Self-promotion in Adelaide Labille-Guiard's 1785 Self-Portrait with Two Students.

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Self-promotion in Adelaide Labille-Guiard's 1785 Self-Portrait with Two Students.

When Adelaide Labille-Guiard (1749-1803) submitted her monumental Self-Portrait with Two Students to the 1785 Salon exhibition sponsored by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, she presented herself to a large and diverse Parisian audience as a protean figure, appearing not only as an ambitious portraitist but also in the guise of a fashionable sitter (Fig. 1). (1) Measuring more than six feet tall, the striking image depicts Labille-Guiard's elaborately attired full-length figure seated in a carefully articulated interior with two younger women standing behind her. Clearly describing the space as the studio of a professional artist, a large canvas rests on an unadorned wooden easel and dominates the left side of the composition. A utilitarian paint box on the left and a chalk holder and dusty rag on the right further indicate the material labor of painting. Yet incongruous signs of opulence abound in features such as the velvet-upholstered taboret, in the current style Louis XVI, and, most dramatically, Labille-Guiard's attire. Here, Labille-Guiard complicates her image as a hardworking artist by dressing as an elegant woman of means, whose revealing neckline, satin gown, and trimmings of feather and lace borrow directly from the latest fashion plates.

As we will see, this grandly multifaceted Self-Portrait necessitated considerable invention. Responding, in part, to the dearth of precedents for female self-portraiture in the history of French painting, Labille-Guiard drew on an uncommonly wide range of sources and genres in an effort to picture herself to best advantage. (2) Thus, even as it echoes old master traditions, the Self-Portrait taints these conventions with tinges of alluring sexuality and brash commerce. Moreover, its strategically enticing composition evokes the effect of a luxury boutique, as it calls out for both the admiration of spectators and the financial support of a paying clientele.

More specifically, the Self-Portrait played an important role in Labille-Guiard's lifelong attempt to make the most of her fraught position as a professional woman artist. In the 1780s, an extraordinary number of women were establishing reputations among the most accomplished, and most talked-about, contributors to Parisian art exhibitions, especially in the realm of portraiture. However, the increasing significance of public notice in advancing artists' careers placed these women in a particularly delicate position: on the one hand, an aspiring portraitist had to catch the attention of critics and audiences in order to attract potential sitters, but, on the other hand, reigning standards of bourgeois virtue prohibited women from soliciting such interest. With the Self-Portrait, Labille-Guiard opted not to avoid but rather to highlight the contradictions that riddled both her ambitions and her reception. In so doing, she capitalized on the era's celebration of calculated transgression and ultimately won the approbation of Salon-goers, critics, and clients alike.

Although the painting is now widely reproduced, having recently been featured on book covers and included in surveys of women artists as well as standard art history textbooks, its complex portrayal of Labille-Guiard and her students has only begun to be addressed. (3) Indeed, despite her many notable contributions to the art and politics of the ancien regime and the French Revolution, Labille-Guiard has received remarkably little scholarly attention. (4) While several authors have contributed to the literature by situating Labille-Guiard in the context of other women artists, examining the gendered rhetoric of her critical reception or individual paintings, none has focused primarily on the Self-Portrait. (5)

My study of this work builds on the resurgent interest in women as artists and patrons in eighteenth-century France and also suggests new directions for research in the field. (6) Notably, institutions and influences that are often overlooked in histories of eighteenth-century French art emerge as central to the careers of women artists. These include the commercial world of shops and fashion and the alternative exhibition spaces that welcomed female artists at a time when the academy limited women's membership. Just such a synthetic approach may allow us to recover the lost stories of women artists while also mapping some of the competing social and aesthetic interests that shaped the cultural geography of eighteenth...

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