Aldobrandini’s stay in the city in 1598, during which he bestowed honours upon the scions of several notable Bolognese families, including Giavarini.

To celebrate this moment, Fontana was commissioned to capture the young man in his prime – she was selected above the rising star Guido Reni and other accomplished artists such as Ludovico Carraci. Fontana’s commission for this work testifies to her high standing in the artistic milieu of Bologna.

The young knight is depicted in military garb with a feather-crested helmet sitting on the table beside him, emphasising his recently elevated status. A Turkish carpet covers the table, indicating the vibrant trade between Italy and the East in this period, and conveying the wealth of the sitter’s family. Curiously, Giavarini points to a small painting of Venus and Cupid, resembling the composition of known works by Fontana herself, perhaps suggesting his aspirations for marriage and continuation of the family line.

The fine painterly qualities of this picture highlight Fontana’s aptitude as a portraitist, and the work testifies to a moment in her career when she was gaining fame and accolades in Bologna, with this recognition ultimately causing her to move to Rome in 1604 at the invitation of Pope Clement VIII, who was so closely linked with the inception of this very painting.

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Fede Galizia Active in Milan 1587–1630

Judith with the Head of Holofernes, c. 1620s Oil on canvas 127 x 95.5 cm (50 x 375/8 in.)

Fede Galizia was the daughter and pupil of the miniaturist and illuminator Nunzio Galizia. In her native Milan, Galizia was praised as a portraitist, as well as receiving public commissions for church altarpieces. Contemporary sources do not mention Galizia’s talent for still life painting, although her work in this genre is celebrated today.

In this splendid, previously unpublished Judith with the Head of Holofernes, the artist signed the work in blood red script on the sack into which the head is placed, perhaps a nod to Caravaggio’s Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (1608) in Saint John’s Co-Cathedral, Malta, in which part of his name is written in the blood spilling from the saint’s neck.

In the Old Testament Book of Judith, the Assyrian general Holofernes intended to annihilate the Jews of Bethulia. Holofernes, however, became enamored with the beautiful Jewish widow Judith. He invited her into his tent to seduce her, but, inebriated with drink, he reclined on his bed, and Judith decapitated him using his own sword, thus liberating her people. The painting’s subject clearly exalts a woman’s struggle to assert herself in a male-dominated world.

Galizia painted this subject several times throughout her career. An early version was published

by Filippo Maria Ferro in 2019 and the artist returned to the subject in 1596 in a painting now at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida. Similar versions are located in the Galleria Borghese in Rome (1601) and the Palazzo Reale in Turin (c. 1605–10). By comparison, the present painting represents significant changes in the artist’s practice as her work matured. The composition presents a powerful and partially disrobed Judith, the fabric of her robes and jewels far simpler than in earlier versions. Judith’s face is carefully modelled using chiaroscuro, her expression serene yet determined. Judith is depicted in motion: turning with a defiant gaze as she leaves Holofernes’ tent, she places the severed head into a sack held by her maid, Abra, no longer the elderly woman of Galizia’s earlier renditions of the subject, but a young girl. In addition, the scimitar of her earlier iterations has been replaced by a sword – a mighty symbol of her strength – and a powerful allusion to female resilience in a male world.

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Giulia Crespi Active in Milan 1610–1628

Saint Isidore, 1620s Oil on canvas 87.5 x 66.5 cm (341/2 x 261/8 in.)

Giulia Crespi was born around 1583, and shared a workshop with her brother, Giovanni Battista Crespi, called Il Cerano. She is last documented in 1628. Although scant information survives regarding her life and career, there is ample evidence of her skill as a painter owing to her many works recorded in important collections.

The composition of the present work clearly derives from a model by Cerano, replicated several times within his workshop. Yet although the work clearly correlates in compositional terms with works part of the much more well understood corpus of her more famous brother, certain elements seem to be distinct to Giulia, in particular the dense and luminous impasto in the face.

Also critical is her distinctive signature, at lower left.

The subject of the painting, Saint Isidore was born in 1070 into a peasant family near Madrid, and worked as a day-labourer on the farm of the wealthy John de Vergas at Torrelaguna. Isidore and his wife Maria lived a model of simple Christian charity and faith. He prayed while working and shared all he had with those even poorer than himself. He died in 1130. Isidore is typically portrayed as a peasant with a sickle or staff, and he and his wife are venerated both in Spain and throughout the Catholic world for their exemplary commitment to family, love for the land, service to the poor, and deep spirituality.

While Cerano died in 1632, his sister Giulia is last recorded in 1628, and it seems possible that she perished in the plague of 1629–30. Saint Isidore was canonised in 1622, following a lengthy campaign on the part of Philip III, the king of Spain, who was particularly devoted to the Spanish peasant saint. Therefore the present canvas can be understood as a mature work by the artist. *Not on display in New York. Details regarding export outside Italy are available upon request.

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Artemisia Gentileschi Rome 1593–after 1654 Naples

The Penitent Magdalene, c. 1625/30 Oil on canvas 81 x 68.5 cm (317/8 x 27 in.)

This recently rediscovered work by Artemisia Gentileschi, the most celebrated female painter of the seventeenth century, shows a refined depiction of Mary Magdalene, meditating upon her sinful past. This is a significant addition to the artist’s oeuvre, and a fine example of Artemisia’s sensitive treatment of women as the protagonist of her paintings.

Artemisia was born in Rome, the only daughter of Orazio Gentileschi, under whom she trained.

Over the course of her career, she worked in Rome, Florence,Venice, Naples, and London, and was patronised by some of the most prominent figures in European society, including Grand Duke Cosimo II of Tuscany and Philip IV of Spain.

The beguiling Magdalene, depicted in three-quarter length and dressed in a white chemise and draped with exquisitely-painted folds of burnt orange cloth, rests her left elbow on a velvet cushion beside her silver ointment jar, while her right hand rests upon a skull. This morose symbol is, however, rendered in a deep brown hue, softening its macabre force as it almost melts into the scene.

The dating of the painting is still under investigation: there is consensus among a large part of scholars for a date between 1626 and 1630 when Artemisia was working in Rome, Venice, and Naples, but another interesting hypothesis places this Magdalene in the 1640s. Echoes of the lively Roman artistic milieu of the 1620s, where Artemisia was working, reverberate throughout the painting. The sumptuous robes and sensuous rendering of the Saint’s snow-white complexion denote the movement of the artist’s style away from the Caravaggism of her early works.

Moreover, the composition and figure’s pose seem to echo certain works by French artists active in Rome and Venice, namely Simon Vouet and Nicolas Régnier, whose works provided reference points for Artemisia.

The Penitent Magdalene here appears to have some iconographic parallels with the Allegory of Melancholy. The image of the woman with her head supported by one arm had, since the early Renaissance, come to denote a melancholic meditation upon one’s past. Indeed, the overlap between the religious and allegorical theme that Artemisia suggests here may have taken inspiration from the famous Meditation by Domenico Fetti, made around 1618, and well known to Artemisia through Guercino’s interpretation of the work in the Casino Ludovisi in Rome, which she frequented.

Thus, the present canvas reveals Artemisia’s keen receptiveness to the artistic influences around her. The work is a sublime example of the artist’s emphasis on female protagonists, showing a delicacy and empathy that few others could achieve.

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Orsola Maddalena Caccia 1596–Moncalvo–1676

Still Life with Flowers and Fruits, c. 1630 Oil on canvas 88.5 x 62.5 cm (347/8 x 245/8 in.)

One of the most remarkably original women painters of seventeenth-century Italy, Orsola Maddalena Caccia was a nun in a small convent whose artistic career spanned some five remarkable decades. Born Theodora Caccia, she was the daughter of an artist, Guglielmo Caccia, a Piedmontese painter of religious subjects known as Moncalvo.Theodora, taking the name Orsola, entered Holy Orders in 1620 and ultimately joined the new Ursuline convent in her hometown of Moncalvo.

The modest nunnery was funded primarily by Guglielmo and Orsola’s painting practice.

Following her father’s death in 1625, Orsola’s artistic commissions sustained the convent until she was well in her seventies. She painted chiefly for prominent families in her local area, though she was also known further afield. Her range of patrons suggests that Orsola was a shrewd businesswoman, leveraging her father’s substantial network of clients to secure the commissions that were the lifeblood of the Moncalvo convent.

