Paris 1768-1826 was a French neoclassical, historical and genre painter. She was born in Paris, the daughter of a civil servant. Her training as an artist began in 1781 under Élisabeth Vigee Le Brun, and she entered Jacques-Louis David's atelier in 1786 along with her sister Marie-Élisabeth Laville-Leroux. The poet Charles-Albert Demoustier, who met her in 1784, was inspired by her in creating the character Émile in his work Lettres Émilie sur la mythologie (1801). In 1791 she exhibited for the first time in the Salon de Paris, displaying her mythology-inspired picture Psych faisant ses adieux sa famille. Another of her paintings of this period, L'Innocence entre la vertu et le vice, is similarly mythological and reveals her feminist interests in this picture, vice is represented by a man, although it was traditionally represented by a woman. In 1793, she married the lawyer Pierre-Vincent Benoist. Her work, reflecting the influence of Jacques-Louis David, tended increasingly toward history painting by 1795. In 1800, she exhibited Portrait d'une negresse in the Salon. Six years previously, slavery had been abolished, and this image became a symbol for women's emancipation and black people's rights. This picture was acquired by Louis XVIII for France in 1818. An important commission, for a full-length portrait of Napol on Bonaparte Premier Consul Français in this period was awarded to her in 1803. This portrait was to be sent to the city of Ghent, newly ceded to France by the Treaty of Luneville in 1801. Other honors came to her; she was awarded a Gold Medal in the Salon of 1804, and received a governmental allowance. During this time she opened an atelier for the artistic training of women. Her career was harmed by political developments, however, when her husband, the convinced royalist count Benoist, was nominated in the Conseil d'État during the post-1814 monarchy come-back called the Bourbon Restoration.   Related Paintings of Marie-Guillemine Benoist :. | Portrait of a Negress (mk05) | Portrait of a black woman | Portrait of Elisa Bonaparte, Grand Duchess of Tuscany. | Portrait of a Black woman | Linnocenza tra il vizio e la virtu |
Related Artists:
HALS, Dirck
Dutch painter (b. 1591, Haarlem, d. 1656, Haarlem). Brother of Frans Hals. From 1618 to 1624 and again in 1640 he was an amateur of the Haarlem chamber of rhetoric known as De Wijngaertrancken, to which Frans also belonged. He was enrolled in the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem from 1627 to his death. As Blade has established on stylistic grounds, Dirck collaborated with the architectural painter Dirck van Delen from that year until 1634, with Hals painting the figures. On 4 April 1634 a lottery of paintings was announced, organized by Dirck Hals (who sent some of his own pictures) and Cornelis van Kittensteijn in the inn De Basterdpijp in Haarlem. The following year, on 20 June 1635, the notary van Leeuwen at Leiden authorized Dirck Hals to collect moneys for Pieter Jansz. van den Bosch of Leiden in connection with the proceeds of paintings sold at Haarlem. On 2 March 1643 Dirck Hals signed as a witness in the presence of the notary Willem van Vredenburch at Leiden.
John J Enneking
1841-1916
Giovanni Bellini
Italian High Renaissance Painter, ca.1430-1516 (b ?1431-6; d Venice, 29 Nov 1516). Painter and draughtsman, son of (1) Jacopo Bellini. Although the professional needs of his family background may have encouraged him to specialize at an early date in devotional painting, by the 1480s he had become a leading master in all types of painting practised in 15th-century Venice. Later, towards the end of his long life, he added the new genres of mythological painting and secular allegory to his repertory of subject-matter. His increasing dominance of Venetian art led to an enormous expansion of his workshop after c. 1490; and this provided the training-ground not only for his numerous shop-hands and imitators (generically known as Belliniani) but probably also for a number of major Venetian painters of the next generation. Throughout his career, Giovanni showed an extraordinary capacity for absorbing a wide range of artistic influences, both from within Venetian tradition and from outside. He also oversaw a technical revolution in the art of painting, involving the gradual abandonment of the traditional Italian use of egg tempera in favour of the technique of oil painting pioneered in the Netherlands. It was thanks to Giovanni Bellini that the Venetian school of painting was transformed during the later 15th century from one mainly of local significance to one with an international reputation. He thus set the stage for the triumphs of Venetian painting in the 16th century and for the central contribution that Venice was to make to the history of European art.