The Visual Culture of Fashion and the Classical Ideal in Post-Revolutionary France

Abstract

In her little-known painting A Study of a Woman after Nature (1802), Marie-Denise Villers exploited a conjuncture between masculine-inflected ideals of Neoclassical art and feminine-inflected ideas of fashionability in the post-Revolutionary period in France by making a feature of female dress while emulating the standards of history painting. The artist's confident synthesis of idioms is examined in the context of Albertine Clément-Hémery's memoir of a women's art studio. Walter Benjamin's notion of gestus is enlisted as a means of understanding how the quite different image cultures invoked in this work communicated social ideas.

Notes

1. On Sophie Meyer Regnault, see Christopher Sells, “A Portrait by Jean-Baptiste Regnault,” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (Fall 1975): 19–21. Sells attributed a self-portrait to her, which implies her receipt of artistic training.

2. The fundamental reference on Villers is Margaret Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers, née Lemoine (1774–1821),” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 127, no. 1527 (April 1996): 165–80. For a recent treatment of artists from this period, see Royalists to Romantics: Women Artists from Versailles, the Louvre and Other French National Collections (Washington, D.C.: National Museum of Women in the Arts, 2012).

3. This family pattern is discussed by Mary Vidal, “The ‘Other Atelier’: Jacques-Louis David's Female Students,” in Women, Art and the Politics of Identity in Eighteenth-Century Europe, ed. Melissa Hyde and Jennifer Milam (London: Ashgate, 2003), 241.

4. Brigitte Gallini, “Concours et prix d’encouragements,” in La revolution française et l’Europe, 1789–1799, by Council of Europe, Exposition (Paris: Ministère de la Culture de la Communication des Grands Travaux et du Bicentenaire, Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1989), vol. 3, 849. Villers's fifth-class prize, worth one thousand francs, was in the lowest category for painting.

5. Werner Szambien, Les projets de l’an II: Concours d’architecture de la période révolutionnaire (Paris: École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, 1986), 45, 90, 92–93, 211, figs. 75–77; and Gallini, “Concours et prix d’encouragements,” vol. 3, 843: “Concours pour le Temple de l’Égalité, sur l’emplacement du jardin Beaujon.” Villers's pecuniary prize of two thousand livres was devalued in 1796 and converted to assignats, which quickly became worthless (845).

6. Maximilien Villers's architectural commissions are listed in Charles Gabet, Dictionnaire des artistes de l’école française au XIXe sie`cle (Paris: Madame Vergne, 1834), 695. Jann Matlock generously drew this source to my attention, as well as references cited in nn. 100, 108.

7. Explication des ouvrages de peinture et dessins, sculpture, architecture et gravure, des Artistes vivans, exposés au Muséum central des arts, d’apre`s l’Arrêté du Ministre de l’intérieur, le 15 fructidor, an X de la République française (Paris: Imprimerie des Arts et Sciences, an X [1802]), 62, cat. no. 311.

8. Camran Mani, “Livrets of the Paris Salons, 1781–1814: Paintings and Other Works with Étude in the Title,” research paper, October 2010, Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art, Williams College, Williamstown, Mass.

9. Têtes d’étude recalled the academic study of expression instituted by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture during the eighteenth century, as the concours de la tête d’expression (1759–84), and for a half figure with a characterful head (1784–93). Études of portraits, still lifes, animals, and landscapes were also cited in the catalogs surveyed.

10. Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure, dessins, modèles, etc. … exposés dans le grand Sallon du Museum au Louvre … au mois vendémiaire au quatrième de la République (Paris: Vve Hérissant, an 4 [1795]), 45, cat. no. 352: “Caton d’Utique. Figure d’étude. Il arrache l’appareil de sa blessure, pour ne pas souffrir la douleur d’être vaincu par César. Tableau de 7 pieds de long, sur 5 de haut.”

11. See Thomas Crow, Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 47–81, 131–39.

12. Explication des ouvrages de peinture, sculpture, architecture, gravure, dessins, modèles, etc. … exposé́s dans le Salon du Musée centrale des arts, le 15 fructidor, an VIII de la République (Paris: Imprimerie des Arts et Sciences, an VIII [1800]), 16, cat. no. 40: “Une femme âgée et son petit-fils, après avoir perdu leur fortune, et par suite leurs amis, se trouvant dans l’impossibilité de gagner leur vie, sont constraints d’implorer la pitié des passans.”

13. Au temps des merveilleuses: La société parisienne sous le Directoire et le Consulat (Paris: Paris Musées, [2005]), 64, cat. no. 65: “Idée du Tableau le Plus Touchant du Salon de l’An 9. [La Pauvre Rentie`re]. Présenté aux Ames Sensibles.”

14. Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers,” 167.

15. Oppenheimer (ibid., 167, 170–72) is cautious about identifying the 1799 painting as the one now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and believes that the prize could have gone to a now lost or unlocated self-portrait.

16. Anne Higgonet, “Studio, Sociability, and Unexpected Consequences in the Old Louvre” (paper delivered at the conference “The Louvre before the Louvre: Artisans, Arts, Academies,” the Wallace Collection, London, July 5, 2013).

17. On “narrative detail” as suggested by gestures, see Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers,” 172. The critic's comment on accessories is in L’Observateur au muséum, ou la Critique des tableaux, en Vaudeville (Paris: Gautier, n.d. [1801]), quoted in La femme artiste d’Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun à Rosa Bonheur ([Mont-de-Marsan: Imp. Lacoste], 1981), 33, cat. no. 13; and in Margaret Oppenheimer, “Marie-Denise Villers (2004),” Société Internationale pour l’Étude des Femmes de l’Ancien Régime (SIEFAR), http://www.siefar.org (accessed August 17, 2007). On the oil sketch, see the entry in Margaret A. Oppenheimer, The French Portrait: Revolution to Restoration (Northampton, Mass.: Smith College Museum of Art, 2005), 185–87, cat. no. 48.