Orsola Caccia’s most outstanding artistic accomplishment was her development of still-life elements into deeply meditative, independent paintings. The present still life exemplifies her highly original contribution to the genre – the meticulously articulated flowers and fruits are carefully organised into a highly stylised, symmetrical composition. At the same time, Caccia transformed each flower, each piece of fruit, into a contemplative image of idealised beauty, reflecting the beauty of God’s creation in a manner ideally suited to spiritual life and private devotional practices. Also distinctive of her work was her insistence on symmetry, likewise a nod to God’s perfection of nature. Caccia clearly studied natural specimens with great care, but the inclusion of species that could not have grown in Moncalvo suggests careful examination of botanical prints. Prints also may have inspired the exuberantly fantastical zoomorphic vases and vessels she favoured.

For devout Catholics, Caccia’s still lifes would have related closely to the language of flowers, or, the ‘Christian botany’. Saint Francis of Sales (canonised 1665) suggested that flower bouquets should be ‘read’ in this symbolic manner, giving rise to spiritual contemplation. Caccia would almost certainly have known his Devout Life (1609), a text popular in the Piedmont region, at the Savoy court, and in Ursuline circles, and these ideas undoubtedly affected her unique approach to still-life painting.

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Elisabetta Marchioni Active in Rovigo in the second half of the seventeenth century

Pair of Floral Still Lifes, second half of the seventeenth century Oil on canvas Each: 109 x 140 cm (427/8 x 551/8 in.)

This magnificent pair of floral still lifes is by Elisabetta Marchioni, a most ‘celebrated painter of flowers’ in seventeenth-century Italy. She was described thus by her late eighteenth-century biographer Bartoli, the chief source for the few biographical details that survive for this artist.

Through Bartoli, we know that Marchioni was the wife of a goldsmith and that she died young, in around 1700.

Bartoli also gave details of a number of her paintings in various collections in the town of Rovigo, in the Veneto. This included an altar frontal depicting the sacred monstrance with putti and flowers, which she gave to the local Capuchin Fathers; the work is now in the Pinacoteca of the Accademia dei Concordi in Rovigo.

The Rovigo altar frontal has often served as the point of departure for establishing attributions to Marchioni. In the altar frontal, the vases bursting with flowers somewhat overshadow the monstrance, revealing Marchioni’s tendency to prioritise the floral elements of her still lifes above all else. This trait is particularly evident in the present pair of paintings, in which the vases almost disappear into the background. Further elements typical of her works can also be found: the stone bases upon which the vases are displayed, the use of elaborate metal vases overflowing with countless varieties of flowers (roses, carnations, jasmines, tulips, and others), and the rendering of the flowers using dense but luminous touches of the brush.

In terms of date, this pair of paintings were likely created in the middle part of the artist’s career.

They are more complex than Marchioni’s early, simplified compositions, but do not yet present the open-air settings typical of her later works. Considering their compositional complexity, brushwork, and the preparation of the canvases, the paintings are perhaps closest stylistically to the pair of flower paintings in the Museo del Castello di Buonconsiglio in Trent, and the altar frontal in Rovigo mentioned above.

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North America, New Amsterdam (New York)

The Anneken Jans Chest: A Shisham Wood (Dalbergia sissoo) and American Walnut (Juglans nigra) Coffer with Iron and Brass Mounts, c. 1633 49.2 x 112 x 46.8 cm (193/8 x 441/8 x 183/8 in.)

Setting sail from Amsterdam in 1630, Anneken Jans and her husband Roeloff Jansz were among the first Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam. There, Roeloff worked for a governor of the Dutch West India Company who had been granted a vast swathe of lands in present day New York state, while Anneken forged a thriving retail business. The family interacted daily with local Native Americans, their eldest daughter becoming a translator for the New Netherlands director-general, Peter Stuyvesant, in his negotiations with the region’s tribes.

In 1634 the family moved to Manhattan, working the Dutch West India Company’s farms in the lower part of the island. With Roeloff ’s sudden death just three years later, Anneken, with six children and no money, continued to farm. In 1638, she married the Dutch Reformed clergyman Everhardus Bogardus, though his drunken and outspoken behaviour enraged the Dutch West India Company. Bogardus died in 1647, when his ship bound for Amsterdam was wrecked at sea. Widowed once again, Anneken had nine children to support; cash-poor but land-rich, she continued to farm until her death in 1663.

Vessels belonging to the Dutch West India Company arriving in New Amsterdam were laden with riches of goods from the Netherlands and its mercantile empire, from building materials to household goods including furniture, textiles from East India, Asian ceramics, and Dutch Delftware. It is likely that the present chest arrived on a Dutch ship in 1633 and was purchased

by Anneken Jans. Her name is inscribed on the lock, presumably as she intended for the chest to store her personal belongings.

Owing to its style and materials, the chest was probably produced on the Indian Malabar Coast or in Persia. The chest’s wooden lockplate is carved in American walnut. The brass lock originated from the Falun mine in Sweden; a padlock, now lost, would have secured the lock.

Consequently, the present chest offers superlative evidence of the global reach of the Dutch in the seventeenth century, while at the same time offering a glimpse into the extraordinary life of one of the first, pioneering women to venture to the new world that was to become America.

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Mary Beale Barrow, Suffolk 1632–1697 London

Portrait of a Lady, c. 1680s Oil on canvas 75.5 x 61 cm (291/2 x 24 in.)

Mary Beale was the most distinguished female portrait painter of the Stuart period and one of the first professional female artists in England. Beale was not only unique for being a female artist in a profession then dominated by men, but moreover competed successfully with her male colleagues. A talented and prolific painter, Beale’s career is well documented in the diaries kept by her husband Charles, who acted as her studio assistant. This portrait of a lady, wearing a blue robe draped over an orange dress and white chemise, her powdered hair fashionably curled and spilling over one shoulder, is typical of Beale’s portraiture.

Beale was born in 1693, though the details of her training remain obscure. Her father, John Craddock, had been a member of the Painter-Stainers’ Company and had his portrait painted

by Robert Walker in the late 1640s. Walker, a leading painter in London at the time, may have played a role in Beale’s early artistic education. In 1651, Mary married Charles Beale, from an affluent family of Puritan gentry, and the couple moved to Covent Garden where they were able to socialise with an erudite circle of artists, intellectuals, and clergymen.

Beale started her artistic career as an amateur in the 1650s but began to paint professionally in the early 1670s, after fleeing London for Hampshire for a period to avoid the plague. When her family returned to London, Beale established herself as a professional ‘FacePainter’ and became the chief supporter of her family.

Beale was encouraged to paint by Sir Peter Lely, then the leading painter in England, and she was often commissioned to paint small copies of his portraits. Lely’s influence is evident in the present work, particularly in the detail of the stone cartouche in which the sitter is encircled, a visual device frequently employed by Lely from the 1660s.

As is often the case with portraits from this date, the identity of the present sitter is not known.

Stylistically, however, it aligns well with Beale’s portraiture from the early-to-mid 1680s when her work was in high demand.

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Woman Artist of the English School

Double Portrait of a Woman Artist and a Man, late seventeenth century Oil on canvas 90 x 115 cm (353/8 x 451/4 in.)

In this artist’s self-portrait, a woman sits before an easel painting a portrait of her deceased husband. As attributes of her mourning, the artist wears black embroidered and beaded bracelets on each of her wrists. She sits upright, a red velvet cloak draped from her left shoulder across her knee. Around her neck is a string of pearls. On the palette in her left hand are daubs of as yet unmixed oil colours.The artist turns to confront the viewer with a firm gaze, while from the oval canvas, the man’s eyes look beyond both artist and viewer. His presence is no longer of this world.

Traditionally, the painting has been described as a work of the English school of the late seventeenth century. Only a few female artists of that period are known and most are well documented.

Our artist has been well trained as a painter, but her main occupation was perhaps elsewhere.

The highly detailed bracelets indicate that she might have worked primarily as a jeweller.

The model of a female painter sat before an easel originally derives from two well-known sources; the self-portrait by Caterina van Hemessen (1528–after 1587) in Basel and the early self-portrait by Sofonisba Anguissola (c. 1532–1625) in Łańcut, Poland. Like the present work, both paintings depict the palettes holding still unmixed colours.

The idea and composition of the present work likely derives from the Portrait of Bartholomew Spranger and his Wife engraved by Aegidius Sadeler. In this allegorical double portrait Spranger commemorates his wife Christiana Müller, who died in 1600. While Spranger is shown looking out at the viewer, surrounded by representations of the Arts and of Fame, fending off death in the form of a spear aimed at his heart, his wife is depicted with a pensive expression, in an oval set above a sarcophagus. Spranger’s composition bursts with rich symbolism, while the present image is, by contrast, clear and sober, a more direct statement of loss and sorrow. In Spranger’s work, the artist’s grief can only be overcome by his self-expression as an artist of fame; the artist in the present work depicts herself with modesty and a lack of status symbols. Such austerity proffers a deep emotional charge, reflecting the affinity between the wife and her absent husband.

