(1767 Paris 1832)
Portrait of a Woman
Oil on panel
39,2 x 31 cm
Framed : 51,5 x 42,5 cm
Bears a number 93, upper left
Bears a label on the reverse :
This picture belongs to Anne C. Bentinck, given by Lise van der …
Late 18th century frame
Provenance : Anne Cavendish Bentinck (1816 – 1888, Cannes) ; Private collection, Monaco
Exhibition : Salon of 1800, n°93
“Citizen Chaudet infinitely diminishes the regret caused by the absence of Citizen Le Brun; she is preparing to be a fearsome rival.” (“Beaux-arts. Sur l’exposition des Tableaux et sculptures de l’an VI. Suite,” Le Mercure français, 17 October 1798, p. 91-100, p. 92)
Beginning with the Salon of 1799, Jeanne-Élisabeth Gabiou (1767-1832), who exhibited under the name of her husband, Chaudet, appeared on the Paris art scene, becoming one of the artists most in the public eye. This was what the Dane Tønnes Bruun-Neergaard underlined in his celebrated painting, On the Situation of the Fine Arts in France in 1801: “Madame Chaudet one of those women who brings together the most talents for painting.” According to him, “Many women, because it’s the ‘done’ thing, study painting or take some courses in natural history, but among them there are only six or seven who can be distinguished from the rest.” (pp. 17-18 and 65). She was the first cousin of Marie-Victoire Lemoine and Marie-Denise Villers, and grew up with them. In 1793, she married her teacher, the sculptor Antoine-Denis Chaudet, and he had a solid network of contacts that permitted him to skillfully orchestrate her first participations in the Salon.
In 1800, her Little Girl Trying to Teach a Dog to Read (Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet, A Little Girl Trying to Teach a Dog to Read, Salon of 1799, Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm, Paris, private collection) was unanimously accepted, not only because of her subject and discreet references to Greuze, Fragonard and Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun, but also for her treatment of light—the fruit of numerous studies and copies she made of 17th century Scandinavian masters. For the author of Petites vérités, “It is when you can paint like her that a woman can be allowed to exhibit her works in public; it is not possible to put more ingenuity, freshness, and color…” (Petites vérités au grand jour, sur les acteurs, les actrices, les peintres, les journalistes, l’institut, le portique républicain, Bonaparte, etc., etc., par une société d’envieux, d’intrigans et de cabaleurs, 1799). Another critic was even more full of praise: “Her brushwork here matches her thought. What agreeable smoothness! … We must be grateful to this amiable artist for the new steps she has taken towards perfection…” (Ch. P., “Fin du compte-rendu de l’exposition publique des ouvrages composés par les artistes vivans ,” La Décade philosophique…, 1800).
At the next Salon, which opened its doors on 2 September 1800, Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet proposed three genre scenes—all now lost—to the public, one of which was the pendant to the 1799 painting acquired by Lucien Bonaparte, known only from its engraving (Jean Godefroy after Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet, Little Girl Playing with a Cat (Salon of 1800), Paris, BNF), as well as “Two portraits, under the same number.” The reappearance of this Portrait of a Woman, presented by the Galerie Didier Aaron, is a beautiful surprise, one shedding new light on these crucial years in the artist’s work.
The first known portrait by the artist which we identified as being her work at the time of an exhibition in Grasse (exhib. cat. Grasse, 2023, p. 134, cat. 12), dates from 1792 and is today her earliest documented work. (A homage to Vigée-Le Brun, it had been published under her name in 1925). At the Salon of 1796, four years after this first work, Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet playfully called on the memory of the public by exhibiting Cupid having just Stolen a Rose (Paris, private collection), a veritable tribute to the Vigée-Le Brun painting Prince Henryk Lubomirski as Cupid of War (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie) at the Salon of 1789. We are familiar with the ties of friendship between Vigée-Le Brun and François-Guillaume Ménageot, an intimate of Jeanne-Élisabeth’s cousins, and also those linking Vigée-Le Brun and the sculptor Chaudet, was invited to the famous “Greek Supper” a few weeks after his return from the Académie de France in Rome in 1788, but the artistic relations between the two women are intriguing.
