Marie-Guillemine Benoist
Marie- Guillemine Benoist, born as Marie de Laville - Leroux Guillemine ( born December 18, 1768 in Paris, † October 8, 1826 ibid ) was a French painter of the Neoclassicism.
Marie- Guillemine Benoist was a woman from an aristocratic family. She belonged to a then small circle of professional painters, to whom Anne Vallayer - Coster, Élisabeth Vigée- Lebrun, Marguerite Gérard, Adélaïde Labille - Guiard and Marie -Gabrielle Capet belonged.
Life
Marie de Laville - Leroux Guillemine was born as the daughter of a Parisian officials. Early on, her parents recognized the talent of her daughter and in 1781 she began an apprenticeship with the painter Élisabeth Vigée -Lebrun known. Together with her younger sister Marie- Élisabeth Laville - Leroux (1770-1842), she worked in the studio of Jacques -Louis David.
1793 she married the French aristocrat and lawyer Vincent Pierre Benoist, Count of Benoist ( 1758-1834 ). During the French Revolution, the couple fled to the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. With the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy was awarded a state pension and her husband was appointed a member of the Conseil d' État.
Her best-known paintings Portrait d' une négresse showed Madame Benoist in 1800 at the Paris Salon. Six years previously, slavery had been abolished, and this image became a symbol of female emancipation and human rights. In 1818 the French king Louis XVIII acquired. the image. Today the painting hangs in the Musée du Louvre.