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Rosalba Carriera 1673–Venice–1757

Allegories of the Four Seasons, mid-1730s Pastel on paper Each: 65.5 x 54 cm (253/4 x 211/4 in.)

No other artist has reinvigorated a medium so single-handedly as perhaps Rosalba Carreira did for pastel in the eighteenth century. Celebrated in her native city of Venice and across Europe, Carreira’s present set of Allegories of the Four Seasons reflects a subject that was among the artist’s most popular, alongside portraiture.

Her characteristic technique is instantly recognisable owing to its supreme smoothness and the delicacy with which she rendered texture and light. The present series is no exception; the soft, luminous forms of the female subjects demonstrate her sensitivity in depicting the human form, and the textures of the fabrics show her attention to detail.

As mentioned above, Carreira represented the Four Seasons on numerous occasions, exploring variations in poses and attributes. In both the poses of the figures and in the luxurious surrounding fabrics, Carreira has imbued these works with elegance and refinement, laden with allegorical richness.

From the sensuous bosom and delicate flowers of Spring, to the clutch of peaches in the lap of Summer; from the turned pose of the Autumn with its chiaroscuro background, to the darkhaired beauty of Winter enveloped in luscious furs, Carreira has created a series that is as much an expression of her artistic brilliance and originality as a representation of a familiar theme.

These works were likely acquired by the voracious collector William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, during his impressive Grand Tour between 1752 and 1754, when he visited Rome, Naples, Paestum, and Pisa.

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Catherine Lusurier 1752–Paris–1781

Portrait of the Artist Carle Vernet (1758–1836), c. 1770s Oil on canvas 34 x 26 cm (133/8 x 101/4 in.)

Catherine Lusurier was trained by the Drouais family; her aunt, Marie Marguerite, was married to Drouais senior. While both Drouais, father and son, tended to their royal patrons, Lusurier recorded likenesses of artists and intellectuals. Her best-known portrait, that of Germain-Jean Drouais, the son of Drouais the younger and a favourite student and colleague of Jacques-Louis David, is now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. In the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, hangs her portrait of Jean le Rond d’Alembert, arguably the most important intellectual in France.

In the works of Chardin and Lépicié, for example, the sitter almost always looks away from the viewer. By contrast, Lusurier’s mentor, Drouais the younger, caused a sensation at the Salon of 1755 or 1761 with his Petit Polisson, the little rascal, whose gaze confronts the viewer with directness and candour; Lusurier embraced this trope. As is evident in the present work, Lusurier deployed neutral backgrounds offset by vividly coloured costumes, and in the present work, attributes and accoutrements alluding to the sitter’s professional accomplishments. Striking too is the beautiful way in which Lusurier painted eyes. Evidence for her exceptional skill in this regard can be seen in her copy of a Largillière portrait at Versailles, commissioned around 1778.

Her sitter here, Carle Vernet, was known primarily as an exceptional painter of horses in motion, racing, hunting, or in cavalry portraits. Trained by his father, Claude-Joseph Vernet, in 1782 he won the highly coveted Prix de Rome, and in 1808 Napoleon awarded him the Legion of Honor for one of his battle scenes. After 1816, he concentrated on the observation of daily life, producing engravings of street vendors, horse markets, and dandies. Today Vernet is best known for his witty, satirical engravings, rather than for his paintings.

At the time of Catherine Lusurier´s death at the age of twenty-eight, the Memoirs Secrets noted: ‘The arts have had a true loss in the person of Mlle Luzurier…’

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Angelica Kauffmann Chur, Switzerland 1741–1807 Rome

Allegory of Prudence and Allegories of Mercy and Truth, before 1780 Oil on metal panels Each: 29.7 x 22 cm. (115/8 x 85/8 in.)

Previously only known through engravings, the Allegory of Prudence and Allegories of Mercy and Truth are significant rediscoveries for the œuvre of Angelica Kauffmann. With their fluid compositions and the delicate execution, such works were coveted in eighteenth-century aristocratic circles.

Born in Switzerland and trained in Italy, Kauffmann moved to London in 1766, where she became one of the most influential artists of her time, and one of only two founding female members of the Royal Academy. Unusually for a female artist in the eighteenth century, Kauffmann primarily defined herself as a history painter. However, the British apathy towards history painting ultimately motivated Kauffmann’s decision to leave England following her marriage to the artist Antonio Zucchi in 1781, returning to Italy.

The present pair of works are both painted on metal panels and are housed in their original frames.

They have been identified via engravings after Kauffmann made by Charles Taylor, published as The Moral Emblems in London in 1780.The series comprised six subjects; in addition to allegories of Prudence, and Mercy and Truth, this included Wisdom, Hope, Instruction, and Life.

In the panel depicting Prudence, the figure is clad in flowing red robes, holding a dove in one hand and a writhing snake in the other. The inclusion of a snake in this allegorical composition was a widely recognisable attribute of Prudence; however, the dove less so – it was more common to include the symbol of a mirror.The present variation is closer to the biblical verse that inspired the subject: ‘Behold, I send you forth as a sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves’ (Matthew 10:16).

In the representation of Mercy and Truth, the two figures hold each other in an embrace, one arm wrapped around the other. Kauffman’s delicate personification of Truth, crowned and dressed in a white robe, holds a book while gazing upwards. To her left, the figure of Mercy holds an olive branch in her hand and looks demurely at the fruit lying by her feet. In this composition, Kauffman draws upon a verse from the Book of Psalms: ‘Mercy and Truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other’ (Psalms 85:10).

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Adélaïde Labille-Guiard 1749–Paris–1803

Portrait of the Comtesse de Lameth, née Marie-Anne Picot (1766–1825), c. 1791 Oil on canvas 94.3 x 74.4 cm (371/8 x 291/4 in.)

A successful portraitist, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard was one of the few female painters admitted to France’s prestigious Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. She joined in 1783, the same year as Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, who soon became her artistic rival. While Vigée became painter to the queen, Labille-Guiard became painter to Mesdames Elisabeth, Adélaïde, and Victoire, the aunts of King Louis XVI, in 1787. This significant honour led to many commissions for portraits from those in courtly circles. While other artists, such as Vigée, fled or were forced into exile, Labille-Guiard remained in France during the Revolution, refashioning herself as an artist of the new Republic. Over the course of her career, Labille-Guiard established a reputation as both a teacher and champion of young women artists, seeking equal rights for them at the Académie.

Both the costume and coiffure of the sitter suggest a date for the present portrait around 1790.

Indeed, in 1791, Labille-Guiard presented a portrait of Comte Charles de Lameth (1757–1832), the sitter’s husband, at the Salon. After serving as a captain during the American War of Independence, Charles returned to his native France and married Marie-Anne Picot, the daughter of a rich landowner and his Creole wife in Saint-Domingue, the French Caribbean colony located in the area of modern-day Haiti. In 1788, Charles became a founding member of the abolitionist group, the Société des amis des Noirs. One of first aristocrats to renounce his privileges in 1789, in 1791, Charles joined the group of deputies in the National Assembly, who broke with the Jacobins and styled their new party as the Feuillants. Fourteen of these men, including Charles, were painted

by Labille-Guiard, and their portraits were presented at the Salon in 1791. Around the same time, Labille-Guiard also painted portraits of the wives and women in the orbit of the Feuillants; it seems likely that the present portrait was one such work.

In the painting, the Comtesse turns gracefully to the right in a pose that suggests a state of revery. In one hand she holds a pink rose while she rests her other arm upon an open book, denoting her intellectual pursuits. Labille-Guiard placed her subject, in her shimmering moiré white gown with its blue sash, against a Romantic landscape.The white dress, its folds skilfully rendered with rapid brushstrokes that characterise Labille-Guiard’s approach to texture, together with the subject’s porcelain complexion, enliven the composition, set against the broodily crepuscular background. Landscape portraiture had been part of Labille-Guiard’s practice from the mid 1780s, when this import from Britain, and in particular from the works of Reynolds and Gainsborough, became increasingly fashionable in France.

French patrons appreciated such works for their flattering naturalism, and for their associations with the Rousseauian cult of nature. Indeed, many of Labille-Guiard’s aristocratic sitters had renovated their formal gardens to align with the new informal taste, and the Lameths were no exception.

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Andrea Appiani 1754–Milan–1817

Josephine Bonaparte Crowning a Myrtle Tree, 1796 Oil on canvas 98 x 73.5 cm (385/8 x 29 in.)

