Michelle de Bonneuil

Michelle de Bonneuil
Portrait of Michelle de Bonneuil by Rosalie Filleul
Born	7 March 1748 Sainte-Suzanne, Île Bourbon
Died	30 December 1829 Paris
Nationality	French
Occupation	Agent

Michelle Sentuary (7 March 1748, Sainte-Suzanne, île Bourbon – 30 December 1829, Paris), married name Jean-Cyrille Guesnon de Bonneuil, was a French overseas agent during the French Revolution and First French Empire. Inspiring André Chénier and others, she was a lady "celebrated for her beauty and her agreeable spirit" according to the formula of Charles de Lacretelle himself a friend of Chénier. She stands for thousands of women in modern and contemporary historiography, and has had several biographies in biographical dictionaries. She was the mother of Amédée Despans-Cubières.

Born in 1748 on Réunion, Michelle Sentuary was the younger daughter of Jean Sentuary and of Marie-Catherine Caillou. She was educated at Sainte-Suzanne, where her father had a plantation, and at Bordeaux, where in 1768 she married Jean-Cyrille Guesnon de Bonneuil, who had a post in the household of the comtesse d’Artois.

She then came to Paris where her beauty, charm, conversation and talents in singing and painting (Hubert Robert gave her painting lessons in the Sainte-Pélagie Prison and she exhibited her floral still lifes at the 1795 Salon) made herself famous in artistocratic and intellectual circles. Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, her painting-tutor and friend, called her "the most beautiful lady in Paris", and she had her portrait produced by the pastellist Rosalie Filleul, the painter Alexander Roslin (who portrayed her in "African" costume), the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne and many other artists.