Le pinceau à la main: The Intertwined Lives and Careers of Madeleine Françoise Basseporte and Marie-Thérèse Reboul Vien

Abstract

Madeleine Françoise Basseporte and Marie-Thérèse Reboul Vien, two artists whose lives intertwined over the course of the eighteenth century in Paris, experienced careers which present fascinating case studies for Enlightenment-era artistic lineage and training, professional obstacles for women, and the placement of women artists in the context of the rococo. Basseporte was a portraitist and botanical illustrator who became the French king’s official plant painter at the Jardin du Roi, while Reboul Vien was a painter of natural history subjects and a member of the prestigious Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. This thesis investigates existing source material and scholarship on these two artists, from their own lifetimes to the present day, and raises new questions regarding the hidden facets of their careers, including the possibilities that Basseporte’s early biographers intentionally altered the factual narrative of her early life, and that Reboul Vien actively contributed to her husband’s practice as a key collaborator for many years after her own exhibition career had ended. The assumption that Basseporte was Reboul Vien’s artistic instructor has been adopted by historians in recent years, but the hypothesis, though compelling, remains unproven. Through comparative examination of Basseporte and Reboul Vien’s work and singular professional trajectories, this thesis critically analyzes the theory of their connection and crucially increases the depth and breadth of scholarship on this pair of artists.