Self-Portrait with Two Pupils

Neoclassicism

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard

Self-Portrait with Two Pupils

1785

Oil on canvas, 83 × 59 1/2 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A painter at her easel with two pupils behind her: a picture read as a case for training women as artists.

Look at

  • The silver-blue silk dress is the largest and brightest shape, painted with crisp highlights.
  • The two pupils lean together at right, making a vertical group against the dark wall.
  • The easel cuts in at left, seen from behind, so we watch the painter at work, not the painting.
  • Well received at the Salon of 1785; when she joined the Royal Academy in 1783, women members were capped at four.
  • The pupils are Marie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carraux de Rosemond. Gift of Julia A. Berwind, 1953.

Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access · CC0 (Met Open Access)

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