18. J. B. P. Lebrun, Catalogue d’une collection capital provenant du cabinet de M. Villers, architecture, composé de tableaux des trois écoles. … (Paris, 1812), lot 119, “occupée à passer son schall,” quoted in Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers,” 170.

19. These motifs appear in the following plates from the Journal des Dames et des Modes (hereafter JDM; note that the plates were numbered sequentially from the beginning of the journal through its entire run from 1797 to 1834): an X, pl. 354; no. 59 (25 messidor, an IX [July 14, 1801]): pl. 315; no. 43 (5 floréal, an IX [April 25, 1801): pl. 296; no. 63 (20 thermidor, an VIII [August 8, 1800]): pl. 236; no. 43 (5 floréal, an XII [April 25, 1804]): pl. 549.

20. Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists: 1550–1950 (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1976), 10, fig. 71.

21. M. [Henri] Soustras to M. Davin, December 9, 1840, quoted in Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers,” 173, 175 n. 65; and in Isabelle Auffret's entry on the painting in Les peintures françaises du XVIIIe`me sie`cle de la collection du Musée du Louvre, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Yomiuri Shimbun, 1997), 194, cat. no. 77: “[le tableau] n’a jamais été fait pour un portrait.” Museum officials accepted the explanation, describing the work as “plutôt un tableau qu’un portrait”; report of December 21, 1840, to the intendant général des musées, quoted in La femme artiste, 33.

22. Jeannine Baticle, “Le portrait de la Marquise de Santa Cruz par Goya,” Revue du Louvre, no. 3 (1977): 163 n. 51, reported in Les peintures françaises du XVIIIe`me sie`cle, 194, cat. no. 77; and La femme artiste, 33.

23. Bertie Greatheed, An Englishman in Paris: 1803, ed. J. P. T. Bury and J. C. Barry (London: Bles, 1953), 72–73, entry for Sunday, February 27, 1803, quoted in Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers,” 174. On Maria Cosway's social connections to French artists, see Philippe Bordes, “Jacques-Louis David's Anglophobia on the Eve of the French Revolution,” Burlington Magazine 134, no. 1073 (1992): 482–90.

24. Nouvelles des Arts, Peinture, Sculpture et Gravure 2 (an XI [1802]): 10, quoted in French in Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers,” 171. Charles Landon made a similar remark, noted in La femme artiste, 33.

25. The painting is illustrated in Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers,” 168, figs. 4, 5.

26. Modes et manie`res du jour à Paris à la fin du 18e`me sie`cle et au commencement du 19e`me: Collection de 52 gravures coloriées (Paris: [La Mésangère], n.d. [1800–1808]). Cataloged by Maurice Fenaille, L’oeuvre gravé de P.-L. Debucourt 1755–1832 (Paris: Morgan, E. Rahir, 1899), 67.

27. The ancient Greek kothornoi, women's boots with platform soles, were adopted in Roman times for the theater, as cothornoi, and worn by tragic actors to give height to the heroes they played; Elizabeth Semmelhack, Heights of Fashion: A History of the Elevated Shoe (Toronto: Bata Shoe Museum, 2008), 6–7, 67 n. 13. Neoclassical shoemakers eliminated the platform and retained the crossed lacings, transforming them into a flat shoe.

28. Devin Fore, Realism after Modernism: The Rehumanizing of Art and Literature (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, [2012]), 140. The quotation refers to Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, trans. Rodney Livingstone, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1996–2003), vol. 2, 778–89. Benjamin responded to and developed Bertolt Brecht's concept of the social gestus as embedded in complex social relations and processes, in, for example, “Über gestische Musik,” in Grosse kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, 30 vols. (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1988–96), vol. 22, 1, 329. Other discussions of this concept in the scholarly literature include Carrie Asman, “Return of the Sign to the Body: Benjamin and Gesture in the Age of Retheatricalization,” Discourse 16, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 46–64.

29. Examples include two figures of youths fastening sandals on the Parthenon freize, W VI, 12, and W XV, 29, marble, ca. 443–438 BCE (Acropolis Museum, Athens); Warrior Putting on His Greaves, black-figure lekythos, 525–475 BCE (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge); and Poseidon, garnet gem, Roman imperial period (Marlborough Collection, formerly Blenheim Palace).

30. In Giovan Battista Cavalieri, Antiquarum statuarum urbis Romae tertieus et quartus liber (Rome, 1594), pl. 91, as cited in Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981),182–84, no. 23.

31. The statue was exhibited as Jason in the Musée Central des Arts from 1800; Augustin Legrand, Galeries des antiques; ou, Esquisses des statues, bustes et bas-reliefs, fruits des conquêtes de l’Armée d’Italie (Paris: Ant. Aug. Renouard, 1803), 27, cat. no. 53.

32. David's premie`re pensée for Leonidas is reproduced and discussed in Jacques-Louis David, 1748–1825, exh. cat. (Paris: Ministè̀re de la Culture, de la Communication, des Grands Travaux et du Bicentenaire, Éditions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1989), 500, cat. no. 216.

33. Susan L. Siegfried, The Art of Louis-Léopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 8–9. The date of Tresca's engraving is uncertain but probably falls in the late 1790s, when he was collaborating with Boilly on the Folies du Jour series (1797) and other subjects. Francisco Goya depicted a similar subject, Bien tirada està, in Los caprichos (Madrid, 1799), pl. 17, which was not yet known in France.

