Not everyone agrees that this portrait of an artist at work
is by Marie-Denise Villers. There was a time when it was believed to be by
Jacques-Louis David and then a strong case was made for Constance Marie
Charpentier being the portraitist.
There are also suggestions that the supposed subject of the
painting is not Charlotte du Val d’Ognes but the artist herself, this being a
self-portrait. A healthy dose of scepticism must therefore be added to any
statement made about the painting’s subject or creator. The fact that the
people involved are women, and therefore not highly regarded in the art world
for that fact alone, could have a lot to do with it. The names are not exactly
well known, but perhaps they should be.
The painting, dating from around 1801, was acquired by New York’s
Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1917. As it was unsigned, the attribution to Jacques-Louis
David – a well-known painter in the neoclassical style – was based on certain
features of the painting, notably the classical white tunic and Grecian
hairstyle of the sitter.
However, this idea was challenged in 1951 by Charles
Sterling, the Museum’s director, who made the claim for Constance Marie
Charpentier (1767-1849), who was a pupil of David’s. The attribution to Marie-Denise
Villers (1774-1821) is now generally accepted, but not universally so. Villers also
studied in David’s studio at one time.
Another possibility is that the mysterious Charlotte du Val
d’Ognes is a complete red herring and that this is either a portrait of
Charpentier by Villers or the other way round (assuming that one dismisses the
self-portrait idea). Given that the painting shows a woman at work on a
sketchpad as she looks intently at the artist, one has to assume that it is the
artist whose image is being drawn by the sitter.
It is known that Jacques-Louis David took female pupils and
it would have been no surprise if he gave them the exercise of sketching each
other. The portrait is clearly much more than a sketch, so presumably the original
drawing was the groundwork for this oil painting on canvas that measures 64x51
inches.
A great deal of work was clearly done when the medium
changed to oils, notably in the lighting of the subject, the contrast of
brightness and shade, and the details of the folds in the sitter’s dress. The
influence of David’s instructions to his pupil can clearly be seen.
One also gets the sense that the artist went out of her way
to impress her tutor by featuring a broken window in the background. This is
shown via a subtle change in the lighting as between the section of the window
frame covered by glass and not, coupled with a gradation from light to dark from
bottom to top.
The painting is not perfect, notably in the weak portrayal
of the subject’s left arm, but there is enough skill demonstrated here to
convince the viewer that this is the work of a highly talented artist, albeit
one under instruction from one of the greatest artists of the time. In
particular one has to admire the degree of intimacy created by the expression
on the sitter’s face, to which the lighting and composition point. The subject
has been indeed been described as “an 18th century Mona Lisa”.
It is an essentially feminine work of art, and this is a
feature that is hard to find in fine art before the modern era. Despite the
obvious quality of this work, the artist is scarcely known – and that is true whether
one chooses to accept Villers or Charpentier as the person to be credited for
it. It is therefore highly regrettable to discover that when it was confirmed
that this was a work by a woman rather than a man, its monetary value plummeted
in the art market.
© John Welford
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