Portrait of Charlotte du Val d'Ognes (Marie-Denise Villers)
| Portrait of Charlotte du Val d'Ognes | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Artist |
Marie-Denise Villers 
|
| Year | 1801 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Location | Metropolitan Museum of Art |
| Accession No. | 17.120.204
|
| Identifiers | The Met object ID: 437903 |
|
[]
|
|
Portrait of Charlotte du Val d'Ognes is a 1801 painting (portrait painting) by Marie-Denise Villers. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting was first acquired by the museum in 1922 and attributed to Jacques Louis David. Later, the painting was attributed to Constance Marie Charpentier and finally to Villers.
Because the painting is unsigned, it has been attributed incorrectly over time. It was first exhibited at the 1801 Salon, during the year that Jacques Louis David boycotted the exhibition. A member of the Val d'Ognes family believed it had been painted by David.
The Met bought the painting, attributed to David, for two hundred thousand dollars in 1922. In 1951, Charles Sterling of the Met admitted that the painting may not have been David's. Sterling was first tipped off that the painting was not David's because the artist had boycotted the 1801 Salon. The mistake was published in the Met's January 1951 Bulletin. The painting may have been Constance Marie Charpentier's because of some evidence found in Salon entries seem to indicate it was hers, however David's name did not come off of the frame until 1977. Sterling's reattribution of the painting to Charpentier was also based on analysis of her painting, Melancholy (1801).
Later, in 1996, Margaret Oppenheimer realized that the painting should instead be attributed to Marie Denise Villers. Oppenheimer's reattribution is based on a modello by Villers, A Young Woman Seated by a Window.
The painting is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Gallery 613.
The work depicts a woman drawing in front of a broken window. Behind the woman, a couple stand on a parapet. In the Concise Dictionary of Women Artists (2001), Valerie Mainz describes the broken window as a "tour de force of the painter's art distinguishing, in its trompe-l'oeil effect, the view of the scene outside as to be seen as only partly through glass." The room depicted in the painting is actually a gallery of the Louvre, as discovered by art historian, Ann Higonnet.
...
Wikipedia