34. Critique raisonnée des tableaux du Salon: Dialogue entre Pasquino, voyageur romain, et Scapin; disposée selon l’ordre du livre de l’exposition; avec le catalogue de 129 auteurs cités (Paris: chez Debray, 1804), quoted in Joseph Bailliol, “Vie et oeuvre de Marie Victoire Lemoine (1754–1820),” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 127, no. 1527 (April 1996): 141: “cette femme qui mettoit sa jarretière.”

35. See Margaret A. Oppenheimer, “‘The Charming Spectacle of a Cadaver’: Anatomical and Life Study by Women Artists in Paris, 1775–1815,” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 6, no. 1 (Spring 2007), http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring07/46-spring07/spring07article/142-qthe-charming-spectacle-of-a-cadaverq-anatomical-and-life-study-by-women-artists-in-paris-17751815.

36. Laura Auricchio, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard: Artist in the Age of Revolution (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2009), 40–50; and idem, “Self-Promotion in Adélaïde Labille-Guiard's 1785 Self-Portrait with Two Students,” Art Bulletin 89 (March 2007): 45–62.

37. I wish to thank a number of curators and historians of dress who shared their expertise and showed me objects in storage collections: Alexandra Bosc, Pascale Gorguet-Ballesteros, and Marie-Laure Gutton, Musée Galliera, Paris, and Catherine Join-Deiterle, former director of that museum; Véronique Belloit, Modes et Textiles, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; Françoise Tétart-Vittu, France; Piedade de Silveira, Paris; Jean Druesedow, Kent State University Museum, Kent, Ohio; Lauren Whitley, Department of Textile and Fashion Arts, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Clare Brown, European Textiles 1500–1800, Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Miles Lambert, the Gallery of Costume, Platt Hall, Manchester; and Akiko Takahashi Fukai and Tamami Suoh, the Kyoto Costume Institute.

38. Natalie Rothstein, Barbara Johnson's Album of Fashion and Fabrics (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990); and Serge Grandjean, Inventaire apre`s déces de l’Imperatrice Joséphine à Malmaison (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1964), 49, item 6.

39. For some, the black dress and veil connote mourning or melancholy, and social issues of the period, such as the return of émigrés between 1800 and 1802 and relaxation of the Revolutionaries’ prohibition of mourning attire, might seem to have created a context that would support this; comments by Nicole Pellegrin and Jann Matlock at the seminar “Qu’est-ce que les études de genre font à l’histoire de l’art?” Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, April 10, 2014. However, in Villers's painting, the complex treatment of the dress, with its cheery red and playful white touches, and the casual draping and ornamentation of the veil are more redolent of high fashion than of mourning. Mourning attire was rarely illustrated at the time, but a few plates show demure, fully black dresses, as worn in London; see Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics (popularly known as Ackermann's Repository of Arts) 2(1809): pl. 17, and 4(1810): pl. 30, “Evening Mourning Dress”; and Journal des Modes, 1818, pl. 51, “Costume de Londres.”

40. Xavier Salmon, Peintre des rois, roi des peintres: François Gérard (1770–1837), portraitiste, exh. cat. (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 2014), 54­–55, cat. no. 9. Women wore black during this period for oil portraits by Jean-Marie Voile, Madame Liénard, 1795–96; Alexandre Bally, Madame Cretté, 1798; François Gérard, Comtesse Katarzyna Joanna Gabrielle Starzeńska, 1803–4, Caroline Murat, ca. 1804, Désirée Clary, ca. 1810, and Maria Łązyńska, 1810–12; Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet, Portrait d’une dame tenant son voile, 1804, Madame Augustin, 1806; and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Madame Antonia Devançay de Nittis, 1807. Chaudet, Villers's cousin, dressed an imaginary figure in black, Jeune fille pleurant son pigeon mort, 1808 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Arras).

41. Salmon, Peintre des rois, 54–55, cat. no. 9, quoting l’Arlequin au Muséum, 1799: “L’art a dérobé cette fois / Tous les secrets de la nature.” In a painting attributed to the circle of David, Portrait of a Young Woman in White, ca. 1789 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.), the sitter's breasts are exposed through the sheer top of a white chemise dress.

42. Black was called “the distinguished color [la couleur distinguée]” for dresses in 1801, and a “very great vogue … for black crepe [tre`s-grande vogue … pour le crêpe noir]” was reported that fall; “Modes Parisiennes,” JDM, Frankfurt ed., no. 39 (September 21, 1801): 359, and Paris ed., no. 69 (15 fructidor, an IX [October 1, 1801]): 552. Black dresses were illustrated in Le Mois 4, no. 11 (pluviôse, an VIII [January 21–February 19, 1800]): pl. 2; JDM, no. 23 (20 thermidor, an VI [August 11, 1798]): pl. 54; no. 66 (5 fructidor, an VIII [August 23, 1800]): pl. 239; no. 68 (15 fructidor, an IX [September 2, 1800]): pl. 241; no. 12 (30 brumaire, an IX [November 21, 1800]): pl. 258; no. 54 (30 prairial, an IX [June 19, 1801]): pl. 309. An extant evening dress of black mousseline crepe from 1818–20 is in the collection of the Musée Galliera.

43. JDM, no. 23 (20 thermidor, an VI [August 11, 1798]): pl. 54 and “Modes: Explication de la gravure, No. 54,” 7–8. The commentary described this “chemise noire” as follows: “Ces chemises sont en crêpe très-clair. On porte au-dessous un transparent blanc, jaune, ou rose. Cette combinaison produit l’effet d’un couleur changeante. Les endoits ou le crêpe se masse, sont noires; ceux où il se développe, laissent au transparent tout son éclat; et comme le mouvement varie les ondulations de la robe, il en résulte dans les couleurs un alternative très-agréable.”  (These chemises are [made] of very clear crepe. One wears a white, yellow, or rose transparent [dress] underneath. This combination produces the effect of changing color. The places where the crepe masses are black; those where it develops leaves all the brightness to the transparent [dress]; and as movement varies the undulations of the dress, a very agreeable alternation in the colors results from this.) The underdress of the plate in the Designmuseum Danmark, Copenhagen, is painted yellow with gold trim on the hat; the underdress of the copy in the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, is painted rose with red trim on the hat.

