COLLECTION NAME:
Visual Resources Teaching Collection
mediaCollectionId
ArtArtHiAAH~7~7
Visual Resources Teaching Collection
Collection
true
Image Record ID:
aahi0000392
image_record_id
aahi0000392
Image Record ID
false
Work Title (display):
The Bad News
Image Title:
detail with two ladies
Work Dates (display):
1804
Work Dates type:
creation
Work Creator (display):
Marguerite Gérard (French, 1761-1837)
Work Creator gender:
female
work_creator_or_agent_gender
female
Work Creator gender
false
Work Creator notes (display):
French painter. After the death of her mother in 1775 she left Grasse to join her elder sister Marie-Anne and her sister's husband Jean-Honoré Fragonard in their quarters in the Louvre in Paris. Marguerite became Fragonard's protégé and lived for the next 30 years in the Louvre, where she was exposed to the greatest art and artists of the past and present. By 1785 she had already established a reputation as a gifted genre painter, the first French woman to do so, and by the late 1780s came to be considered one of the leading women artists in France, the equal of Adelaide Labille-Guiard, Anne Vallayer-Coster and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. Since she was excluded from exhibiting at the Académie Royale, which allowed only four women members, her work was popularized through engravings by Gérard Vidal, Robert de Launay and her brother Henri Gérard. As a woman, Marguerite Gérard was also deprived of the academic training and study of the nude essential to the professional history painter. However, her informal apprenticeship to Fragonard and her study of the paintings by Dutch 17th-century masters in private and royal collections enabled her to develop a meticulous and sentimental genre style that appealed to both the public and the critics throughout her long career. After the Revolution the Salons were opened to women and Gérard exhibited from 1799 to 1824, winning a Prix d'Encouragement in 1801 and a Médaille d'Or in 1804. Gérard was also an accomplished portrait painter, specializing at first in small-scale, freely brushed portraits of friends and later in larger, more finished portraits, closer in style to her genre scenes. More than 300 genre scenes and 80 portraits, including several miniatures, have been documented. Since she worked chiefly in oil on canvas, preferring to make preliminary sketches in oil, very few drawings can be reliably attributed to her. Gérard's genre paintings present an idealized vision of the private world of bourgeois and upper-class women of her period. The embodiments of perfect womanhood, her subjects are depicted in romantic or maternal roles, accompanied by pets and servants and enjoying a leisurely, protected life occupied with their children, their correspondence, their music and drawing. Bad News (exh. Salon 1804; Paris, Louvre) is typical of this genre. Unlike her subjects, Marguerite Gérard never married. She pursued her career as an artist for over 50 years and was an astute businesswoman, often lending money to aristocrats at high rates of interest. The myth that Gérard and Fragonard were lovers has been disproved: she referred to him as her 'good little father' and continued to live with Mme Fragonard for 17 years after the master's death. However, the question of her artistic collaboration with Fragonard during the 1780s remains controversial. Some scholars believe that Fragonard's hand is visible in many works signed by Gérard during the first decade of her career, while others cannot imagine this master of dynamic, spontaneous brushwork painting in the precise, controlled manner of his student. Since Fragonard scholars are still at odds over the style and quantity of his output in the 1780s, agreement over the attribution of many well-known pictures including the Stolen Kiss (c. 1785; St Petersburg, Hermitage) and the First Steps of Childhood (c. 178083; Cambridge, MA, Fogg) has yet to be reached. Gérard maintained a level of technical competence and ingratiating sentimentality in her paintings that assured her success. Her ability to reproduce textures and surfaces with trompe l'oeil precision and her preference for a glittering palette of silvery colours enhanced by glazes made her genre scenes unique. Gérard's canvases are precursors of the idyllic domestic genre scenes beloved by the public from the 19th century onwards, yet they also convey a sense of the splendid isolation that was the norm for the most fortunate, educated women of her time. (Grove Art Online Accessed 2006-07-26)
Work Style Period:
Romantic (modern European styles)
work_styleperiod
Romantic (modern European styles)
Work Style Period
false
Work Style Period:
Neoclassical
work_styleperiod
Neoclassical
Work Style Period
false
Work Style Period:
19th century
work_styleperiod
19th century
Work Style Period
false
Work Subject:
emotions
subject
emotions
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
women (female humans)
subject
women (female humans)
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
genre
subject
genre
Work Subject
false
Work Subject:
sadness
subject
sadness
Work Subject
false
Work Worktype:
paintings (visual works)
work_type
paintings (visual works)
Work Worktype
false
Work Category (VRC classification):
paintings
work_category__ucbaahvrc_classification_
paintings
Work Category (VRC classification)
false
Work Material and Technique (display):
painting
Work Measurements (display):
63 cm (H) x 50 cm (W)
Work Location (Repository or Site) name:
Musee du Louvre
Work Location (Repository or Site) role:
repository
Work Location (Geographic) name:
Paris, France
Image Rights (display):
© Ronald Wiedenhoeft. Licensed for educational use via Scholars Resource: Saskia, Ltd.
