Artist of the day: April 2025

Monday, April 7, 2025

Artist of the Day, April 7, 2025: Marie-Guillemine Benoist, a French painter - neoclassical, historical, genre (#2252)

Marie-Guillemine Benoist, (1768 – 1826) born Marie-Guillemine Laville-Leroux, was a French neoclassical, historical, and genre painter.

Benoist was born in Paris, the daughter of a civil servant. Her training as an artist began in 1781 under Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, and she entered Jacques-Louis David's atelier in 1786 along with her sister Marie-Élisabeth Laville-Leroux.

Benoist first exhibited in the Exposition de la Jeunesse in 1784, showing a portrait of her father and two pastel studies of heads. She continued to exhibit at the Exposition until 1788. The poet Charles-Albert Demoustier, who met her in 1784, was inspired by her in creating the character Émilie in his work Lettres à Émilie sur la mythologie (1801).

In 1791, Benoist exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon, displaying her mythology-inspired picture Psyché faisant ses adieux à sa famille. Another of her paintings of this period, L'Innocence entre la vertu et le vice, is similarly mythological and reveals her feminist interests — in this picture, vice is represented by a man, although it was traditionally represented by a woman. In 1793, she married the lawyer Pierre-Vincent Benoist.

Her work, reflecting the influence of Jacques-Louis David, tended increasingly toward history painting by 1795. In 1800, Benoist exhibited Portrait d'une négresse (as of 2019 renamed Portrait of Madeleine) in the Salon. Six years previously, slavery had been abolished, and this image became a symbol for women's emancipation and black people's rights. James Smalls, a professor of Art History at the University of Maryland, declared that "the painting is an anomaly because it presents a black person as the sole aestheticized subject and object of a work of art." The picture was acquired by Louis XVIII for France in 1818.

An important commission for a full-length portrait of Napoléon Bonaparte — Premier Consul Français in this period — was awarded to her in 1803. This portrait was to be sent to the city of Ghent, newly ceded to France by the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801. Other honors came to her; she was awarded a Gold Medal in the Salon of 1804 and received a governmental allowance. During this time she opened an atelier for the artistic training of women.

Her career was harmed by political developments, however, when her husband, the supporter of royalist causes, Comte Benoist, was nominated in the Conseil d'État during the post-1814 Bourbon Restoration. Despite being at the height of her popularity, "she was obliged to abandon painting" and pursuing women's causes, due in part to her devoir de réserve ("tactful withdrawal") in the face of the growing wave of conservatism in European society.

© 2025. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Michel Bergeron/Visual Diplomacy or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only

Marie-Guillemine Benoist

Marie-Guillemine Benoist - Self-portrait, 1786

Portrait of Charles-Albert Demoustier, circa 1785

Psyche Bidding Farewell to Her Family, circa 1791

Innocence Between Virtue and Vice, circa 1791

Portrait of Mme de Briche, circa 1795

Portrait of a Lady, said to be Madame de Reiset d'Arques, as Sappho, circa 1795

Portrait of a Lady, circa 1799

Portrait of M. de Briche, circa 1799

Portrait of Madeleine, circa 1800

Portrait of Mademoiselle Carnot, circa 1800

Portrait of Giuseppina Grassini, circa 1800

A young woman carrying two flower pots, circa 1802

Madame Philippe Panon Desbassayns de Richemont and Her Son Eugène , 1802

Portrait of Baron Larrey, circa 1804

Portrait of Claude-Ignace Brugière, baron de Barante , circa 1805

Elisa Bonaparte, Emperor Napoleon's sister and Duchess of Lucca, circa 1806

Portrait of Felice Baciocchi, circa 1806

The Sleep of Childhood and that of Old Age, circa 1806

Portrait of Madame Lacroix-Saint-Pierre, circa 1806-13

Portrait of doctor Franz Joseph Gall, circa 1807

Portrait of Michel Etienne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau, circa 1807

Portrait of Pauline Bonaparte princess Borghese, circa 1808

Portrait of Madame Boselli, circa 1809

The Fortune Teller, circa 1812

Portrait of Louis Joseph, Dauphin of France

Portrait of René Delaville-Leroulx

Two young children with a bird nest

Saturday, April 5, 2025

Artist of the Day, April 5, 2025: Gabriel Orozco, a Mexican artist, painter, sculptor, photographer (#2251)

Gabriel Orozco (1962) is a Mexican artist. He gained his reputation in the early 1990s for his exploration of drawing, photography, sculpture and installation. In 1998, Francesco Bonami called Orozco "one of the most influential artists of this decade, and probably the next one too."

Early life and education
Orozco was born in 1962 in Veracruz, Mexico to Cristina Félix Romandía and Mario Orozco Rivera, a mural painter and art professor at the University of Veracruz.[citation needed] When Orozco was six, the family relocated to the San Ángel neighborhood of Mexico City so that his father could work with artist David Alfaro Siquieros on various mural commissions. His father took him along to museum exhibitions and to work with him, during which time Orozco overheard many conversations about art and politics.

Orozco attended the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas between 1981 and 1984 but found the program too conservative.[citation needed] In 1986, he moved to Madrid and enrolled at the Circulo de Bellas Artes.[citation needed] There his instructors introduced him to a broad range of post-war artists who were working in non-traditional formats. He said of his time in Spain,
"What's important is to be confronted deeply with another culture. And also to feel that I am the Other, not the resident. That I am the immigrant. I was displaced and in a country where the relationship with Latin America is conflicted. I came from a background that was very progressive. And then to travel to Spain and confront a very conservative society that also wanted to be very avant-garde in the 1980s, but treated me as an immigrant, was shocking. That feeling of vulnerability was really important for developing my work. I think a lot of my work has to do with that kind of exposure, to expose vulnerability and make that your strength."

Career
In 1987, Orozco returned from his studies in Madrid to Mexico City, where he hosted weekly meetings with a group of other artists including Damián Ortega, Gabriel Kuri, Abraham Cruzvillegas and Dr. Lakra. This group met once a week for five years and over time the artist's home became a place where many artistic and cultural projects took shape.

Orozco's nomadic way of life began to inform his work strongly around this time, and he took considerable inspiration from exploring the streets. His early practice was intended to break away from the mainstream work of the 1980s, which was often created in huge studios with many assistants and elaborate techniques of production and distribution. In contrast, Orozco typically worked alone or with one or two other assistants. His work revolves around many repeated themes and techniques that incorporate real life and common objects. The exploration of his chosen materials allows the audience's imagination to explore the creative associations between oft-ignored objects in today's world.

In 1995 he worked in Berlin on a Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst grant.

"For him [Orozco], the decentralization of the manufacturing practice mirrors a rich heterogeneity of object and material. There is no way to identify a work by Orozco in terms of physical product. Instead it must be discerned through leitmotifs and strategies that constantly recur, but in always mutating forms and configurations." – Ann Temkin
© 2025. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Gabriel Orozco or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only