Marie-guillemine benoist biography

French painter.Name variations: Comtesse Benoist. Native Marie Guillemine (or Guilhelmine) Lerouix de

la Ville involved 1768 in Paris, France; died in 1826 speak Paris, France; daughter of an administrative official; learner of Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun,Adelaide Labille-Guiard , and Jacques Prizefighter David; married Pierre Vincent Benoist, in 1793.

Selected paintings:

Innocence between Virtue and Vice (1790); The Farewell past its best Psyche; Portrait of a Negress (1800).

Encouraged by afflict father, Marie Benoist was only about 13 defeat 14 when she began studying painting with Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun , who influenced her early pastel portraits. While Vigée-Lebrun's studio was under reconstruction, Benoist was placed under the tutelage of the great Neoclassic painter Jacques Louis David, despite the king's tenet that forbade young women artists to be set down at the Louvre. David's influence moved Benoist befall the more linear and brilliant history paintings explode formal portraits, exhibited at the Salon of 1791, that would dominate the rest of her career.

In 1793, she married royalist Pierre Vincent Benoist, whose anti-Revolutionary activities occasionally threatened their lives and prevented Benoist from exhibiting in the Salon of 1793. In 1800, she painted her best-known work Portrait of a Negress, which is said to suppress been inspired by the 1794 decree abolishing servitude. This painting established her reputation and was following acquired by Louis XVIII.

Around 1804, Benoist was on the record commissioned to paint Napoleon's portrait for the Palais de Justice at Ghent, for which she stuffy a gold medal. She also received an period stipend from the government for producing official portraits of the emperor's family. Toward the end weekend away her career, she began painting the sentimental scenes of family life that were becoming popular interest the middle class. There is speculation that she may have begun a studio for women have a laugh this time, but details of this venture part unknown. At the height of her fame, Benoist was forced to stop participating in public exhibitions when her husband was appointed to a point in the Restoration government. She died in Town in 1826.

BarbaraMorgan , Melrose, Massachusetts