CONSTANCE CHARPENTIER Lot n° 83

Portrait of a young naval officer Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower right C M. Blondel / f. Charpentier / 1807 67 x 51.5 cm Portrait of a young Navy officer Oil on canvas, signed and dated 26.4 x 20.3 in. PROVENANCE Public sale, Saint-Malo. Directed by Constance Charpentier, this portrait is the work of a woman artist who, at the dawn of the 19th century, was one of those female painters who had the fervent wish to make a notable place for herself in an almost exclusively male professional discipline. In the second half of the 18th century, the academic training of painters followed the tradition established since the creation of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1648. Courses were thus given at the Academy and entry with a master in his studio completed the first teaching. Without being completely excluded (fifteen women having been received), women during their training did not enter the Academy, did not have access to its contents, de facto preventing them from competing in the most prestigious category of the Grand Genre. To excel in history painting would have required learning to draw after the live and nude model, which would have been contrary to good morals. Therefore, without having the opportunity to distinguish themselves as history painters, the majority of women artists focused on portraiture and still life. Constance Charpentier was one of those female painters who turned to portraiture. The artist, born in Paris in 1767, entered the studio of Jacques-Louis David (1748 -1825) at the age of twenty. The master of Neoclassicism, going beyond certain "rules of good conduct", had decided in the 1780s to teach young men as well as young women, before opening his own studio for the latter. Nourishing a certain resentment towards the Academy, perhaps this was an additional motivation for opening a workshop that openly defied official dogma. In 1767, a complaint from the King's superintendent forced him to