44. La Correspondance des Dames 1, no. 14 (20 floréal, an VII [May 9, 1799]): pl. 30; and a pleated “domino” fan, Directory or early nineteenth century (Musée Galliera, inv. no. 1981.95.76). These patterns are similar to the white-on-white figured skirt shown in JDM, no. 27 (15 pluviôse, an VIII [February 4, 1800]): pl. 191. The hand coloring of three-toned outfits suggested by other plates is not a reliable guide to worn clothing: the first plate of the Journal des Dames et des Modes (1797) was differently colored in two copies, one example showing a solidly colored gray dress (Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art), another showing a gray bodice with a rose skirt (Boston Public Library); JDM, no. 41 (17 fructidor, an V [September 3, 1797]): pl. 1.

45. Only one of five sleeveless, front-lacing French corsages from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the Musée Galliera exposes its laces rather than hiding them under overlapping flaps, and this is a child's garment probably made for a fancy dress ball, as suggested by its deeply scalloped lower edge (Corsage fillette, late eighteenth century/Directory, brown silk [changing color] edged in blue, inv. no. 68.67.3; the others, inv. nos. 68.67.2; 1970.108.3; 1955.20.2; 1993.41.X). High-waisted dresses with exposed front lacing were rarely represented in paintings and prints. Exceptions include Marguerite Gérard, Happy Household, 1795–1800 (private collection) and First Steps, or Nursing Mother, 1804 (Musée Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Grasse), the latter depicting a maid in regional costume; and a watercolor drawing executed or supervised by Pierre de La Mésangère, which shows a mother holding a child and wearing a red bodice that contrasts with her dress (Costumes de Paris, Bibliothèque Municipal, Rouen, Leber 6149, fol. 1011). However, its exposed lacing is barely visible in the published version of this image because the bodice is painted black like the dress (JDM, no. 12 [30 brumaire, an IX (November 21, 1800)]: pl. 258). A silk brocade dress with exposed front lacing, probably made for fancy dress (American, 1840–49), is in the Kent State University Museum, Kent, Ohio, inv. no. 1983.001.0065.

46. Contemporary illustrations of regional French costumes with front lacing include A. Rabini Beauregard and Pierre Marie Gault de Saint-Germain, “Femme de St.-Bonnet,” in Tableau de la ci-devant Province d’Auvergne (Paris: Pernier, 1802), pl. V, after a watercolor by Gault de Saint-Germain in the collection Costumes auvergnats, Bibliothèque Municipale, Clermont-Ferrand; and Jacques Grasset de Saint-Sauveur, “Homme & Femme des Vosges,” in Voyages pittoresques dans les quatre parties du monde. … (Paris: veuve Hocquart, 1806).

47. Four women painted Italian or regional costume subjects between 1793 and 1815, before the vogue for them took off across Europe in the 1820s: Villers's sister Marie-Victoire Lemoine (A Woman from Frascati and a Guitarist, 1793, private collection); Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot, who began exhibiting picturesque Italian genre scenes in 1810; Marie Guilhelmine Benoist (The Consultation, or The Fortune-Teller, 1812, Musée de la Ville, Saintes); and Pauline Auzou (A Spinner, n.d., private collection). Rare precedents for such subjects include Aniet-Charles-Gabriel Lemonnier's Paysanne de Frascati, late eighteenth century (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen), and Jacques Sablet's Neapolitan genre scenes, exhibited from 1796.

48. Lisbeth, drame lyrique en trois actes et en prose, libretto by [Edmond de] Favières, first performed at the Opéra-Comique theater, 21 nivôse, an V [January 10, 1797] (Paris, 1798). The production was discussed in “Modes. Explication de la Gravure, No. 6, Seconde Série; pl. 22,” JDM, no. 71 (23 pluviôse, an VI [February 11, 1798]): 8.

49. Ibid.: “C’est proprement un habit de bergère. La collerète, le lacet, le jupon, le corset, le petit tablier, tout caracterise une jeune habitante des montagnes, occupée à paître ses tendres agneaux, à traire les chèvres, à presser le fromage. Rien de plus simple que cet ajustement, que contraste parfaitement avec la richesse orientale de la coiffure.” Slightly later plates from the same journal suggest that the costume inspired a fashion for elaborate headgear and sleeveless or front-laced bodices; an VI [1798], pl. 29, “Spencer sans manche,” pl. 31, “Chapeau blanc à la Lisbeth.”

50. Gulnare, ou l’Esclave persanne, comédie en un acte et en prose, libretto by B. Marsolier, first performed at the Opéra-Comique theater, 20 nivôse, an 6 [January 9, 1798] (Paris, 1798).

51. Pierre de La Mésangère's role in the journal is discussed by Annemarie Kleinert, “Le Journal des Dames et des Modes”: ou La conquête de l’Europe féminine (1797–1839) (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2001).

52. Esthétique de la toilette, ou Du beau, dans la toilette (Leipzig: Au comptoir d’industrie, [ca. 1804]), 85: “[P]roscrivez toute mise qui imite d’une manière trop frappante des costumes de théâtre”; “Évitez tout ce qui est singulier ou théâtral, frappant ou fantasque.”

53. Philippe Perrot, Fashioning the Bourgeoisie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 36.

54. Françoise Tétart-Vittu, “Who Creates Fashion?” in Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity, ed. Gloria Groom (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 68–77.