Image Rights license agreement:
SASKIA, LTD.: WHO CAN USE THIS SOFTWARE: (a) Licensee, including faculty, staff and currently enrolled students may use the Licensed Software to display and or print the corresponding graphic images without limitation for teaching and research purposes at the defined Sites, or at remote locations having electronic access to your Site(s). (b) This license include permission to use the Licensed Software on a multi-user network at the defined Site, and to permit remote access to a computer/server located at your Site. Simultaneous display in multiple locations at or connected to the Site is also permitted. (c) Licensee agrees to employ reasonable security measures designed to limit access to your faculty, staff and currently enrolled students. PROHIBITED USES AND LIMITATIONS: (a) Saskia hereby reserves all rights not expressly granted herein. (b) the License Software may not be used for preparaiton of any publication, scholarly or otherwise; or for any purpose other than teaching or research. Publication of an image from the Licensed Software requires a separate license from Saskia. (c) Licensee agrees not to resell, lease, transfer, sub-license or otherwise distribute a copy of the Licensed Software, or any image taken from the Licensed Software, in whole or in part. (d) Licensee also agrees not to modify, corrupt or alter any digital image graphic content or "digital watermark" or the like in the software provided by Saskia under this Agreement. (e) Licensee agrees not to remove, alter, cover or distort Saskia's copyright notice, trademark, or other proprietary rights notice placed by Saskia in the Licensed Software itself, or in the associated packaging, media or documentation. (f) And Licensee agrees to notify users of the Licensed Software, in writing or by sign-on screen display, of their obligations under this Agreement and solicit their cooperation and compliance with such obligations.
Work Rights (display):
public domain
Terms of Agreement and Conditions of Use:
YOU AGREE: Luna Imaging's Insight Software and the digital image collection associated with it (the Software) are being provided by the University of Colorado under the following license. By obtaining, using, and/or copying this work, you (the Licensee) agree that you have read, understood, and will comply with the following terms and conditions. 1. The Software contains the University of Colorado's Department of Art and Art History's implementation of a digital image collection; 2. Any images obtained through use of the Software will be used only for non-profit, educational purposes; 3. The use of images obtained through the software will only be used while the Licensee is either: a) an employee of the University of Colorado, Metropolitan State College of Denver, or the Community College of Denver, or b) an enrolled student at the University of Colorado, Metropolitan State College of Denver, or the Community College of Denver; 4. When the Licensee is no longer an employee or student of the University of Colorado, Metropolitan State College of Denver or Community College of Denver, either by an action of the University of Colorado, Metropolitan State College of Denver or the Community College of Denver or due to actions of the Licensee, the licensee will cease to use any images exported from the Department of Art and Art History's digital image collection; 5. The Licensee agrees to indemnify the University for claims and liability arising out of the use of the Software or for any violations of this license; 6. THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO SUPPLIES THE SOFTWARE WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING ANY WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
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The contents of the University of Colorado Digital Library are available for your use in research, teaching, and private study. Some of these items are protected by the U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.) and some items may have additional restrictions. If you use the items in this collection, make sure you abide by any restrictions stated in the descriptive data window. The nature of these collections often makes it difficult to determine the copyright status of an item. We have made every effort to provide information about copyright owners and other restrictions in the descriptive data window. Ultimately, however, it is your responsibility to use the item according to the terms governing its use. If you are a copyright holder and the information is either not listed or listed incorrectly, please let us know so that we can update the information on our site.
Holding Institution:
University of Colorado at Boulder
Collection:
Art and Art History Visual Resources Center
Collection info and contact:
For information about this collection, see . For specific questions, suggestions, or corrections about the descriptive data for images, contact aahvrc@colorado.edu. Please include the Image Record ID ('aahi' followed by a 7-digit number) for each image in question.