This graceful portrait of Josephine Bonaparte Crowning a Myrtle Tree by Andrea Appiani – the chief exponent of Italian Neoclassical painting and one of the portraitists most favoured by Napoleon – was painted in the summer of 1796, following the arrival of the newly-married future Empress in Italy. The canvas was conceived as a pendant to the first portrait of her husband by Appiani following the Battle of Lodi on 10 May 1796.The circumstances of the commission are recorded in a laudatory ode from a contemporary pamphlet by the Roman poet Angelo Petracchi.To date, it is the first known full-length portrait painted of Josephine.

In Appiani’s painting, Josephine is portrayed as a goddess of Love, simply and elegantly costumed in a loose muslin dress that alludes to antiquity. In an ancient ritual sacrifice, she offers a wreath to a myrtle, a tree sacred to Venus. The wreath entwines pink and red roses, an allusion to one of Josephine’s middle names (Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie), and lilies, a traditional symbol of purity, along with oak and laurel leaves, emblems of her husband. Further flowers laced with symbolism bloom around the trunk of the myrtle tree, including sunflowers, daisies, asters, and more lilies. Rendered with precision, the foliage is an apt tribute to a woman who would become an incredible collector of botanical specimens, the ‘imperatrice botaniste’ of Malmaison.

A preparatory drawing for the work, now in the collections of the Château de Malmaison, near Paris, shows Josephine on a slightly larger scale than she appears in the finished portrait, matching the figure of Napoleon in the pendant (now in the collection of the Earl of Rosebery, Dalmeny House).

The symbols of union also reference the couple’s recent marriage, which took place on 9 March 1796. The wedding itself had been a hasty one, performed with many irregularities.

Yet in Appiani’s portraits, the couple could see themselves recast as heroic lovers, as Mars and Venus.

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Anne Vallayer-Coster 1744–Paris–1818

A Pair of Florals: A Bouquet of Tulips and A Bouquet of Daffodils, 1802 Watercolour and gouache on brown paper Each: 30.8 x 24.5 cm (121/8 x 95/8 in.)

The daughter of a Gobelins’ goldsmith and jeweller, Anne Vallayer-Coster most likely trained with her father as well as with the painter Joseph Vernet and the botanist Madeleine Basseport.

Aged twenty-six, Vallayer-Coster was welcomed into the prestigious Académie Royale on 28 July 1770. Her participation at the Salon the following year inaugurated a lifetime of success as still-life painter. Flower paintings like the present pendants were the most appreciated of her compositions.

In 1779, with the intervention of Marie Antoinette, Vallayer-Coster obtained a studio at the Louvre, becoming the first woman to have single lodging under the Grand Gallerie. Among her neighbours were Joseph Vernet, her mentor and teacher, and Gérard van Spaendonck.

Her marriage contract to the lawyer Jean-Pierre Sylvestre Coster in 1781 was witnessed by the Queen and signed by Pierre, Premier Peintre de Sa Majesté, and the comte d’Angiviller, Directeur général des Bâtiments, indicating the high esteem in which she was held in the upper echelons of society. Afterwards, she continued exhibiting under her maiden name,Vallayer.

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Etienne-Charles Le Guay Sèvres 1762–1846 Paris

Portrait of Marie-Victoire Jaquotot, c. 1801 Oil on ivory panel, in a gilded wood frame 19.7 x 13.8 cm (73/4 x 53/8 in.)

This exquisitely refined portrait depicts Marie-Victoire Jaquotot (1772–1855), pupil and second wife of the painter Etienne-Charles Le Guay. Another version of this composition signed by Le Guay is today in the collections of the Musée du Louvre, Paris. Born in Sèvres, Le Guay was the son of a porcelain painter and trained in the famous porcelain factories of the town, before establishing his own practice as a miniature painter. Exhibiting at the Salon between 1795 and 1819, he achieved renown as one of the leading miniaturists of the era, counting among his patrons several members of the Bonaparte family.

In the present portrait, Jaquotot – whose beauty was famed at the time – is depicted by her husband in an Empire-style setting, denoted by features such as the marble column beside a Grecian vase, and the sofa, embellished with an Egyptian motif. Jaquotot, fancifully dressed in a fitted white silk gown and draped with a white gauze veil, holds the viewer’s gaze while consulting a portfolio of drawings or prints, indicating her artistic aptitude.

Having studied under her future husband, Jaquotot became one of the greatest porcelain artists of her era. From 1800, she worked as a figure painter at the Sèvres manufactory, where in 1801 she painted the Empress Josephine’s portrait, and won a gold medal for her work at the Salon in 1808. Under the Restoration, Louis XVIII granted her the title of ‘Peintre du Cabinet du Roi’ with an annual pension of 1,000 francs, and later honoured her with the title of ‘Premier Peintre sur Porcelaine’. Jaquotot eventually established an independent workshop in the Sèvres factory, where she worked until 1846 when she fell from favour during the July Monarchy, being stripped of her titles and privileges.

Nevertheless, this splendid object offers a rare window into the world of the highly accomplished women artists who contributed significantly to the renown and success of the Sèvres manufactory.

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Marie-Victoire Jaquotot Paris 1772–1855 Toulouse

Breakfast Service with Heads of the Madonna after Raphael (Déjeuner ‘Têtes de Madones d’après Raphaël’), c. 1813 Produced in France, Sèvres, Imperial Manufactory of Porcelain Hard-paste porcelain, enamels, and gold

In 1813, Alexandre Brongniart, director of the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory at Sèvres, commissioned one of his most prized artists, Marie-Victoire Jaquotot, to paint the present breakfast service, the Déjeuner des Madones. The set includes an ‘Asselin’ teapot, a ‘Greek’ milk pitcher, a sugar pot, and a ‘Jasmin’ cup together with its saucer, all of which were designed to be placed upon a large oval tray. Each piece features an image of the Virgin Mary, drawn from paintings attributed at the time to Raphael.

Correspondence between Brongniart and Jaquotot notes that the images of the Virgin were to be chosen from works by Raphael then in the Musée Napoléon, now the Louvre.The following works were selected: the Madonna della Sedia (now Palazzo Pitti, Florence) for the tray, the Virgin with the Veil (Louvre) for the teapot, the Virgin and Child with Saint John the Baptist, called La Belle Jardinière (Louvre), for the sugar pot, and the Bridgewater Madonna (now National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh) for the cup. Exceptional is the Virgin on the milk pitcher – the image of the Virgin was drawn from a painting in the collection of Catherine the Great and taken to Saint Petersburg in 1772, accessible to Jaquotot only through engravings. As such, Jaquotot’s Déjeuner des Madones serves as a pantheon on porcelain of the great Italian Renaissance master’s Madonnas.

Completed by 24 December 1813, the service was delivered to the Tuileries Palace in time for the New Year’s gift-giving ceremony, when it was purchased by the Empress Marie-Louise, the second wife of Napoleon. The couple’s nuptial cortège, in 1810, had processed through the Grande Galerie of the Musée Napoléon, passing each of Raphael’s beautiful Madonnas, some brought to France by Napoleon himself. Jaquotot’s breakfast service would thus have been a precious memento for its new owner, a lasting reminder of her wedding day. At the same time, these exquisitely painted Queens of Heaven, rendered by the queen of French porcelain painting, and purchased by the reigning empress, proffer a highly feminine expression of the grandeur and cultural hegemony that characterised Napoleon’s reign, entwining the personal and the political in an unparalleled expression of beauty and artistic accomplishment.

For the first time in more than a century, the pieces were reunited in 2021 and are now displayed in their original case.

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Athénaïs Paulinier 1798–Paris–1889

Head of the Virgin after Girodet, 1834 Produced in France, Sèvres, Royal Manufactory of Porcelain Hard-paste porcelain and enamels 59 x 50 cm (231/4 x 193/4 in.)

A highly accomplished painter on porcelain, Athénaïs Paulinier was born Marie Élisabeth Apollinie Athénaïs Le Barbier de Tinan, taking the name Paulinier following her marriage to Alphonse Paulinier, Conseiller du Cher and bodyguard to King Louis XVIII. After training with Marie-Victoire Jaquotot, Paulinier worked at the Royal Manufactory of Porcelain at Sèvres between 1830 and 1834, before striking out on her own. Paulinier’s career was distinguished by her copies of Old Master and contemporary paintings on porcelain, as well as miniatures, which she regularly exhibited at the Salon. Despite her highly refined creations and contemporary acclaim, Paulinier’s paintings are not well known today, and the present plaque seems to be her only work to have emerged on the market in the modern era.

