Constance Marie Charpentier

Constance Marie Charpentier
Self portrait
Born
Constance-Marie Blondelu[1]

(1767-04-04)4 April 1767
Paris, France
Died3 August 1849(1849-08-03) (aged 82)
Paris, France
NationalityFrench
Known forPainting

Constance Marie Charpentier (born 4 April 1767 Paris, – 3 August 1849 Paris)[1] was a French painter. She specialized in genre scenes and portraits, mainly of children and women. She was also known as Constance Marie Blondelu.

Life and career[edit]

Records of Charpentier's training are unclear, but she might have studied with numerous artists. She is typically believed to have studied with the acclaimed French painter Jacques-Louis David, but may also have been a pupil of François Gérard, Pierre Bouillon, Louis Lafitte and either Johann Georg Wille or his son, Pierre-Alexandre Wille.[2]

Constance Marie Charpentier, Melancholy, 1801, oil on canvas, 130 x 165 cm. Musée de Picardie, Amiens, France

In 1788 she received a 'Prix d'Encouragement.' From 1795 to 1819 she exhibited approximately thirty paintings at various Salons, winning a gold medal in 1814 at the Paris Salon and a silver medal in 1821 at the Salon at Douai.[2][3]

It is believed that some of Charpentier's works were incorrectly attributed to her teacher, David.[4] The well-known painting Young Woman Drawing (1801) was incorrectly attributed first to David, then to Charpentier, and is now believed to be the work of Marie-Denise Villers.[5] Based on surviving, positively identified works by Charpentier, she is considered one of the finest portrait painters of her era.[3]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Dacre-Wright, Gildas. "Constance Charpentier: Painter (1767 - 1849)". Constance Charpentier. Archived from the original on 24 February 2015. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
  2. ^ a b "Royalists to Romantics: Spotlight on Constance Marie Charpentier". Broad Strokes. National Museum of Women in the Arts. 30 May 2012. Retrieved January 25, 2013.
  3. ^ a b Oxford University Press, ed. (2002). Art Encyclopedia The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Art Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art.
  4. ^ Strieter, Terry W. (1999). Nineteenth-century European Art: A Topical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing. p. 41.
  5. ^ "Charlotte du Val d'Ognes (died 1868)". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved April 8, 2013.