Madame Cavé

Madame Cavé
Cavé c.1831-34 by Ingres (MMA)
Born	Marie-Élisabeth Blavot 1809 or 1810 Paris
Died	1883 Neuilly-sur-Seine
Nationality	French
Education	By Clément Boulanger and Camille Roqueplan
Style	Romanticism
Spouse(s)	Clément Boulanger Hygin-Auguste Cavé

Madame Cavé (1806, 1809 or 1810, Paris - 1883, Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a French painter and drawing professor. Born Marie-Élisabeth Blavot and also known as Marie Monchablon in her youth (from her mother's name), she married the painter Clément Boulanger and then, after Boulanger's death, Edmond Cavé - whom she also outlived.

Known as Madame Cavé during the July Monarchy due to her husband's official duties, she was equally friendly with Neoclassicist admirers of Ingres and with Romantic painters such as Delacroix, with whom she was friends. After she was widowed, she taught drawing to young women and published two teaching pamphlets on drawing and colour during the Second French Empire. She later also published reflections on women's conduct and place in society.

The daughter of rentiers (), her family was related to that of Charles Leclerc, first husband of Pauline Bonaparte. She was raised at a boarding school for young girls, where she learned drawing and watercolour under Camille Roqueplan, then genre painting under Clément Boulanger, a student of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who painted Boulanger's portrait around 1830. She and Boulanger married in 1831 - they had had a son together in Rome the previous year named Albert.

Cautious, beautiful and charming, she still managed to live quite an independent life and her career as a painter continued without interruption until 1855. From 1836 she gave lessons in drawing and painting in a school for young girls. In 1833 she met Eugène Delacroix at a ball - four years later he offered her a small painting, Charles Quint at the Monastery of Yuste (18 x 26 cm). She and Delacroix travelled to Flanders together in 1839 and they remained close until his death.