This large porcelain plaque, set in a gilded wood frame, was produced by Paulinier in 1834 after L’Étude de Vierge or Le Visage de la Vierge, painted in 1812 by Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson (1767–1824) and exhibited at the Salon at the Louvre in the same year (now lost, but recorded in contemporary engravings). The pensive Virgin gazes gently towards her left hand, which caresses the long white veil tumbling over her right shoulder. Her plaited hair is adorned with a ferronnière, a headband encircling the forehead and adorned with a jewel at its centre.

She wears a green gown with a red bodice embellished with fine gold detailing. In the background is a landscape of clear, slightly milky blue skies over hints of a pale blue mountain range.

A number of details, such as the Virgin’s downcast gaze and the tender sweetness of the atmosphere, evoke Raphael’s images of the Virgin, while the headband worn by Girodet’s Virgin and her Renaissance-style costume can be connected to Leonardo’s famous La Belle Ferronière.

Such references are evidence of Girodet’s careful study of Renaissance works, now in the Louvre.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, concern arose around the deterioration of Old Master paintings, even in the most exalted of collections, owing to poor restoration work.

As painted porcelain was considerably more durable, many porcelain copies of masterpieces in France were made at Sèvres. This trend was soon followed by a taste for copies of paintings by contemporary artists, like the present example.

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Sophie Frémiet [Rude] Dijon 1797–1867 Paris

Portrait of a Woman, 1818 Oil on canvas 162.3 x 118.5 cm (637/8 x 465/8 in.)

Sophie Frémiet was the daughter of a Dijon clothing merchant, Louis, and his wife Thérèse Sophie Monnier, who had come from a family of artists; her father, Louis-Gabriel Monnier, was an engraver, the first director of the Dijon museum, and an influential figure in the city’s bourgeois society. Sophie began her studies at the Dijon drawing school, but with the collapse of the Empire in 1814, the Frémiets fled to Brussels along with other ardent Bonapartists, including the renowned painter, Jacques-Louis David. There, the talented young Sophie flourished under David’s artistic tutelage, gaining his confidence and thoroughly absorbing his style and technique.

In 1818, Sophie Frémiet made her debut in the Brussels Salon, exhibiting two paintings merely identified as ‘Portraits of two women’ one now identified securely as of her sister,Victorine van der Haert, the other of an as yet unidentified sitter, which is the present painting.

Sophie continued to work as a portraitist, as well as painting mythologies, allegories, and subjects from modern history, including in 1824 a series of allegories for the Brussels residence of the enormously wealthy Duke of Arenberg. However, her career was hindered at many points by her gender. During her initial training in Dijon, she was denied access to the main studio where her male counterparts drew the nude figure. Remarkable copies of his own masterpieces delegated to her by David were often confused with the originals by eminent connoisseurs, denying her any credit for her accomplishments; at the same time, David claimed authorship of some of her most sophisticated portraits. She was denied prizes in public artistic competitions despite critical acclaim for her work and, in one case, that of the Ghent Salon of 1820, her male rival’s failure to follow the rules. In 1821, Sophie married her fellow exile from Dijon, the brilliant young sculptor François Rude. Although the pair enjoyed a happy and devoted marriage, when they returned to France, with François establishing his studio in Paris, his fame soon eclipsed that of his wife, and until recent decades her name was barely known outside Dijon. Careful study in recent years of her career and oeuvre marks an important rediscovery of a talented woman painter in the Davidian mode in nineteenth-century France.

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Antoinette-Cécile-Hortense [Haudebourt-]Lescot 1784–Paris–1845

Self-Portrait, early 1800s Oil on canvas 27.5 x 21.8 cm (107/8 x 85/8 in.)

Antoinette Cécile Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot was among the most celebrated women painters in Europe in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Not only was she the first French woman to receive formal artistic training in Italy at the Académie de France in Rome, but she also exhibited over one hundred paintings at the Salon in her thirty-year career.

Finding recognition as a dancer while she was still a child, Lescot’s artistic talent soon emerged, and from the age of ten she studied under the esteemed painter and family friend Guillaume Guillon-Lethière. Shortly after the latter’s appointment as the director of the Académie de France in 1807, Lescot travelled to Rome, where she spent seven years, becoming the first French woman to receive formal artistic training at the Académie. While in Italy, she was also able to mix with some of the era’s most influential artists including Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who drew her portrait, and the sculptor Antonio Canova. Here she developed an interest in the astute observation of Italian customs and traditions which provided source material for her genre pieces, and honed a precise and refined technique akin to Dutch Old Masters such as Gerard ter Borch and Gabriel Metsu. She returned to Paris in 1816 and in 1820 married Louis-Pierre Haudebourt, an architect she had met in Rome.

This detailed and richly hued self-portrait typifies Lescot’s style, combining neoclassical lighting and richness of costume with finely-articulated details reminiscent of Dutch interiors. The penetrating work is one of just three known self-portraits by the artist; another, dating from 1825, is in the Louvre, and the last was sold at auction in 2012. In these other works, Lescot depicts herself in the role of the artist, grasping a brush or a palette. The present picture, by contrast, is a more intimate, self-reflective painting, in which the artist shows herself as a fashionable young woman. Given the similarities between the painting and the drawing executed by Ingres in Rome in 1814, it is probable that Lescot made this work during her extended stay in Italy, in the dynamic artistic milieu in which she found herself.

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Antoinette-Cécile-Hortense [Haudebourt-]Lescot 1784–Paris–1845

The Little Beggar (Le petit mendiant), 1808–9 Oil on canvas 99.1 x 68.3 cm (39 x 267/8 in.)

The metal pins hanging from a bar attached to the leather strap from which the boy’s bag is suspended identify him as a poacher. He touches his hat in a respectful manner, hoping that the viewer, a passerby, will perhaps place a few coins in his extended right hand, the grimy nails, torn clothes, and rough coat suggesting his desperate plight. He was probably typical of the thousands of young children and other marginalised people living on the streets whom visitors to Europe’s great cities encountered, their lives far removed from the elegant Salons occupied by finely dressed men and women who are so often the subject of eighteenth-century French paintings.

The Little Beggar is one of the earliest known works by Lescot, who arrived in Rome a few months after her professor, Guillaume Guillon-Lethière, had been appointed director of the Académie de France. The painting is exceptional in showing a beggar in such a compassionate light; while he is clearly asking the viewer for money, he is a sympathetic rather than a threatening figure, reflecting significant changes in attitude towards the less fortunate. This may have been inspired by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which led to a revolution in the upbringing and education of children. The viewer’s ‘pitié’ now extends to this boy, who despite being a poacher, is the victim of circumstances which have forced him to turn to begging. While beggars and the indigent had been portrayed in paintings since the late sixteenth century, the viewer was only ever invited to observe them, not to engage with them directly, as is the case here, presaging developments in late nineteenth-century Realism.

The painting was first exhibited in Rome in 1809, in an exhibition of international artists held in the Palazzo dei Conservatori and organised by the Roman Consulta, the Napoleonic administration of the city. Lescot presented several paintings, and was honoured with an award at the conclusion of the event. The following year in Paris, at the 1810 Salon, Lescot’s contribution also included the present work, which attracted the praise of numerous critics.

Particular thanks to M. Paul Menoux for his attribution of this painting, and his generosity in providing the basis for this text.

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Antoinette-Cécile-Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot 1784–Paris–1845 La dôt (The Generosity of the Duchess of Angoulême), 1821 Oil on canvas 51 x 42 cm (20 x 11/2 in.)

Marie-Thérèse (1778–1851), Duchess of Angoulême, arose from tragedy to become the highest-ranking woman at the French court. She suffered a catastrophic childhood as the only surviving daughter of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, enduring a horrific imprisonment, abuse at the hands of her guards, and the execution of her parents, brother, and other close family members on the guillotine. The trauma remained with her for the rest of her life.

In 1795, on the eve of her seventeenth birthday, Marie-Thérèse was finally released, and at the age of twenty, she married her cousin, Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angoulême. With the death of Louis XVIII in 1824 her father-in-law succeeded as Charles X and she became dauphine, the traditional title of the wife of the heir to the French throne; with her mother-in-law deceased, Marie-Thérèse reigned preeminent among the ladies of the court of France. Charles X was deposed in the July 1830 revolution and Marie-Thérèse and her husband were forced into exile – she became titular queen in the eyes of many legitimists with the death of her father-in-law in 1836, herself dying in exile in Austria in 1851.