55. Albertine Clément-Hémery, Souvenirs de 1793 et 1794 (Cambrai: Presses de Lesne-Daloin, 1832). Clément-Hémery's account of the Regnault studio is discussed by Séverine Sofio, “‘Mon élève que je regarde comme mon meilleur ouvrage’: Former les jeunes filles à la peinture dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle,” in Apprendre à peindre: Les ateliers privés à Paris 1780–1863, ed. France Nerlich and Alain Bonnet (Tours: Presses Universitaires François-Rabelais, 2013), 76–77.

56. Clément-Hémery, Souvenirs, 4.

57. Anne Higgonet (“Studio, Sociability”) has suggested that Villers may have been referred to Regnault for instruction in his all-female class. Villers exhibited as a student of “Giraudet” (Girodet) at the Salon of 1799; Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers,” 167, 169, 171. Girodet did not supervise a studio for women until 1818; see François-Louis Bruel, “Girodet et les dames Robert,” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art Français (1912): 76–93. Henri Soustras claimed that David worked on Villers's Une étude de femme d’apre`s nature (Soustras to Davin, 1840, quoted by Geneviève Lacambre in her entry on the painting in La femme artiste, 33; and Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers,” 173–74). Lacambre (La femme artiste, 35), Oppenheimer (“Nisa Villers,” 173–74), and Isabelle Aufret (in her entry on the painting in Les peintures françaises du XVIIIème sie`cle, 248–49) accepted David's role as partial author of the work, but that claim should be regarded with caution since it enhanced the status of his family's association with the picture (according to Soustras, his mother, then Mlle Jacquimet, was invited by David to pose for the hands of Villers's figure) and in view of its conventional gender bias. Vidal (“The ‘Other Atelier’”) did not list Villers among David's students; Oppenheimer (“Nisa Villers,” 171) implied that Villers may have copied François Gérard's work around 1799, when he painted a now-lost portrait of her.

58. Clément-Hémery, Souvenirs, 7: “Sa [Mlle de Longueville's] mise élégante, recherché, était pleine de goût; elle embellissait les modes que créait Tornezy.”

59. Ibid., 18: “Gui** s’était successivement affublée d’une draperie grecque, d’une ceinture en guise de ceste, puis d’un casque, d’une cuirasse, d’une lance, meubles obligés d’un atelier” (obligatory props of a studio).

60. Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion in the French Revolution (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988); Nicole Pellegrin, Les vêtements de la liberté (Aix-en-Provence: Alinea, 1989); Madeleine Delpierre, Dress in France in the Eighteenth Century, trans. Caroline Beamish (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 120–24; and Richard Wrigley, The Politics of Appearances: Representations of Dress in Revolutionary France (Oxford: Berg, 2002).

61. Edmund Burke, Letters on a Regicide Peace, in The Works of Edmund Burke (London, 1893), vol. 5, 208, quoted in Linda Frey and Marsha Frey, “‘The Reign of the Charlatans Is Over’: The French Revolutionary Attack on Diplomatic Practice,” Journal of Modern History 65, no. 4 (December 1993): 706–44, at 709.

62. Clément-Hémery, Souvenirs, 25: “sa mise, d’une extrême simplicité, qui contrastait avec nos ceintures et nos tuniques antiques.”

63. The students may have recalled a public demonstration by women made four years earlier, when in September 1789 eleven wives of artists presented a patriotic gift of jewelry to the Assemblée Nationale. Press reports describe them as dressed in white, although engravings, such as Don patriotique des illustres françoises, published by Jacques-François Chéreau, depict them in colored dresses.

64. Clément-Hémery, Souvenirs, 26: “Voyez-vous six femmes dont j’étais la plus jeune et la moins jolie, se disputant de fraîcheur, de gaité, de grace et de coquetterie, parées comme les victims sacrifiées de Tauride, les chevaux lisses, parfumés, à côté de ces gras et dégoutans bonnets rouges, de ces carmagnoles républicaines, souvent sales, déchirées, et la svelte Tornezy, à la peau blanche, aux yeux bleus, aux cheveux d’ébène, bravant, à notre tête, la première bordée des sots propos qu’excite une innovation? … On nous entoura, on nous suivit, on hua, on applaudit; la peur, la joie se succédaient sur nos traits suaves et mobiles, rien ne déconcertait notre imperturbable chef.”

65. Clément-Hémery's recollection of the starkness of the contrast is in part a product of the prejudices underlying her memoir, undoubtedly filtered as they were through the values and politics of her class, particularly in the hindsight of another revolution, that of 1830. The memoir was not published until 1832, but she cites dated letters and records from the 1790s that bolster the reliability of her account (Souvenirs, 45–46 n. 4, 47 n. 6, 53 n. 15). On the belated publication of her papers, see Kleinert, “Le Journal des Dames et des Modes,” 337. My analysis of the contextualization of Clément-Hémery's memoir has benefited from discussion with Philippe Bordes, to whom I also owe the references cited in nn. 61 and 63.

66. Clément-Hémery, Souvenirs, 31: “De jeunes filles, ne comprenant ni la révolution, ni l’insidieuse politique, s’occupant de leur éducation et des arts. …”

67. Étienne-Jean Delécluze, “Appendice: Les barbus d’à présent et les barbus de 1800,” in Louis David: Son école et son temps; Souvenirs, preface and notes by Jean-Pierre Mouilleseaux (1855; Paris: Macula, 1983), 419–38; on the article's original publication in 1832, 419; on the barbus’ appearance in 1800, 420–24.

