Marie-guillemine benoist biography
Gabrielle d’estrées and one of her sisters!
Benoist, Marie (1768–1826)
French painter.Name variations: Comtesse Benoist.
Marie-guillemine benoist self-portrait
Born Marie Guillemine (or Guilhelmine) Lerouix de
la Ville in 1768 in Paris, France; died in 1826 in Paris, France; daughter of an administrative official; student of Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun,Adelaide Labille-Guiard , and Jacques Louis David; married Pierre Vincent Benoist, in 1793.
Selected paintings:
Innocence between Virtue and Vice (1790); The Farewell of Psyche; Portrait of a Negress (1800).
Encouraged by her father, Marie Benoist was only about 13 or 14 when she began studying painting with Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun , who influenced her early pastel portraits.
While Vigée-Lebrun's studio was under reconstruction, Benoist was placed under the tutelage of the great Neoclassical painter Jacques Louis David, despite the king's decree that forbade young women artists to be trained at the Louvre.
David's influence moved Benoist into the more linear and brilliant history paintings and fo