La dôt (meaning The Dowry), painted in 1821, is one of at least two paintings by HaudebourtLescot owned by the duchess and probably records an actual incident. In a rustic interior, the duchess is seated before a young bride and her father, a veteran of the recent wars.With a delicate gesture the duchess offers the young woman a small purse containing the promised dowry as the girl’s proud father, in his best uniform, looks on. The girl wears a bouquet of lilies of the valley at her breast and a sprig of the same is attached to her lace bonnet. On the shelf behind her is a traditional wedding brioche with a pink rose, ready to be consumed in the imminent celebrations.Through the door in the back of their modest home, members of the marriage party mingle. Affirming the duchess’s reputation as a generous princess, known for her acts of charity towards the less fortunate, such paintings were intended to popularise the royal family.

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Anna [Rimbault-]Borrel 1817–Paris–1842

Valentine de Milan and Odette de Champs-Divers (from the Alexander Dumas novel Isabelle de Bavière), 1837 Oil on canvas 94 x 69 cm (37 x 271/8 in.)

The two women portrayed here were leading figures in the late medieval French court.

Such influential female figures must have been an attractive subject for a young woman artist anxious to make an impression as a history painter in a male-dominated contemporary art world.

Alexandre Dumas was the master of historical novels, renowned today for the adventures of the Three (and then Four) Musketeers, but better known in his day for his series of Chroniques de France, of which Isabelle de Bavière was published in 1835. That the present painting was completed just two years later, in 1837, attests to the novel’s popular success.

Isabelle was the wife of Charles VI of France (1368–1422), whose reign witnessed the humiliating defeat at Agincourt. Charles was the unhappiest of French kings, his own mind often disturbed by uncontrollable and violent fantasies. His feelings for Isabelle alternated between passion and dislike; her public infidelities caused him distress. Only Charles’s sister-in-law Valentine Visconti (1368–1408), Duchess of Orléans, and his mistress Odette de Champdivers (c. 1390–1425), were able to soothe his outbursts. The relationship between these three women was central to the events that ultimately led to the English Kings Henry V and VI taking the French throne.

Charles VI’s attachment to his sister-in-law, Valentine, whose promiscuous husband, Louis, was likely one of Isabelle’s lovers, resulted in constant tension between Louis and the Duke of Burgundy – who had been regent before the king had come of age – with both trying to control the monarch.The teenage Odette was pushed by the Duke of Burgundy into a relationship with the king to assure his influence; Louis was stabbed to death in 1407 on the orders of the Duke.

While Valentine and her husband had been at odds for some years, she nevertheless swore revenge. Here, Odette tries to persuade Valentine to remain calm. Both wear costumes which do not precisely represent early fifteenth-century dress, as the artist, like others painting historical themes at this time, was more influenced by romanticised ideas of medieval clothes.

Anna Borrel was born to bourgeois parents in Paris. Showing a precocious artistic talent she entered the studio of Charles de Steuben, a history and portrait painter. In 1838, she married Henri-Louis Rimbaud, a bank employee, but he died just three years later. She herself perished just fifteen months later at the mere age of twenty-four, of an unknown malady. As a woman artist with ambitions beyond portraiture and still lifes, Borrel embraced the contemporary fashion for subjects from historical fiction.

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Patrick Branwell Brontë Thornton, West Yorkshire 1817–1848 Haworth, West Yorkshire

Portrait of Emily and Anne Brontë, c. 1838 Oil on canvas 41.9 x 36.8 cm (161/2 x 141/2 in.)

As noted on the plaque on the frame which is original to the painting, this portrait shows the two Brontë sisters, Emily (1818–1848) and Anne (1820–1849), painted by their brother, Patrick Branwell Brontë. Another painting showing similar likeness of the sitters, which also includes their third sister Charlotte (1816–1855) is now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London. Both paintings are stylistically similar, with thinly applied paint and emphatic delineation of the subjects, typical of a young amateur artist, as indeed Patrick Branwell Brontë was.

In the present painting, the slightly awkward Emily is depicted on the left, while the more delicate and attractive Anne is shown on the right. Emily and Anne never lived to witness the fame enjoyed by their sister Charlotte (1816–1855), author of the extraordinary novel Jane Eyre (1847), as they died in 1848 and 1849, respectively. Nevertheless, both sisters were accomplished authors in their own right, with Anne best known for her novels Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), and Emily the author of the literary masterpiece Wuthering Heights (1848).

The style of the dresses worn by the two sitters were common in the late 1820s, yet it is likely that the painting was made almost a decade after these fashions were a la mode; Mrs Gaskell, in her The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1957), noted that the Brontë sisters were prone to wearing outdated styles of dress, partly owing to their geographical distance from fashionable London.

It is likely that this painting was made in early 1838, while Emily and Anne were young women and at a time when their sister Charlotte was absent from the family home, away teaching.

Marks of the women’s erudition and aspirations are in evidence in the book held by Anne, and the globe set prominently beside them. At the same time, the quotidian details of the modest parsonage in which they were raised can be seen in the right background, with its simple fireplace sparsely adorned with a sprig of greenery, and the table or ottoman covered in a flowered, seemingly hand-stitched cloth beneath the globe.

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Anna Maria Bassi Amsterdam 1800–1862 Milan

Saints Martha and Mary Magdalene, after Bernardino Luini, 1839 Oil on ivory panel, in a coeval gilt bronze frame 10.5 x 12.5 cm (41/8 x 47/8 in.)

Born into a noble Milanese family, the painter Anna Maria Bassi was a much-admired portraitist during her lifetime, who possibly trained under Francesco Hayez, the leading Romantic painter of the day. Although little is known about her career, she certainly moved in a sophisticated milieu, with her family playing an important role in the cultural and political life of Milan during a pivotal time in its history. Her eldest brother, for example, became Mayor of the city following his participation in the Cinque Giorni uprising of 1848, and her family were close with artists including Hayez, who made a portrait of Bassi’s mother, and whom Bassi herself depicted in a painted portrait in 1842.

The present work is remarkable for a number of reasons. Firstly, its existence bears witness to the widespread participation in the arts by upper-class women in the decades following the Napoleonic era. Artistic and musical training were important elements of a well-rounded education for young women; however, few were able to pursue successful careers and Bassi is therefore unusual in this regard. Unmarried women during this period were often afforded more freedom to undertake independent careers, and it is worth noting that Bassi only married in her mid-fifties, by which time she had already had an established career as a portraitist.

Secondly, this work is significant for the insight it gives into the artistic tastes of the first half of the nineteenth century.The model for the work is a large panel now in the Rothschild collection at Pregny-Cambésy, that in the nineteenth century was thought to be by Leonardo (it is now attributed to Bernardino Luini). During Bassi’s era, it was one of the most famous paintings supposedly by Leonardo in a private collection, and was thought to be an allegory of chastity and vanity. Bassi’s choice of this subject for her painting reveals the high regard for Old Masters in nineteenth-century Milanese circles, both on an intellectual and patriotic level.Works like this paid homage to the great artistic heritage of Italy while forging links between the Renaissance past and the nineteenth-century present. *Not on display in New York. Details regarding export outside Italy are available upon request.

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Erminia de Sanctis 1840–Rome–1919

Portrait of Medora (Carolina Rapazzini), 1867 Gouache on paper applied to panel 65.5 x 61 cm (253/4 x 24 in.)

The present gouache on paper was executed by Erminia de Sanctis, the sister of the Roman painter Guglielmo de Sanctis (1829–1911) and a pupil of Tommaso Minardi, who specialised in historical genre scenes and portraiture. The work has an eminent provenance, previously belonging to the noble Florentine Corsini collection.

The work depicts the opera singer Carolina Rapazzini in the guise of Medora, the protagonist of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Il Corsaro, a tragic melodrama based on a work by Lord Byron, which debuted on 25 October 1848 at the Teatro Grande in Trieste. The subject here can be identified by comparison with a portrait painted by the artist’s brother Guglielmo in 1864, titled Medora (Museo dello Spedale degli Innocenti, Florence). The soprano Rapazzini was made famous by her performance of this particular role. Here, she is represented with lusciously unfurled hair, wearing a robe of diaphanous white cloth, emblematic of her innocence. Around her neck are two strands of coral, and in one hand she holds a carnation, a symbol of youth, vitality, and the promise of love. In her representation of Rapazzini, De Sanctis drew upon Old Master beauties such as those by Titian, as well as more modern works such as Francesco Hayez’s Melancholy (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan).

Erminia de Sanctis shared a studio in Via Margutta in Rome with her brother Guglielmo.

Both were significant protagonists in the Roman art scene of the second half of the nineteenth century. The strong bond between the two is evident in the numerous paintings that the painter dedicated to his sister, and in the stylistic and compositional similarities between many of their works. Most commonly working in watercolour, producing portraits and still lifes, Erminia’s works were in great demand in her own time, especially among foreign customers.

