Marie-Victoire Lemoine

Born in Paris, Marie-Victoire Lemoine was the eldest daughter of four sisters to Charles Lemoine and Marie-Anne Rousselle.{{Cite book|last=Oppenheimer|first=Margaret|title=Women Artists in Paris|publisher=UMI Company|year=1996|location=Ann Arbor, Michigan|pages=143–144, 222–224|language=English}} Her sisters, Marie-Denise Villers and Marie-Élisabeth Gabiou, also became painters. She was first cousins with Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet through her mother's side. Unlike her sisters, she remained unmarried and became one of the few women in contemporary art that made a living through painting.

She was a student of François-Guillaume Ménageot in the early 1770s, with whom she lived and worked in a house acquired by the art dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun, next to the studio of Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun (1755–1842), France's leading woman painter. Ménageot was ten years older than Lemoine.{{Cite journal|last1=Baetjer|first1=Katharine|last2=Christiansen|first2=Keith|last3=Tinterow|first3=Gary|date=1989|title=European Paintings|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3259896|journal=The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin|volume=47|issue=2|pages=32|doi=10.2307/3259896|jstor=3259896 |issn=0026-1521|url-access=subscription}} From 1779, Marie-Victoire Lemoine lived in her parents' home until she moved in with her sister Marie-Elisabeth, where she remained even after her sister's death. She died six years after her last exhibition, aged sixty-six. At the time of her death, she only left 10 Francs in cash and clothing and linen valued at 181 Francs and 50 Centimes, which amounts to only US${{Inflation|US-GDP|1.72|1820|fmt=c}} in cash and US${{Inflation|US-GDP|181.50|1820|fmt=c|r=-2}} for the clothing and linen in today's currency.

Marie-Victoire Lemoine mainly painted portraits, miniatures, and genre scenes.{{Cite book |last1=Bachmann |first1=Donna G. |title=Woman artists: an historical, contemporary, and feminist bibliography |last2=Piland |first2=Sherry |publisher=Scarecrow Press |year=1994 |pages=158–159}} She was most active in the art community during the late 1780s and the early 1790s. Lemoine set up her first salon in 1774.{{Cite book|last=Vigué|first=Jordi|title=Great Women Masters of Art.|publisher=Watson-Guptill|year=2003|location=New York, New York|pages=159–162}} She took part in numerous Salons,{{Cite web|url=http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436875|title=Marie Victoire Lemoine {{!}} The Interior of an Atelier of a Woman Painter {{!}} The Met|website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art, i.e. The Met Museum|date=1789 |access-date=2017-03-08}} for example, her first solo exhibition was held at Pahin de la Blancherie's Salon de Correspondance in 1779,{{Cite journal|last=Auricchio|first=Laura|date=2002-01-01|title=Pahin de la Blancherie's Commercial Cabinet of Curiosity (1779–87)|jstor=30053338|journal=Eighteenth-Century Studies|volume=36|issue=1|pages=47–61|doi=10.1353/ecs.2002.0050|s2cid=162042216}} where she exhibited a now untraced portrait of the Princess Lamballe (57 x 45 cm).{{Cite book|last=Bobko|first=Jane|title=Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from the Louvre, Versailles, and Other French National Collections.|publisher=National Museum of Women in the Arts|year=2012|location=Washington, DC|pages=143–144}} Five years after the Parisian Salon allowed women to participate, she exhibits there for the first time in 1796. She continued to display her works of art to the public in the salons of 1796, 1798, 1799, 1802, 1804, and 1814. Lemoine was known to sign her paintings with the signature "M. Vic Lemoine."

File:Marie-Victoire Lemoine - 1796.jpg|Marie-Victoire Lemoine's The Interior of an Atelier of a Woman Painter, at first interpreted as Vigée Le Brun with a student. Later interpretation is that the subject is Marie-Victoire herself with her sister Marie-Elisabeth{{Cite web|url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436875|access-date=2020-06-16|title=The Interior of an Atelier of a Woman Painter| website=The Met|date=1789 }}

File:The two sisters, by Marie-Victoire Lemoine.jpg|The Two Sisters, 1790

File:Marie-Victoire Lemoine (attr) Portrait of a boy feeding two bird.jpg|Portrait of a Boy Feeding Two Birds

File:Marie-Victoire Lemoine - Jeune fille tenant une colombe, 1793.jpg|alt=|A Girl Holding a Dove, 1793

File:Child with rose - attributed to Marie-Victoire Lemoine.jpg|alt=|Child Holding a Rose

File:Marie-Victoire Lemoine - Portrait of a Female Artist - NM 7332 - Nationalmuseum.jpg|alt=|Portrait of an Artist

File:Master Henri Gabiou Playing the Violin 2.jpg|Portrait of Henri Gabiou, the artist's nephew, playing the violin 1796

File:Marie-Victoire Lemoine - Woman and Cupid, 1792.jpg|Woman and Cupid, 1792

{{Commons category}}

{{Reflist}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lemoine, Marie-Victoire}}

Category:1754 births

Category:1820 deaths

Category:Painters from Paris

Category:18th-century French painters

Category:19th-century French painters

Category:18th-century French women painters

Category:19th-century French women painters