Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818) Portrait... - Lot 47 - Daguerre

Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818) Portrait of a young boy Canvas. Signed and dated on the right M.lle Vallayer/1779(?). Ancient restorations. 31 x 26 cm On the back two labels ("Donated by the Count of Holstein in 1895"). Provenance : Mme de Tourzel, governess of the Children of France, who remained in this lineage until the early 2000s. Bibliography: Eik Kahng, Marianne Roland Michel, Anne Vallayer-Coster, Painter to the Court of Marie-Antoinette (Dallas Museum of Art exhibition catalogue), 2002, cat. 58 reproduced p. 206. The framing of our little boy is reminiscent of Greuze's toddlers who were very successful at the time, and it should be noted that the open collar motif is also found in Fragonard (Enfant en Pierrot, 1780, London, Wallace collection) and Vigée-Lebrun (Marie-Thérèse Charlotte de France, known as Madame Royale, and her brother the dolphin, Louis Joseph Xavier François, 1784, Versailles, Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon). Anne Vallayer was admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture on 28 July 1770 as a still-life painter, a genre in which she would excel throughout her life. She exhibited at the next Salon where the critics, including Diderot, were ecstatic. Very quickly, she produces more occasional figures (Une jeune violoniste, 1773, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum; Une vestale, private collection) and portraits. On the date of our portrait, she enters Marie-Antoinette's intimate circle and obtains a lodging at the Louvre. She married Jean-Pierre Sylvestre Coster, lawyer at the Parliament and Receiver General, in 1781. She is one of the few women painters who managed to make a name for herself during the reign of Louis XVI, along with Adélaïde Labille- Guiard and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, of whom in many respects she appears to be the forerunner, heralding the emergence of numerous female artists during the Revolution and the Empire (