Marie Bracquemond

(France, 01/12/1840 - 17/01/1916)

One of the most notable women of the Impressionist movement, Bracquemond’s early life was troubled due to her parent’s uneasy relationship. The family moved from her home in Brittany, France, to the Jura region, then to Switzerland, and back to France to the Limousin region before settling in Étampes, 48km south of Paris. Here, she began to receive lessons from one M. Auguste Vassor and successfully submitted a painting to the 1857 Paris Salon where she exhibited alongside other notable works including Jean-François Millet’s The Gleaners (1857), and where she was introduced to Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, with whom she started lessons.

As her work developed, she became a regular at Salon exhibitions from 1860s onwards. She left Ingres’ studio and began completing commissions for the likes of Empress Eugenie, who commissioned her to paint a portrait of Cervantes while he was in prison, and Count de Nieuwerkerke, the director-general of French museums, who commissioned her to make copies of the most important works in the Louvre collection. While doing so, she met Félix Bracquemond, who would become her husband.

As her work continued to develop, she moved out of the studio and began painting en plein air and became more involved with other artists in the Impressionist circle, particularly Monet and Degas who both admired her work greatly.

Her achievements and artistic independence led to her husband growing increasingly jealous and, in 1890, he prohibited her from painting, ending her career at the height of her success. Subsequently, she and her work fell into obscurity and was largely forgotten about after her death, until the Feminist art history movement gained momentum in the 1970s and historian Tamar Garb spotlighted her achievements in her 1986 publication, Women Impressionists.

Image: Marie Bracquemond, Self-Portrait (1870). Oil on canvas, 45 x 38 cm. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, Normandy, France.