68. Clément-Hémery, Souvenirs, 25, 26: “Effectivement, avant trois jours les passementiers ne pouvaient suffire à confectionner les gallons de laine qu’on leur demandait. Le décadi suivant, les Tuileries, les Champs-Elisées étaient remplis de femmes bariolées de ceintures, de bandelettes, de cothurnes grecs. Tornezy triompha: son passementier lui dût sa fortune.”

69. Ibid., 35–36.

70. See Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, Necklines: The Art of Jacques-Louis David after the Terror (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), chaps. 3, 4; Laura Auricchio, “Madame Récamier et les femmes de la haute société au temps du Directoire et du Consulat,” in Stéphane Paccoud, Juliette Récamier, muse et méce`ne (Paris: Hazan; Lyons; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, 2009), 97–104; E. Claire Cage, “The Sartorial Self: Neoclassical Fashion and Gender Identity in France, 1797–1804,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 42, no. 2 (Winter 2009): 193–215; and Amy Freund, “The Citoyenne Tallien: Women, Politics, and Portraiture during the French Revolution,” Art Bulletin 93 (September 2011): 325–44.

71. Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, “Nudity à la grecque in 1799,” Art Bulletin 80 (June 1998): 311–35.

72. Clare Browne, Lace from the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2004), 93, fig. 60, inv. no. 536.1875.

73. On the bobbin net machine, patented in 1808 and 1809, see S. Ferguson fils, Histoire du tulle et des dentelles mécaniques en Angleterre et en France (Paris: Lacroix, 1862), 31, 33–34.

74. A visual example is Wenceslaus Hollar's veiled figure of Summer from his engraved series The Four Seasons (London, versions of 1641 and 1644). For a textual example, see below.

75. Examples include Alexander Roslin's The Lady with the Veil: The Artist's Wife, 1768 (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm), and plates from the JDM: no. 62 (15 thermidor, an VIII [August 3, 1800]): pl. 234; no. 13 (5 frimaire, an VIII [November 26, 1800]): pl. 175; no. 2 (10 vendémiaire, an XII [October 3, 1803]): pl. 501.

76. JDM, no. 13 (5 frimaire, an VIII [November 26, 1800]): pl. 175. Translucent black shawls worn over the shoulders or head were frequently illustrated in the fashion press, for example, in Tableau Générale du Goût 1, no. 3 (brumaire an 7 [October 22, 1798]): pl. 5; and no. 6 (frimaire an 7 [November 31, 1798]): 164, pl. 11.

77. Gallery of Fashion 6 (November 1799): fig. 237.

78. Interest in the Roman story of Tuccia, the priestess of Vesta, took a turn toward narrative (away from allegorical portraiture) at the end of the eighteenth century, as indicated by paintings by Pierre Danloux, La supplice d’une vestale, 1790 (Musée du Louvre, Paris) and Jean-Baptiste Peytavin, La supplice d’une vestale, Salon of 1801 (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Chambéry), a sculpture by Lucas de Montigny, La supplice d’une vestale devenue me`re, Salon of 1804 (formerly Musée du Louvre), and an opera by Étienne de Jouy, La vestale, 1807. The ancient tale was recast in the contemporary world of fashion in a satire of Jouy's opera, La marchande de modes, parodie de La vestale, in the print series Le Bon Genre (Paris: [Pierre de La Mésangère], 1812), 7 (commentary), no. 34.

79. C** N**, “Sur les voiles, ou le Signalement des femmes du jour,” JDM, no. 53 (25 prairial, an 10 [June 14, 1802]): 417–18, at 418: “Mon voile est à la mode, Monsieur, et si la mode n’existoit pas, j’aurois eu besoin de l’inventer: vous sentez donc que je ne saurois le quitter; mais si je vous intéresse vraiment, je reviens ici tous les soirs, vous me reconnaîtrez sans peine. Mes jarretières sont vertes, je porte des bas à coin aurore et des souliers blancs.”

80. Pierre de La Mésangère, “Dictionnaire etymologique, descriptif, et anecdotique du luxe français, dans l’habillement des femmes,” dactylograph copy, Bibliothèque Municipale, Rouen, MM 4540, fol. 1016, citing Polman's book by the second half of its title and as published in 1623. La Mésangère owned a copy of Polman's book; Catalogue des livres de la bibliothe`que de feu M. de la Mésange`re, … dont la vente se fera le … 14 novembre 1831… . (Paris: de Bure, 1831), 38, lot no. 408.

81. P. L. Dufour [Pierre Dufour], Histoire de la prostitution chez tous les peuples du monde depuis l’antiquité la plus reculée jusqu’à nos jours, 6 vols. (Paris: Serè, 1851–53), vol. 6, 36.

82. Jean Polman, Le chancre, ou Couvre-sein feminin … Ensemble le voile, ou couvre-chef feminin (Douai: G. Patté, 1635), quoted in La Mésangère, “Dictionnaire etymologique,” fol. 1016: “cacher ce qu’elle a découvert à dessein.”

83. “Modes (Explication de la gravure no. 9),” JDM, no. 23 (20 thermidor, an VI [August 7, 1798]): 7–8: “Quoique les voiles soient d’une grandeur assez démesurée pour ressembler à un jupon, ils ne couvrent point la figure. C’est un objet de luxe plus que d’utilité réelle. Au reste, tout amateur leur saura gré de parer la beauté sans en déguiser les attraits.”

84. For example, Chazet, “Le voile,” JDM, no. 5 (15 prairial, an IX [May 4, 1801]): 405; and “Le pouvoir des voiles,” JDM, Frankfurt ed., no. 27 (July 1, 1802): 27–29.

85. In 1798 the Journal des Dames et des Modes reported that the cothurne was holding its own against other styles; “Modes Parisiennes,” no. 19 (November 4, 1798): 11: “La mode du cothurne se soutient assez.” Giorgio Riello, A Foot in the Past: Consumers, Producers, and Footwear in the Long Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 81, 190–91, 205. See also Peter McNeill and Giorgio Riello, “The Art and Science of Walking: Mobility, Gender and Footwear in the Long Eighteenth Century,” Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture 9, no. 2 (2005): 175–204.

