Anne Vallayer-Coster

Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818) was an eighteenth-century French painter. Known as a prodigy artist at a young age, she achieved fame and recognition very early in her career, being admitted to the Royal Academy in 1770, at the age of twenty-six [McKiven 2002] .

Despite the negative reputation that still-life painting had at this time, Vallayer-Coster’s highly developed skills, especially in the depiction of flowers, soon generated a great deal of attention from collectors and other artists [McKiven 2002] . Her “precocious talent and the rave reviews” earned her the attention of the court, where Marie-Antoinette took a particular interest in Vallayer-Coster's paintings [McKiven 2002] .

Regardless of her closeness to the ancient régime and France's hated monarch she survived the bloodshed of the French Revolution [Haber 2003] . However, the fall of the French monarchy, which were her primary patrons, caused her banishment into the shadows.

Anne Vallayer-Coster was a woman in a man’s world. It is unknown what she thought of contemporaries who admitted her to the confraternity, and made her an honorary ‘man’. Her life was determinedly private, dignified and hard-working. Occasionally she attempted other genres, but for the usual reasons her success at figure painting was limited [Greer 2001, p. 244] .

Biography

Earlier Years

Born in 1744 on the banks of the Bièvre along the Seine River in France, Vallayer-Coster was one of four daughters born to a goldsmith of the royal family at Gobelines [Greer 2001,p. 244] . In 1754, Anne’s father moved their family to Paris. Anne Vallayer-Coster seems not to have entered the studio of a professional painter, but instead received her training from a variety of sources, including her father, the botanical specialist Madeleine Basseport, and the celebrated marine painter Joseph Vernet [Cohen 2003,p. 572] .

By the age of twenty-six, Vallayer-Coster was still without a name or a sponsor; this proved to be a worrisome issue for her [Greer 2001,p. 244] . Reluctantly, she submitted two of her still-lifes (one of "The Attributes of Painting", and "The Attributes of Music") to the "Académie Royale de la Peinture et de la Sculpture", as reception pieces in 1770 [Greer 2001,p. 247] . She was unanimously elected into the Royal Académie once the honorable Academicians saw her paintings, making her one of only four women accepted into the Académie before the French Revolution [McKiven, 2002] . This moment of success however, was overshadowed by the death of her father. Immediately her mother took over the family business, quite commonly the case during this time, and Anne continued to work to help support her family [Greer 2001,p. 247] .

Vallayer-Coster exhibited her first still-lifes with flowers in 1775 and four years later she began to enjoy the patronage of Marie Antoinette [Doy 2005, p. 33] . With her Court connections and pressure from Marie Antoinette, she received space in Louvre in 1781 which was unusual for women artists [Doy 2005, p. 33] . Shortly thereafter, in the presence of Marie Antoinette at the courts of Versailles, she married Jean-Pierre Silvestre Coster, a wealthy lawyer, "parlementaire", and respected member of a powerful family from Lorraine" [Doy 2005, p. 33] [Greer 2001, p. 247] . With these titles came the very highest ranks of the bourgeoisies, the noblesse de robe. With such a prestigious title came a state office which, traditionally during this time was bought from father to son, making them almost indistinguishable from the old nobility. [Doy 2005, p. 33]

Career

She received early recognition of her career after being elected as an associate and a full member of the Royal Académie in 1770. Her strategies in initiating and sustaining her professional career were brilliant. She was as exceptional in achieving membership in the Academy and succeeding in a prominent, professional career late in the eighteenth century, when resistance to women in the public sphere was deepening and the Académie was as resistant as ever to welcoming women into its ranks [Michel 1960, p. i] . A common image of Vallayer-Coster was not only as a virtuous artist but as a skillful diplomat and negotiator as well, sharply aware both of her potential patrons' interests and of her own, unusual position as prominent woman artist [Michel 1960, p. i] .

The two paintings the she submitted for review to the Académie in 1770, "The Attributes of Music" and "The Attributes of Painting", now in the holdings of the Louvre. The former is among the early career highlights presented in the Frick exhibition [Cohen 2003, p. 572] .

Later Years

With the Reign of Terror in 1793, the ancient regime, that up to this point had supported Vallayer-Coster, disappeared. ["Woman painter rescued from obscurity.” 2003] Despite her noble status and her connection to the throne, Vallayer-Coster was able to deviate away from the pandemonium of the French Revolution in 1789 [Greer 2001, p. 247] . Even with the arrival of Napoléon when the empress Josephine acquired two works from her in 1804, her reputation suffered. [McKiven 2002] After this period of national upheaval, little is known of Vallayer-Coster’s career. The only exception that came from this was that she replaced her previous work of still-lifes for that of flower portraits; however, these proved to be unavailing. ["Woman painter rescued from obscurity.” 2003]

In 1817 she made a come back with her old subject matter by way of the exhibition of her "Still Life with Losbster" in the Paris Salon ["Woman painter rescued from obscurity.” 2003] . This piece belonged to Louis XVIII after he was restored to the French throne in 1814. There is some evidence to believe that at Vallayer-Coster gave it to “the king as an expression of her joy as a loyal Bourbon supporter through the turbulent years of the Revolution and Napoleonic imperialism. [("Woman painter rescued from obscurity.” 2003]

Commenting on the Salon exhibit of 1771, the encyclopedist Denis Diderot noted that "if all new members of the Royal Academy made a showing like Mademoiselle Vallayer's, and sustained the same high level of quality, the Salon would look very different!" [McKiven 2002]

She died in 1818 at the age of seventy-four having painted more than 120 still-lifes always with a distinctive colouristic brilliance. [McKiven 2002]

Artwork

tyle

The bulk of Vallayer-Coster’s work was devoted to the language of still-life as it had been developed in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries [Michel 1960, p. i] . During these centuries, the genre of still-life was placed lowest on the hierarchical ladder. For this reason, it was expatriated to women. Vallayer-Coster would not allow this to reduce the pride and thoroughness that she put into her work [Berman 2003] .

