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Adélaïde Labille-Guiard

A painting of a light-skinned adult woman sitting in a plush, luxurious chair at an easel. She holds a painting palette and paintbrushes, and wears an extravagant, pale blue and white gown and a large, wide-brimmed hat adorned with fluffy white feathers and matching blue ribbon.

Adelaide Labille-Guiard, Self-portrait with Two Pupils, Mlle. Marie Gabrielle Capet and Carreaux de Rosemond, 1785; © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

1749 to 1803

Despite the inevitable comparisons with Labille-Guiard’s younger, more socially prominent fellow painter Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun, this talented and ambitious artist worked for numerous royal and aristocratic patrons.

In 1783, she won admission to the Academy and was ultimately awarded the title Peintre des Mesdames (painter to the king’s aunts), a government pension, and an apartment at the Louvre.

Labille-Guiard studied with several accomplished instructors, learning how to make miniature portraits and work with pastels. She became an influential teacher herself, known for devotion to her female pupils, many of whom went on to establish their own painting careers.

A lifelong champion of women’s rights, Labille-Guiard worked toward reforming the Academy’s policies toward women. Unlike Vigée-LeBrun, she supported the French Revolution and remained in Paris during this tumultuous era, winning new patrons and creating portraits of several deputies of the National Assembly. Although she also produced some history paintings, it was with her carefully crafted portraits that Labille-Guiard made her mark.

Artist Details

  • Name

    Adélaïde Labille-Guiard
  • Birth

    Paris, 1749
  • Death

    Paris, 1803
  • Phonetic Spelling

    ah-day-lah-eed lah-bee-ghee-ahr

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