Marie-Victoire Lemoine (; 1754 – 2 December 1820) was a French classicist painter.

Life

Born in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, Marie-Victoire Lemoine was the eldest daughter of four sisters to Charles Lemoine and Marie-Anne Rousselle. Her sisters,

Marie-Denise Villers Marie-Denise Villers (''née'' Lemoine; 1774 – 19 August 1821) was a French painter who specialized in portraits. Life Marie-Denise Lemoine was born in Paris to Charles Lemoine and Marie-Anne Rouselle. Two of her three sisters, Marie-Victoire ...

and

Marie-Élisabeth Gabiou Marie-Élisabeth Gabiou, née Lemoine (c. 1761 – 30 May 1811) was a French painter. Gabiou was the sister of painters Marie-Denise Villers and Marie-Victoire Lemoine, and was the sister-in-law and cousin of Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet; her husban ...

, also became painters. She was first cousins with

Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet (née Gabiou; died 18 April 1832) was a French painter and the wife of the sculptor Antoine Denis Chaudet, who had also been her teacher. Her father, Louis Gabiou, was a wig maker. After the death of her first husband in ...

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. 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$ in cash and US$ for the clothing and linen in today's currency.

Work

Marie-Victoire Lemoine mainly painted portraits, miniatures, and genre scenes. She was most active in the art community during the late 1780s and the early 1790s. Lemoine set up her first salon in 1774. She took part in numerous Salons, for example, her first solo exhibition was held at Pahin de la Blancherie's ''Salon de Correspondance'' in 1779, where she exhibited a now untraced portrait of the Princess Lamballe (57 x 45 cm). 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 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 In classical mythology, Cupid ( , meaning "passionate desire") is the god of desire, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus and the god of war Mars. He is also known as Amor (Latin: ...

'', 1792

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lemoine, Marie-Victoire 1754 births 1820 deaths Painters from Paris 18th-century French painters 19th-century French painters 18th-century French women painters 19th-century French women painters