18th C. Expose of Female Artists

Melissa Hyde’s challenge to “cherchez la femme” defines 18^th Century views on femininity within the context of a hostile masculine world; even the colloquial implication of the phrase indicates the accusatory and suspicious dismissal of female influence that confined women artists like Vallayer-Coster, Labille-Guiard, and Vigée-Le Brun.  Hyde’s thesis makes the case that the problem with the modern lack of visibility of 18^th Century female artists does not rest in any shortage of women painters, but rather the limitations put in place by institutions like the Académie and the Salon that obstructed any significant advancement in the profession.  The combination of this intrinsic “culpability” of the female and the hindrances to professional acceptance are weighed on opposite sides of Elizabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun’s Madame Rousseau et sa fille, from the side of the painter and of the sitter.  Paradoxically, Vigée-Le Brun does the work of capturing the confines of a woman’s space while still being a successful, albeit scandalous, artist.

Gill Perry’s introduction to gender and art history charges the reader with not only assessing the constructs of femininity that can be gleaned from visual representations of women, but also contemporary definitions of masculinity.  An unintentional glimpse into this duality can be gained through the Louvre’s current mistranslation of Vigée-Le Brun’s work, which lists Madame Rousseau et Sa Fille as “Madame Rousseau and His Daughter.”  The emphasis on an external masculine possession is fitting, particularly if Perry’s aspect of the “role of gender in the physical or social environment” is considered.  Madame Rousseau inhabits the role of mother and, consequentially, dutiful wife.  Her daughter appears as more of a prop to support Madame Rousseau’s apparent fecundity; the little girl is

held up by the mother but is still forced toward the back of the painting, is mostly covered by shadow, and does not look toward the viewer.  Despite motherhood being more or less Madame Rousseau’s ‘profession,’ it is still a private space.  Vigée-Le Brun’s own self-portraits even supersede her actual career in place of motherhood; similar to Madame Rousseau et Sa Fille, her role as a mother is what defines her.

Presumably, Madame Rousseau et Sa Fille would have been commissioned by Madame Rousseau’s husband, the architect of the Palais de le Légion d’Honneur, Pierre Rousseau.  This normative representation of femininity twists the typical definition of the male “gaze” into a purely dominating form, sans overt sexuality.  Monsieur Rousseau’s commission would have given him a work that placed his wife in a respectable context and reminded the viewer of her position within the confines of the Rousseau family.  This subtle confining of the woman is reflective of the diverting of male concern over the power of female sexuality with references to maternity that Geraldine A. Johnson writes about in her essay on Marie de’ Medici.  Like Marie de’ Medici’s allusions to fertility and the Virgin Mary, Madame Rousseau et Sa Fille extirpates any “culpability” of the female sex with the placement of the daughter in what is essentially a portrait of Madame Rousseau.

Vigée-Le Brun’s position as the painter of this work, however, does not necessarily lend her to accusations of being complacent to this misogyny.  Her status as the chosen portraitist of Marie Antoinette would have gained her no ground with the revolutionaries or the conservatives who wished to ground women within the home.  Vigée-Le Brun may have been painting a portrait of a woman within the private sphere, but ultimately the fact remains that a female was the one being commissioned.