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Portrait of Madeleine
Marie-Guillemine Benoist · Rococo & Neoclassicism
- Artist
- Marie-Guillemine Benoist (1768–1826)
- Date
- 1800
- Dimensions
- 81 x 65 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
This portrait shows a young Black woman seated on an armchair draped with a rich blue cloth, wearing a white headwrap and a white dress that leaves one breast bare. She looks calmly and directly at the viewer.
A closer look
Painted six years after France first abolished slavery in its colonies, the portrait was exhibited at the Salon of 1800 and was exceptional for showing a Black woman as the sole, dignified subject of a formal portrait. Benoist, a pupil of Jacques-Louis David, painted her with the clarity and calm of Neoclassicism: smooth brushwork, a pure white fabric against dark skin, a restrained palette of white, blue and red that echoes the French flag. The sitter, long known only by a racial description, has been identified as Madeleine, a woman from Guadeloupe brought to France as a servant.
More by Marie-Guillemine Benoist
Famous works elsewhere
- Self-portrait 1786
- Portrait of Elisa Bonaparte, Grand Duchess of Tuscany 1806
- Innocence between Vice and Virtue 1790
- Madame Philippe Panon Desbassayns de Richemont (Jeanne Eglé Mourgue, 1778–1855) and Her Son, Eugène (1800–1859) 1802
- Portrait of a Lady 1799
- Portrait of Louis Joseph, Dauphin of France 1784