After Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818) French, Old Master Style Oil on Canvas. Signed bottom right M. M. Elliott. A reproduction of "Vase of Flowers and Conch Shell" that hangs in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. 

Condition: Good. 

Overall: 29 5/8 X 24 in. 

Sight: 23 1/4 X 17 1/2 in. 

Depth: 2 3/4 in. 

#3800 . 

Anne Vallayer-Coster was born December 21st, 1744 in Paris, France. She was the daughter of a goldsmith for the royal family des Gobelins, and some of her earliest paintings were copies of the tapestries they were famous for creating. Her father trained her, as women were not allowed to enter the studio of an unrelated male professional painter at the time. She also learned from the botanical specialist Madeleine Basseport, as well as receiving secret lessons from the celebrated marine painter Joseph Vernet who was sympathetic to her plight. She became a major 18th Century French painter best known for still lifes. She achieved fame and recognition very early in her career, being admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1770 at the age of twenty-six, one of only fourteen women ever accepted before the Revolution. The two still lifes she submitted to gain entrance to the Académie are now prominently displayed in the Louvre. Unfortunately, the death of her father that summer slightly delayed her career, but she was allowed to return to the Académie a year later after she had gone back to work in the family factory to help make ends meet. Despite the low status that still life painting had at this time, Vallayer-Coster’s highly developed skills, especially in the depiction of flowers, soon generated a great deal of attention from collectors and other artists. Her “precocious talent and rave reviews” earned her the attention of the court when she first exhibited them in 1775, where Marie Antoinette took a particular interest in her. With her Court connections and pressure from Antoinette she received her own space in the Louvre in 1781, virtually unheard of for women artists up to this point. Later that year she married Jean-Pierre Silvestre Coster (1745-1824), a wealthy lawyer, parlementaire, and respected member of a powerful family from Lorraine. Marie Antoinette signed the marriage contract as witness, and these titles conferred to Anne the very highest ranks of the bourgeoisies, the noblesse de robe. She remained intensely private her whole life, and managed to survive the bloodshed of the Reign of Terror in 1793, but the fall of the French monarchy, who were her primary patrons, caused her reputation to decline. Although during Napoléon’s reign Empress Josephine acquired two works from her in 1804, her standing was irretrievably diminished. This, ironically, afforded her some creative freedom for the works she had made before. She began to concentrate on gouache, and in addition to still lifes she painted portraits and genre paintings, but because of the restrictions still placed on women at the time her success at figure painting was limited. In 1817 she exhibited Still Life with Lobster in the Paris Salon, one of her most famous works and her last exhibited painting, where she managed what an expert called “a summation of her career,” depicting most of her previous subjects together in a work she donated to the restored King Louis XVIII. She died on February 28th, 1818, having painted more than 120 still lifes with her distinctive coloristic brilliance. The conventional morality that precluded women artists from drawing from the nude model began to crumble, and her outspoken criticism of this was pivotal in fixing these standards in the following century. Her work has been prominently displayed many times since her death, including permanent exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art, The Frick Collection, and the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Nancy.

Good.