She had a way about her paintings that resulted in their attractiveness. It was the “bold, decorative lines of her compositions, the richness of her colors and simulated textures, and the feats of illusionism she achieved in depicting wide variety of objects, both natural and artificial” [Michel 1960, p. i] which drew in the attention of the Royal Académie and the numerous collectors who purchased her paintings. This interaction between art and nature was quite common in Dutch, Flemish and French still-lifes [Michel 1960, p. i] . Her work reveals the clear influence of Jean Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, as well as 17th-century Dutch masters, whose work has been far more highly valued, but what made Vallayer-Coster’s style stand out against the other still-life painters was her unique way of coalescing representational illusionism with decorative compositional structures [Michel 1960, p. i] [Berman 2003] .

The end of the eighteenth-century and the fall of the French monarchy closed the doors on Vallayer-Coster’s still-life ‘era’ and opened them to her new style of florals [Michel 1960, p. ii] . It has been argued that this was the highlight of her career and what she is best known for. However, it has also been argued that the flower paintings were futile to her career. Nevertheless, this collection contained floral studies in oil, watercolor and gouache [Michel 1960, p. ii] .

Technique

Vallayer-Coster had a photographic quality about her paintings. She used a variation of brush strokes to create the illusion that different styles of painting were being used. This was achieved by simulation material substance in paint and through finely blended precision [Michel 1960, p. ii] .

Context of Art

For Vallayer-Coster, even the inanimate objects had a character of their own. Her objection was to provide an aspect of grandeur to everything that she painted; in doing so, she created an additional level of stability and engorgement. The result of her work makes perfect sense within the Enlightenment [Haber 2003] . The images portrayed in her paintings harmonized with the elite bankers and aristocrats, whom held confidence in what they owned. These same men with their ownership of the objects and the paintings believed that they also owned a nation as well. Their high societal status and material possession made them believe that they could “knock still-life off its pedestal” [Haber 2003] . To Michel Foucault, the Enlightenment's encompassing stare and classification of appearances stood for repressive control [Haber 2003] .

Exhibit

The exhibition titled “Anne Vallayer-Coster: Painter to the Court of Marie Antoinette," was the first exhibit on Anne Vallayer-Coster to provide a proper, all-encompassing representation of her paintings. It has been hung in the temporary display gallery at the Frick Collection. Organized by the Dallas Museum of Art, and curated by Eik Kahng, this exhibition had its debut at the National Gallery of Art, where it opens on June 30 and closes on September 22, 2002 [McKiven 2002] ["Woman painter rescued from obscurity.” 2003] .

Containing more than thirty-five of Vallayer-Coster’s paintings, which were provided by both museums and private collectors of France and the United States ["Woman painter rescued from obscurity.” 2003] , this exhibit was supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities [McKiven 2002] .

One of her most accomplished works, and one of the highlights of this exhibition, is Still Life with Seashells and Coral (1769). Later in life, in the Still Life with Lobster (1817), which was to be her last painting, she managed what an expert called "a summation of her career," [McKiven 2002] depicting most of her previous subjects together in a work she donated to the restored King Louis XVIII.

To gain an understanding of the magnitude of Vallayer-Coster's achievements, it should be noted that the exhibition includes additional works by such renowned artists as Chardin, her elder and the celebrated master of still-life painting, and her contemporary Henri-Horace Roland Delaporte, among others [McKiven 2002] .

Works of Art

Notes

References

*Berman, Greta. “Focus on Art”. The Julliard Journal Online 18:6 (March 2003) http://www.juilliard.edu/update/journal/focusOnArt_0303.html

*Cohen, Sarah R. “Anne Vallayer-Coster: Painter to the Court of Marie-Antoinette.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 36:4 (2003): 571-576

*Doy, Gen. Seeing and Consciousness: Women, Class and Representation. Gordonsville: Berg Publishers, 2005 pp 33

*Greer Germaine. The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Works. London: Tauris Parke Paperbacks, 2001. Pp 244-247

*Haber, John. “Dead Flowers”. New York Art Crit (2003). http://www.haberarts.com/coster.htm

*McKinven, Mary Jane. June 2002. “Stunning Still Lifes by Anne Vallayer-Coster, Foremost 18th-Century Painter in Court of Marie-Antoinette”. National Gallery of Art (June 2002)

*Michel, Marianne Roland. “Tapestries on Designs by Anne Vallayer-Coster.” The Burlington Magazine 102: 692 (November 1960): i-ii

*"Woman painter rescued from obscurity.” United Press International (February 2003). http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=2

ee also

*Women Artists