86. “Modes Parisiennes,” JDM, Frankfurt ed., no. 28 (July 6, 1801): 50–51: “Il paroit que les souliers à talons sont sur le point de reprendre faveur. Un de nos journalistes qui s’est déclaré le partisan de cette chaussure, s’exprime ainsi: Je me demande pourquoi [le beau sexe] a renoncé aux chaussures à talons, si bien adaptées à tirer le meilleur parti d’une figure, même une mediocre, et pour protéger de l’humidité les personnes naturellement délicates. Ce genre de chaussure a un autre mérite, qui est celui de ne pas ressembler aux nôtres. Il donne aussi quelque chose de mol et de mal assuré; elle semble appeler un support que l’amour et l’amitié s’empressent de lui fournir.’” The “journalist” in question was probably Nicolas-Edme Rétif de la Bretonne, who had made high-heel shoes a fetish in his novels and complained at length about flat shoes in his reportage essays Les nuits de Paris, ou Le spectateur nocturne (London and Paris: Guillot, 1788–94). The reaction against high-heel shoes was widespread; Esthétique de la toilette, 59, called them a “genre de torture”; see also “Souliers sans talons,” JDM, no. 16 (20 frimaire, an XIII [December 11, 1804]): 134–35. The bygone custom of offering a hand to a high-heeled woman was remarked in “Aux femmes [extract from the Journal de Paris],” JDM, no. 41 (25 germinal, an IX [April 15, 1801]): 321–23, at 322.

87. Riello, A Foot in the Past, 205. On Juliette Récamier's cothurne shoes, see Juliette Récamier, muse et méce`ne, 161, cat. no. III.9 bis.

88. Among many examples, the following plates from the JDM illustrate women walking outdoors (no. 60 [5 frimaire, an VI (November 25, 1797)]: pl. 12; 1817, pl. 1664), driving carriages (no. 23 [20 thermidor, an VII (August 7, 1798)]: pl. 55; no. 41 [25 germinal, an IX (April 15, 1801)]: pl. 294), and riding horses (an VII [1798], pl. 79; no. 50 [10 prairial, an IX (May 30, 1801)]: pl. 303).

89. [Jean-Baptiste] S[ellèque?], “Tablettes d’une jolie femme” and “Suite des Tablettes d’une jolie femme,” JDM, nos. 2 and 4 (10 and 20 vendémiare, an IX [October 2 and 12, 1800]): 9–10 and 28.

90. The landscape is indeterminate in character. It could be parkland rather than a garden, and it lacks the distinctive features of the English garden, which was being introduced in France at the time; see Alexandra Gerstein, “Josephine at Malmaison,” France in Russia: Empress Josephine's Malmaison Collection (London: Courtauld Institute of Art, 2007), 16; and Au temps des merveilleuses, 84, cat. no. 84.

91. Pliny, Natural History: A Selection, trans. John F. Healy (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 2002), 332, no. xxxv.

92. As glossed by Cobham Brewer, A Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Giving the Derivation, Source, or Origin of Common Phrases, Allusions, and Words That Have a Tale to Tell (London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin, [1882?]), 497.

93. Pierre de La Mésangère, Dictionnaire des proverbes français, 3rd ed. (Paris: chez Treuttel et Wütz, Rey et Gravier, 1823), 146, s.v. “chaussure,” and 507–8, s.v. “maître Charles André.” An anonymous etching Ne sutor ultra crepidam was published about 1750–60, possibly in connection with the Voltaire-André incident (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris).

94. Michelle Sapori, Rose Bertin: Ministre des modes de Marie-Antoinette (Paris: Institut Français de la Mode, 2003); and Fiona Ffoulkes, “‘Quality Always Distinguishes Itself’: Louis Hippolyte LeRoy and the Luxury Clothing Industry in Early Nineteenth-Century Paris,” in Consumers and Luxury: Consumer Culture in Europe 1650–1850, ed. Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 183–205.

95. The oddity of the gloves was remarked by Harris and Nochlin, Women Artists, 217; and Pellegrin, Vêtements de la liberté, 188–89, ill.

96. This observation made by Friedrich von Schelling was famously recalled by Sigmund Freud in his essay “The Uncanny” (1919), in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. and ed. J. Strachey, 24 vols. (London: Hogarth, 1955), vol. 17, 225.

97. “Le gant,” JDM, no. 22 (20 nivôse, an IX [January 10, 1801]): 174: “Un bras arrondi indique certainement une gorge parfaite, une tournure délicieuse”; “l’odeur dont vous l’aviez arosé le matin, m’a indiqué que vous aviez un petit grain de coquetterie”; “vous avez un petit coeur bien sensible, bien tendre … c’est la couleur gris de lin de votre gant qui m’a appris tout cela”; “Jettez-moi celui qui vous reste; je le ramasserai bien volontiers” (“A rounded arm certainly indicates a perfect throat, a delicious form”; “the smell you sprayed it with in the morning, told me that you had a little touch of coquetry”; “You have a very sensitive, very soft little heart … it's the gray linen of your glove that taught me all this”; “Throw me the one you have left; I will pick it up willingly”). Another fictional piece on gloves’ revelation of moral character was “Une étude de moeurs par les gants (Historique),” La Silhouette, no. 2 (1830): 20–21.

98. See Peter Stallybrass and Ann Rosalind Jones, “Fetishizing the Glove in Renaissance Europe,” Critical Inquiry 28, no. 1 (Autumn 2001): 114–32; and Richard Steele to Lady Mary Steele, August 1707(?), in The Correspondence of Richard Steele, ed. Rae Blanchard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941), 195.

