 This lecture is entitled Adelaide La Biguillarde, Women Artists on the Rise. So last subunit, we discussed Elizabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, who was one of the most important women artists in 18th century France. And this is a self-portrait of Vigée Le Brun from around 1782. And on the left here we have La Biguillarde, and this portrait is from around 1785. These women are working at roughly the same time in France, and they're both celebrated not only because they're successful women artists, which is still fairly unusual at the time, but they really wanted to promote the role of women artists in France. So all of these things that they have in common means that you often study them together. So we've already taken a look at Vigée Le Brun, and today we're going to be focusing on La Biguillarde. Now, she was, like her friend Vigée Le Brun, very successful, not just with any random patron, but she was successful with the very top levels of society. And that makes her really exceptional. And she was even accepted into the Royal Academy in 1783. And even more, she is famous for helping other women artists become successful. She actually took on women pupils and tried to help them become successful as artists. Now, she's famous for her portraits. And you can see when you take a look at this self-portrait, you can perhaps get a sense of why she was famous for her self-portraits. It's a very engaging, personal portrait. And just before we move on really quickly, I think you can see when you look at the self-portraits of Vigée Le Brun, the self-portraits of Vigée Le Brun and La Biguillarde here, they really present themselves as these beautiful, poised, self-assured women. And when we look at their full work that they did, their art really backs this up. They're very skilled, detail-oriented painters who really inject a unique liveliness into their paintings. So now let's take a quick look at a representative example of the kind of portraits La Biguillarde was famous for. So here on the left side of the screen we have one of La Biguillarde's portraits. And this is a portrait of a man by the name François-André Vincent. François-André Vincent. And this dates from around 1795. You can just kind of ignore the image on the right for just a second. So this is La Biguillarde's portrait of this man, François, who was one of her earliest teachers, painting teachers, and would later become her husband. So she has a lot of personal and emotional connections to the sitter here. And I think that comes across, it's really a captivating likeness of this person. And just as in this particular portrait, she's famous for setting her sitters against very simple backgrounds, often just a plain wall. And they're very frank, straightforward portrayals of these people. And here she shows François as an artist, right? He's holding a handful of brushes, he has a palette with paints on it. So right away we see not only this man and his character, but we know who he is, what he does, how he makes his living. So again, a very frank, kind of no-nonsense approach to this man's portrait. But it's still very lively and engaging. He has this kind of twisted three-quarter pose. The way he looks out at us is very engaging, making that eye contact. Even the way she's depicted his facial expression is very distinctive and individualized and very engaging. And now let's just draw our attention to the portrait on the right, which is from the 1630s, so quite a bit earlier. And this is a painting by Rembrandt of his wife Saskia. And I thought that would be an interesting comparison because we have two artists who are known for very engaging portraits and these are portraits of their spouses. But of course Rembrandt was working in the Dutch Baroque and there are very different tastes that informed art production at the time. And I think right away you can see Rembrandt is working in the trappings of the Baroque and right away you can see this use of chiaroscuro. She emerges from this very murky background and her face is brightly lit. Whereas in La Biguiarde's portrait, everything's much more evenly lit. There isn't that kind of sense of mystery created by the chiaroscuro. It's a much more frank and straightforward depiction of this person. So I think that is an interesting reminder of the direction that art is moving in this period. Away from the Baroque and towards something new which is very much in line with the interests of the Enlightenment. And finally I just want to move on and take a look at what is probably considered La Biguiarde's most famous painting. So here we have her self-portrait with two pupils. And you can see right here is the self-portrait we looked at a couple of slides ago. This is the image we were looking at. It's taken from this larger self-portrait. And it's her self-portrait with two pupils. Let me write that down. Portrait with two pupils. And it dates to 1785. And like I said, this is considered without a doubt her most famous painting. And it shows her as a painter, sort of like the last image we looked at with her husband. She's holding brushes and a palette and you can see the back of the canvas that she's working on. So she's engaged in her craft, actually involved in the act of painting. And she's also being shown as a teacher. Behind her we have two of her pupils and these are real women. We know who these women are and that they were in fact her students. So she's shown as a painter and as a teacher. And many view this as kind of a bit of propaganda, a bit of self-advertising for her worthiness for acceptance into the Royal Academy. And you can see how that might work. This is definitely very much about her role as an artist and her worthiness as an artist as she's engaged in her craft. Many have even pointed out in the background right here is a sculpture of a Vestal Virgin. And that's also sort of a pro-woman or feminist subtext there. The Vestal Virgins gave up traditional women's roles of being wives and mothers so that they could protect the city of Rome. So people have read a lot into that. But just like with the portrait we just looked at, I think you can see there's a real liveliness and interest in this painting, but also a tremendous amount of frankness, the way she looks right out at the viewer. She's not coy at all. She's very proud of her art and proud of her status as a woman artist. Before we finish up, I just wanted to point out the tremendous attention she pays to the details of the clothing, of her own clothing and her pupil's clothing. You can see this dress she's wearing, the tremendous attention to the color and the texture, the way the dress falls, the ruffles along the bust, the feathers in her hat. And even if you look at this woman behind her, you can see the sheer netting of this dress. And that's all, it's very sumptuous and beautiful, really draws us into the delicate details of this painting, but it also shows us how skilled she is as an artist that she can do this. So she's kind of doing a lot there by bringing our attention to these details. And really she's just provided us with a female-oriented view of the craft of painting. And by doing this, she's kind of helped establish the validity of women painters in France. And she really succeeded in doing this, and even today remains one of the most celebrated women artists of the era.