Anne Vallayer-Coster is one of these remarkable women who have left an unwavering mark in the history of French painting and managed to do so in an realm only then reserved for men.
As the daughter of a goldsmith working in the Gobelins Manufactory, Vallayer-Coster grew up in a family of craftsmen having close ties with artists and figures from the royal court.
She was a subsequent student of the botany illustrator, Madeleine Françoise Basseporte and the famous landscape artist, Joseph Vernet. Such teachings allowed her to quickly acquire a great pictorial mastery that led to
her acceptance at the age of 26 in France’s Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. After being noticed by Marie-Antoinette, Vallayer-Coster held a place at court and multiplied her portrait and still life commissions
for the royal family.
Her corpus reflects the influence of her predecessor, Jean-Siméon Chardin, whom she admired for his highly sensitive interpretation of art. The painting that we present is a fine example and demonstrates a poetic and psychological
approach for a portrait. Vallayer-Coster invites us into the model’s intimate world as a young violinist stops her music practice to delve into the music score and seems lost in her thoughts.
A chromatic game echoes between the pristine white satin dress and the dark background of the neutral composition and interacts with us to convey this image of a resolutely virtuous woman who perfectly correlates with
the Enlightenment philosophy. The scene seeks austerity but softly and highlights Anne Vallayer-Coster’s style with the use of a nervous and delicate brushstroke that blends the colors naturally.
Realized in 1773 when Vallayer-Coster was already very comfortable in painting still lifes, she approached the portrait genre with more caution thus this painting is now considered one of the the artist’s masterpieces.
Marianne Roland-Michel envisions one of her sisters in this model, which seems quite likely as the portrait exudes a warmth and a special tenderness.
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Nationalmuseum houses a major collection of French 18thcentury paintings. The pictorial qualities of the Rococo are to some extent reminiscent in this portrait by Anne Vallayer-Coster. The painting is considered one of
the artist’s masterpieces. The genre-like picture shows probably one of the artist’s sisters. The model holds a violin with broken strings. On her lap she has a notes sheet and a bow.
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