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A ‘Scrimshaw’ elephant ivory tusk depicting ‘The Voyage in the Sunbeam’, c. 1877 Carved ivory 65 x 12 x 8 cm (255/8 x 43/4 x 31/8 in.)

Depicted here is the Voyage in the Sunbeam, the famous sojourn undertaken by Anna ‘Annie’ Brassey, Baroness Brassey (1839–1887), her husband Thomas Brassey, 1st Earl Brassey (1836–1918), and their five children between 1876 and 1877. They boarded their luxury yacht, the Sunbeam, and travelled the world. A full account of their journey to South America, Hawaii, Japan, China, Sri Lanka, and other faraway destinations was first published in 1878 in a memoir entitled Around the World in the Yacht ‘Sunbeam’, our Home in the Ocean for Eleven Months, authored by Lady Brassey.

The tome includes a series of seemingly fantastical but true stories of a now long-lost world.

One such anecdote recounts their visit to the Maharaja of Jahore who ‘...gave me some splendid Malay silk sarongs, grown, made and woven in his kingdom, a pair of tusks of an elephant shot within a mile of the house…’.

Following their travels, in July 1881, the Brasseys, having returned to England, welcomed King Kala-kaua of Hawaii, who had been greatly pleased with Lady Brassey’s description of his kingdom. He was entertained at Normanhurst Castle and invested Lady Brassey with the Royal Order of Kapiolani. The illustrations in Lady Brassey’s book are after etchings by the Honourable A.Y. Gingham, who worked for the Brasseys aboard the Sunbeam. It seems likely that Gingham was given the present tusk by Lady Brassey, one of the pair she received from the Maharaja, and he proceeded to engrave the tusk in commemoration of the voyage and of his intrepid female employer.

Please note that a copy of Lady Brassey’s book accompanies the engraved tusk. *Not on display in New York. Details regarding export outside the EU are available upon request.

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Victoria Dubourg Paris 1840–1926 Buré Potted Pansies, c. 1870s Oil on canvas 21 x 26.8 cm (81/4 x 101/2 in.)

Victoria Dubourg, and her husband Henri Fantin-Latour, were two of the most famous flower painters in the second half of the nineteenth century, both reflecting and contributing to the rising popularity of still-life subjects in France. Dubourg was part of a generation of women who enjoyed the increasing opportunities for aspiring female artists afforded them in postRevolutionary France. The Louvre, converted from a royal palace into an art gallery, enabled artists to study masterworks from the past – for women, this was an unprecedented opportunity to continue their artistic education, given that they were excluded from formal training in the École des Beaux-Arts until 1897.

Dubourg began her artistic education privately at the studio of Fanny Chéron, and by the 1860s had established herself as an independent artist. During this time, she obtained permits to study works of art at the Louvre on several occasions, including to undertake commissions from the Ministry of Fine Arts. In 1866, for example, she was paid 800 francs to make a replica of Pietro da Cortona’s Virgin and Child with Saint Martina under an initiative of Napoleon III’s government to send copies of the great masters to administrative offices across France.

It was in 1869, while studying Correggio’s Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in the Louvre, that Dubourg met her future husband and collaborator, Fantin-Latour. In the years that followed, they shared a studio space and honed their reputation as flower-painters, sourcing fresh blooms to paint from the family estate in Buré in Normandy. Throughout her career, Dubourg signed the prodigious number of pictures she displayed at the annual Paris Salons and other international art exhibitions using her maiden name, perhaps in an effort to assert her unique artistic identity.

The present work shows the artist’s keen observation of the floral subject, described in loose brushstrokes and set against a neutral background. The work is presented in an original frame from the French art dealer Goupil, suggesting a date from the 1870s.

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Grace Adelaide Fletcher New York 1857–1942 London

Cherry Blossoms in a Vase, 1886 Oil on canvas 109.8 x 54.2 cm (431/8 x 211/8 in.)

Though very little is known of Grace Fletcher’s career as a painter, the present work reveals both her artistic gifts and the influences which shaped her aesthetic vision. Stems of pink and white cherry blossoms burst exuberantly from a golden-yellow Japanese vase embellished with a flock of cranes. In Japanese culture, cranes symbolise peace, luck, and longevity.The vase is set upon an elegantly crumbled green silken tablecloth adorned with calla lilies or perhaps morning glories, both associated in Japanese culture of chastity and purity.

Fletcher was a member of the National Association of Women Artists, founded in 1889 to support professional women artists in a male-dominated art world. Her biography has, however, been much overshadowed by that of her husband, Horance Fletcher (1849–1919) who made a fortune as a food faddist, nicknamed ‘The Great Masticator’ owing to his theories concerning the relationship between chewing and healthy digestion.

Although she inscribed this painting ‘Grace Fletcher/Japan/1886’, it is unclear if Fletcher ever travelled to Japan, or if the reference to Japan is intended to be the work’s title, reflecting the exotic objects which it depicts.At the time of painting, Fletcher was living inVenice, her husband’s international lecture engagements meaning the couple spent many years as expatriates in Europe.

This gave Fletcher the opportunity to study the Impressionists in Paris in the 1870s, and upon settling in Venice, the couple found themselves at a centre of an important artistic and social milieu, the so-called Palazzo Barbaro set, which included prominent artistic and literary figures, most notably the author Henry James.

The present painting, in its attention to the light reflected off the vase, and the atmospheric rendering of the background view out the window, certainly attests to Fletcher’s admiration for French Impressionism, and the japonisme central to the work indicates the fashion for Asian art and aesthetics in late-nineteenth-century Europe.

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Laura Coombs Hill 1859–Newburyport, Massachusetts–1952

A Suffragette (Wedding Portrait of the Artist’s Cousin), c. 1900 Pastel on dark brown pastel paper 38 x 22.8 cm (15 x 9 in.)

Painted by the artist Laura Coombs Hill as a gift for her cousin upon the occasion of her wedding, this intimate pastel has been kept in the artist’s family to the present day. The work engages with the long tradition of marriage portraits, while overturning many of the expected norms of the genre. Indeed, the portrait may be read as a testament to the subject’s independence and political beliefs rather than as a celebration of her upcoming marriage, with the artist perhaps intending the work to be a future reminder to her cousin of her values.

Coombs Hill notably portrays her cousin without her fiancé, standing defiantly alone against the plain background. Additionally, the yellow rose she holds aloft was a prominent symbol of the suffragette movement, showing the sitter’s support of this cause, which would only achieve its aim of women’s right to vote in 1920, two decades after this work was created. This bolt of yellow is reflected in the pair of gloves held in her other hand, featuring boldly against her modest clothing.

Indeed, the austere elegance of the sitter’s attire bestows a dignity upon her person, asserting the seriousness of her political views and presenting her as a paragon of women’s virtue and reason, further emphasising the credibility of her cause. The image is in many ways exemplary of the impossible situation that women of this era faced: on the one hand, in order to be respected in society, a good marriage was expected; on the other, by entering into marriage, a woman forfeited her independence and conformed with the societal norms that she was fighting to upend.

A rare and highly personal work – especially for an artist best known for her flower-painting – this work is an insight into a relationship between two cousins, their shared values and social causes, in a moment of great societal change.

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Jonathan Eastman Johnson Lovell, Maine 1824– 1906 New York

Portrait of the Artist Jane Erin Emmet de Glehn (1873–1961), 1904 Coloured chalk over pencil 41 x 29 cm (161/8 x 113/8 in.)

This portrait was made of the sitter, born Jane Erin Emmet (1873–1961), in the year of her marriage to the artist Wilfrid de Glehn (1870–1951). Cousins of the novelist Henry James, both Emmet’s older sisters, Rosina Emmet Sherwood (1854–1948) and Lydia Field Emmet (1866–1952), also became successful artists. ‘Jano’, as she wanted to be called, initially studied at the New York Art Students League and then later in Paris. She is famously represented painting in the company of her husband by John Singer Sargent in The Fountain, Villa Torlonia, Frascati (1907, now Art Institute, Chicago). Sargent and the de Glehns travelled together frequently through Italy, Spain, and the Alps between 1905 and 1914, often depicting each other in their paintings.

The American painter and printmaker Jonathan Eastman Johnson travelled to Europe in 1848 to study drawing at the Düsseldorf Akademie. He then spent three years in The Hague, during which he immersed himself in the study of seventeenth-century Dutch painting. The influence of the Dutch masters on his portrait style was so great that he became known as ‘the American Rembrandt’. In 1855, after two months in Thomas Couture’s Paris studio, he returned to America and concentrated on American subject matter, making studies of the Chippewa tribe in Lake Superior. A turning point for the artist came in 1859 with an exhibition in New York entitled Negro Life in the South at the New-York Historical Society. His ambiguous images of the leisure activities of a group of enslaved people were a sensation at a time when slavery was universally debated. For the next two decades, Johnson explored themes of national life in both humble interior scenes and larger rural tableaux.