99. “Le gant,” 174: “Ce gant, qui sans doute est désolé de se trouver relégué dans un coin obscure de ma poche gauche; et de ne plus devoir s’unir au plus joli bras du monde.”

100. “Dentelle rabattue en demi-voile,” JDM, an XI [1803], pl. 493, fig. 19, signed (lower left) “V^t” [Carle Vernet]; and JDM, no. 45 (May 5, 1806): pl. 725.

101. In 1801, Sylvain Maréchal promoted legislation that would prevent women from “reading, writing, engraving, chanting, singing, painting, etc.”; quoted in Geneviève Fraisse, Reason's Muse: Sexual Difference and the Birth of Democracy, trans. J. M. Todd (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 2. His polemic provoked a debate and anticipated Napoléon's promulgation of the civil code in 1804. See James F. McMillian, “Revolutionary Aftermath: The Reconstruction of the Gender Order,” in France and Women 1789–1914 (New York: Routledge, 2000), 32–44; and Susan K. Grogan, French Socialism and Sexual Difference: Women and the New Society, 1803–44 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992).

102. Women exhibitors increased from twenty in 1791 to eighty in 1812 and seventy in 1814, and they received 10 to 12 percent of the medals awarded during this period; Eva Knels, “Les artistes aux Salons sous Napoléon: Stratégies artistiques dans une phase de mutation” (paper presented at the conference “Painting for the Salon, 1791–1881,” University of Exeter, September 4–6, 2013). Statistics compiled for Salons between 1827 and 1850 show that 17.6 percent of the entrants were women (1,598 of 9,072); Harriet Griffiths and Alister Mill, Database of Salon Artists, 1827–1850, www.salonartists.org (accessed April 2014). Séverine Sofio has also drawn attention to the discrepancy between contemporary discourses that delegitimize women artists and their exhibiting practices between 1791 and 1848; Sofio, “Des discours aux pratiques, comment approcher la réalité des rapports de sexe? Genre et professions artistiques au XIXe siècle,” Sociétés & Représentations, no. 24 (2007): 177–93.

103. Marie-Denise Villers to the minister of the interior [Jean-Antoine Chaptal], 15 ventôse, an X [March 6, 1802], Archives Nationales, Paris (hereafter AN), F²¹ 527, quoted in Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers,” 174: “La Richesse est rarement compagne des beaux-arts; une portion du prix d’encouragement me serait fort utile.”

104. The minister of the interior's policy statement regarding prix d’encouragements in the genre category, dated Paris, 30 pluviôse, an 7 [February 18, 1799], is quoted by Édouard Pommier in L’art de la liberté: Doctrines et débats de la Revolution française (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 280; and discussed in Susan L. Siegfried, “The Salon and Early Republican Experiments in State Patronage,” in Painting for the Salon, 1791–1881, ed. James Kearns and Alister Mills (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015), 27–43. Villers's genre painting, the first she exhibited, is discussed in Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers,” 173. In 1810 the artist sold a reduced replica of it to the Russian collector and former ambassador Prince Youssopov (State Museum Estate Archangeleskoye); see Susan L. Siegfried, “Expression d’une subjectivité féminine dans les journaux ‘pour femmes,’ 1800–1820,” in Plumes et pinceaux: Discours de femmes sur les arts en Europe (1750–1850), ed. Mechthild Fend, Melissa Hyde, and Anne Lafont (Paris: Les Presses du Réel, 2012), 256, fig. 3. The replica was probably produced as a model for Jean Godefroy, who exhibited his engraving of the subject as La fidélité, along with a pendant, La reconnaissance, at the Salon of 1808; Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers,” 174–75, figs. 13, 14.

105. As noted by Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers,” 179 n. 73. The minister scrutinized claims for payment of prix d’encouragements the year before Villers submitted her request; “Sommes à payer sur les fonds de l’an 9 [1800–1801] suivant les décisions du Ministre,” n.d., AN, F¹⁷ 527, dos. “an VIII–XIII.”

106. Letters from [Pierre] Peyron, peintre, to the minister of the interior [Lucien Bonaparte], dated Paris, 24 pluviôse, and 9 ventôse, an VIII [February 13 and 28, 1800], AN, F¹⁷ 1058, dos. 19, requesting back payment for two prix d’encouragements. He protested the minister's refusal to pay on the grounds of “la loi de l’arrievé” as “discouraging, humiliating, annihilating all emulation, and closing all the doors to hope [découragent, humilient, annéantissent toute émulation, et ferment toutes les portes à l’Esperance],” and prevailed.

107. “Ministre de l’Intérieur: Sommier général des dépenses de l’an 9, Encouragemens à la peinture,” AN, F4* 150, fols. 269, no. 738 (Chaudet); 270 bis, nos. 1662 bis and 1688 (Gérard); 270 bis verso, nos. 1790 (Charpentier) and 2201 (Benoist).

108. The location of the portrait is not known; Oppenheimer, “Nisa Villers,” 175. According to Gabet (Dictionnaire des artistes, 695), Maximilien Villers renovated two properties belonging to the duchesse d’Angoulême, presumably after her return to France in 1814.

109. Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life,” in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon Press, 1995), 1–41.

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Susan L. Siegfried

Susan L. Siegfried, Denise Riley Collegiate Professor of the History of Art and Women's Studies, is the author of Ingres: Painting Reimagined (2009), Staging Empire: Napoleon, Ingres, and David (with T. Porterfield, 2006), Fingering Ingres (with A. Rifkin, 2001), and The Art of Louis‑Léopold Boilly: Modern Life in Napoleonic France (1995) [Department of the History of Art, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48109, [email protected]].