МАККВИН АЛИСОН (Университет Мак-Мастер, Канада). Возможности для женщин-художников в Севре: роль королевского и императорского покровительства с середины XVIII до середины XIX веков
ALISON MCQUEEN (McMaster University, Canada). Opportunities for Female Artists at Sèvres: The Significant Roles of Royal and Imperial Patronage from the Mid-18th through Mid-19th Centuries
In this paper, I argue that royal and imperial patronage were instrumental in supporting multiple roles for women employed at France’s national porcelain manufactory during its first century, from the 1750s through 1850s. I seek to rectify how, through its conventional focus on issues of “authenticity” and “attribution,” the historiography of Sèvres’ porcelain has been structured to valorize male producers. I critique the field’s dominant discourse of masculine name recognition that has framed “value” in the gendered terms of market commodity. I demonstrate how that approach has marginalized the important contributions of women to the history of porcelain.
My paper offers insight into the considerable artistic work of women as painters, sculptors, retouchers, transfer printers, and burnishers. I address how their work was integral to the financial success of Sèvres from its earliest years when women worked in a studio space outside the main building. Physically marginalized by their gender, women nonetheless produced the porcelain flowers that ensured the financial viability of the manufactory during the reign of Louis XV. The floral sculpting of women was integral to the creation of the famous Bouquet of the Dauphine (1748; Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen) that Maria Josepha of Saxony (1731–67) sent to her father Augustus III the year after she married the heir to France’s throne. Today, however, that famous work is attributed only to the men who designed the flowerpot and mount.
My paper also argues for greater attention to Sèvres’ female painters including Genviève Taillandier (née Le Roy, active 1774–98), Pauline Knip (née de Courcelles, 1781–1851) Marie-Adélaïde Ducluzeau (née Durand, 1787–1849), Marie-Victoire Jaquotot (1772–1855), and Pauline Laurent (née Jullien, 1805–60). I illustrate they are important historical examples of successful women employed by Sèvres who contributed to its innovations in surface patterns, who refused a full-time contract in order to retain artistic autonomy, and who were mistreated in the context of the gender-bias that was integral to France’s election of 1848. I argue that Jaquotot’s Portrait of King Louis XVIII (1816; Paris, Louvre) and Laurent’s Portrait of Empress Eugénie (1855; château de Compiègne) deserve greater attention in part because of their significance as symbols of how female artists were offered more opportunities at Sèvres during periods of royal and imperial rule. In contrast, the so-called “democracy” in France during the mid-19th century (universal male suffrage; Second Republic, 1848–52) was notable as a period in which female artists were treated deplorably by Sèvres. However, when Eugénie (1826–1920) became empress of the French in 1853, the female artist hired to produce porcelain replicas of her portrait became the best paid of all of Sèvres’ employees, thus a woman finally reached the same level of pay a female painter had received over three decades earlier. In conclusion, I examine how the extant inventories of the palais des Tuileries, the château de Saint-Cloud, and Villa Eugénie at Biarritz demonstrate Empress Eugénie’s important role in the valorization of Sèvres porcelain during the Second Empire (1852–70), which was a period of considerable production and renewed interest in pâte tendre, the very technique women had used to sculpt the flowers that were central to Sèvres’ success a century earlier.
женщины-художники, фарфор, Франция, Севр, патронаж
female artists, porcelain, France, Sèvres, patronage