Johnson exhibited widely and was active in the National Academy, the Century and Union League Clubs, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Society of American Artists. He was at ease in upper-class society, owned a large home in Manhattan, and spent his summers on Nantucket.

During the last twenty years of his life, he jettisoned the practice of genre painting and returned to portraiture, the primary artistic activity of his youth. Able to command extremely large fees, he spent the rest of his life painting prominent New Yorkers. He died in 1906, two years after he drew this portrait.

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Grace Gassette Chicago, Illinois 1871–1955 Woodstock, Vermont

Portrait of a Lady, 1907 Oil on canvas 177.8 x 80 cm (70 x 311/2 in)

Grace Gassette was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1871. As a young woman, she became wellknown in Chicago society, serving as President of a literary and philanthropic organisation and becoming a founding member of the Women’s Athletic Club of Chicago. Gassette was also a budding artist, and in 1898 she exhibited a portrait of her stepmother in the Champs Elysées Salon in Paris.

The following year she moved to the French capital and exhibited a miniature portrait in the Salon, by which time she was studying with the academic painter Raphaël Collin. A few years later, around 1906, she met fellow expatriate painter Mary Cassatt, who became a significant mentor, and Gassette later denoted Cassatt as her teacher in exhibition catalogues.

Throughout the first decade of the 1900s and until the outbreak of World War I, Gassette travelled back and forth between Paris and America, exhibiting works in both her native and adoptive countries. In Paris, Gassette and her stepmother were part of the lively and largely female social circle of American expatriates around Gertrude Stein.

With the outbreak of World War I, Gassette’s life changed dramatically as she plunged her considerable energy into the war effort. Initially overseeing surgical supplies for an American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine, in 1916 she became technical director of the Franco-American Corrective Surgical Appliance Committee, using her knowledge of anatomy acquired through figure drawing, to design orthopaedic devices for injured soldiers. Following the war, Gassette was awarded the Legion of Honour by the French government, becoming one of the first two American women to receive this accolade.

This elegant portrait of a young woman by Gassette is signed and dated 1907. The sitter is shown full length, wearing a blue gown, long white gloves, and a wide white and blue hat from which spills a brilliant red veil. Although the sitter has not yet been identified, it is possible, given the ambitious scale of the portrait and the prominent inscription, that the painting is the one Gassette submitted to the Carnegie International in that year, the elusively-titled ‘portrait of Madame A.’ 84

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Augustus John Tenby 1878– 1961 Fordingbridge

Portrait of Vita Sackville-West (recto); Unfinished Portrait of Violet Trefusis (verso), 1919 Oil on canvas 58 x 50 cm (227/8 x 193/4 in.)

This double-sided canvas presents a portrait of Victoria Mary (Vita) Sackville-West (1892–1962) on the front side, and an unfinished portrait of Violet Keppel Trefusis (1894–1972) on its reverse.

The two women – Vita, the daughter of the aristocratic Lionel Edward Sackville-West and his society wife; Violet, the illegitimate daughter of Alice Keppel, mistress of King Edward VII – first met as adolescents, attending the same school in London. Between 1908 and 1910, the girls enjoyed an intense but apparently platonic infatuation.

With King Edward’s death in 1910, the Trefusis’ situation deteriorated, disrupting the two young women’s relationship. Violet entered a finishing school in Munich and Vita married the young diplomat Harold Nicholson. In April 1918, a chance visit by Violet to Vita’s home rekindled their youthful intimacy, which soon assumed the form of a fully sexualised, passionate affair.

Following the signing of the Armistice in November 1918, the pair travelled extensively throughout Europe. However, in the months and years that followed the two women were forced apart by circumstances, familial pressure and fear of scandal, Violet’s increasingly demanding temperament, and Vita’s devotion to her husband and young family, as well as to her literary endeavours. By 1921, Violet and her husband Denis Trefusis (whom she had married in June 1919) had moved permanently to Paris, distancing themselves from Vita and Nicholson.

This recently discovered double-sided portrait dates to 1919, following the resumption of Vita and Violet’s affair after the latter’s marriage. Vita’s diaries provide a valuable insight into her activities around this time; she writes that in the autumn of 1919 Violet sat for a portrait

by Augustus John. After only two sittings, Violet rejected the work and asked that John paint Vita instead. The unfinished portrait of Violet, according to Vita’s diaries, shows her as a ‘gypsy’ – a subject that fascinated John throughout his life – while Vita’s portrait reveals her vibrancy of character and independence, wearing a fantastical style of dress that evokes bygone fashions as the sitter unflinchingly meeting the viewer’s gaze.

This striking canvas with its pair of highly accomplished portraits commemorates a same-sex affair between two extraordinary women at the outset of the twentieth century. Their desire to transcend traditional roles found perfect expression in the brush of John, who, by immortalising them on a single canvas, served to create an unusual memento of their love affair.

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NOTABLE SALES

Artemisia Gentileschi Rome 1593–after 1654 Naples

Self-Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 1614–16 Oil on canvas 71 x 71 cm (28 x 28 in.)

National Gallery, London

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Artemisia Gentileschi Rome 1593–after 1654 Naples

Allegory of Fame Oil on canvas 57 x 51 cm (223/8 x 201/8 in.)

Private collection

Orsola Maddalena Caccia 1596–Moncalvo–1676

Holy Family Oil on canvas 94 x 81 cm (37 x 311/4 in.)

Private collection

Orsola Maddalena Caccia 1596–Moncalvo–1676

Fruit and Flowers, c. 1630 Oil on canvas 76.2 × 99.1 cm (30 × 39 in.)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Bequest of Errol M. Rudman, 2020

Orsola Maddalena Caccia 1596–Moncalvo–1676

Flowers in a Grotesque Vase, c. 1635 Oil on canvas 102.5 × 81 cm (403/8 × 317/8 in.)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Bequest of Errol M. Rudman, 2020

Ginevra Cantofoli 1618–Bologna–1672

Allegory of Truth, c. 1665–72 Oil on canvas 92 x 72.5 cm (361/4 x 281/2 in.)

Berkeley Art Museum, University of California at Berkeley

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Marianne Loir c. 1715–Paris–c. 1779

Monsieur de Fontaine, c. 1760 Oil on canvas 91.5 x 65 cm (361/8 x 255/8 in.)

Private collection

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Anne Vallayer-Coster 1744–Paris–1818

Still life, 1777 Oil on canvas 114 x 158.7 cm (447/8 x 621/2 in.)

Private collection

Marie-Louise-Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun 1755–Paris–1842

Portrait of Countess Nikolai Alexandrovich Tolstoy, nee Princess Anna Ivanovna Bariatinskya Oil on canvas 136 x 102 cm (531/2 x 401/8 in.)

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Marie-Louise-Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun 1755–Paris–1842

Countess Yekaterina Vassilievna Skavronskaia, later Countess Litta, 1790 Oil on canvas 54.8 x 45.2 cm (215/8 x 173/4 in.)

Private collection, Australia

Marie-Louise-Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun 1755–Paris–1842

Portrait of Carlo Gastone della Torre di Rezzonico, 1791 Oil on canvas 75 x 88 cm (291/2 x 345/8 in.)

Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art, Luxembourg

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Maria Flaxman 1768–London–1833

Eleanor Anne Porden (1795–1825), 1810s Oil on canvas 113 x 143.8 cm (441/2 x 565/8 in.)

Krannert Museum, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

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Louise Bouteiller 1783—Paris–1828

Portrait of Césarine de Houdetot, Baronne de Barante: Les Pamplemousses, 1818 Oil on canvas 193.5 x 143 cm (761/4 x 561/4 in.)

National Gallery of Victoria, Australia

Charlotte Bonaparte Paris 1802–1839 Sarzana, Sardinia

Self-Portrait, c. 1824–26 Oil on canvas 88 x 73 cm (345/8 x 283/4 in.)

Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey

Eva Gonzales 1849–Paris–1883

Le Goûter (Afternoon Tea), c. 1874 Oil on Canvas 51 x 33 cm (201/8 x 13 in.)

Dallas Museum of Art, Texas

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Publication © Robilant+Voena 2023 Cover Design by LucaStoppiniStudio Catalogue Design by Creative Wisdom Ltd Printed in the UK by Pureprint ISBN: 978-1-7395796-0-9