At the Salon of 1800, thanks to this Portrait of a Woman, Jeanne-Élisabeth—her reputation henceforth established—showed the public an emancipation from her predecessor, as far as palette and brushwork were concerned, while nevertheless adopting one of her favorite accessories: Few art lovers had forgotten the turban which Vigée-Le Brun had wrapped around her head in her Portrait of the Artist with her Daughter at the Salon of 1786 (Paris, Musée du Louvre) and in which she had also decked Lady Hamilton as a Sibyl (private collection), one of her most spectacular portraits. The pose—as seductive as one could wish for—allows the delicacy of the face of the model, the beautiful sculpting of the lips, the sweetness of her features and the delicacy of her expression to be underlined. Jeanne-Élisabeth here continues to use the wide, delightful brushwork of the 18th century, particularly insisting on the beautiful pink of the cheeks, even while using the tones—especially the yellows and reds accented with orange—that were one of her signatures as of 1802 (Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet, Portrait of Two Young Children, Salon of 1802, Oil on canvas, 92 x 109 cm, Finland, private collection) and 1804.
Jeanne-Élisabeth plays with the blond reflections in the hair and the facture of the veil—veritable tour de force—because of the way she treats transparency, making it a skillful procedure to arouse the viewer’s curiosity about an attribute that inspires both desire and curiosity about the wearer.
It was tempting to see the model as Madame Augustin, who also posed for Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet (Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet, Portrait of Mme Augustin, Salon de 1806, Oil on canvas, 55.5 x 46 cm, Present location unknown) whose portrait, whereabouts unknown today, was exhibited at the Salon of 1806. In reality, when comparing the visuals, appreciable differences appear in the drawing of the faces of the two women, in particular in the shaping of the nose, the arch of the eyebrows and the shape of the lower lip. In addition, the restauration of the painting by Isabelle Leegenhoek on behalf of the Galerie Aaron revealed the presence of a number at the upper left, “93,” which corresponds to a pair of portraits on the register of entries for the Salon of 1800. Conversely, on the Portrait of Madame Augustin, which came from the collections of her heirs, the old label indicates “102,” the number of the portrait in the exhibition catalogue from 1806.
As of the Salon of 1800 and her Portrait of a Woman, Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet put in place the canon for portraits of women wearing veils, of which the Portrait of Madame Augustin is a beautiful example. At present, we have not seen the Portrait of a Woman Clutching her Veil , exhibited at the Salon of 1804 with the number “104.”
The identity of the model for this Portrait of a Woman remains an enigma. The notes of one of the critics for the Salon of 1800 lead us to doubt:
“ Nos. 90 to 93 by Madame Chaudet. Works by this interesting artist should be ranked first among those of the best modern masters. We remark with interest her portrait and that of a woman sewing, where her simple style and the purity of her drawing merit the greatest praise. Her manner of painting is that of the old masters and leaves in the souls of connoisseurs a feeling of the beauty that one always feels at the sight of beautiful works.” (“Notice raisonnée des tableaux exposés cette année au Salon du museum,” Journal d’indications, Coll. Deloynes, XXIII, 639, p. 235-236)
However, nothing allows us to confirm that the painting presented by the Galerie Aaron the self-portrait of the artist, even if a whole range of details might suggest it. Marie-Victoire Lemoine and Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet are the only members of the family for whom we know of no confirmed portrait. The self-portrait that the latter exhibited at the Salon de la Correspondance in 1787 has not been seen for over a century. None of her first cousins—Marie-Victoire, Marie-Élisabeth, Marie-Geneviève or Marie-Denise—had blue eyes, but it is quite possible that that she did, since one of the daughters as well as the son of her brother and her first cousin, Henri Gabiou, definitely had very blue eyes. Finally, the yellow veil in all likelihood belonged to her, as we see it appear again in her Young Woman Crying over her Dead Dove, exhibited at the Salon of 1808 (Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet, Young Woman Crying over her Dead Dove, Salon of 1808, Oil on canvas, 131 x 98 cm, Arras, Musée des Beaux-arts), and it was kept by the artist throughout her life.
Thus, we will have to wait for the painting of 1787 to reappear to know whether this Portrait of a Woman was that of the artist. History of art requires a certain patience!
Carole Blumenfeld February 2024