Royalists to romantics: women artists from the Louvre, Versailles and other French national collections

Abstract

The rich collections of paintings and sculptures by women in the Louvre, Versailles, Fontainebleau, and other venerable French collections present an outstanding opportunity to explore the important contributions that women artists made in France between 1750 and 1848, a period that saw the waning of the ancien regime, the traumas of the French Revolution, the rise and fall of Napoleon, and the restoration of the monarchy. 'Royalists to Romantics' features some seventy-five paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings by thirty-five French women artists of this era. These stunning works both illuminate their makers' careers and offer a new narrative about the art world of the Revolutionary period. Published to accompany a major exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, this beautifully illustrated book examines eighteenth-century French theories of sexual difference and their influence on the 'woman-artist question'; paradoxical Revolutionary attitudes toward women artists, who encountered as many new limitations as opportunities; and the complex ways that women marketed their reputations and managed their cultural positions in France's intricate social and artistic hierarchy. Accompanies a major exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC from February 24- May 31, 2012.

Contents

Foreword / Susan Fisher Sterling -- Introduction / Jordana Pomeroy -- Revolutionary paradoxes: 1789-94 / Laura Auricchio -- Looking elsewhere: women and the Parisian art world in the eighteenth century / Melissa Lee Hyde -- The woman-artist question / Mary D. Sheriff.