Marie-Victoire Lemoine

With Galerie Sedelmeyer;
Their sale, Paris, 17-18 May 1907, lot 250 (as by  Vigée-Lebrun), for FF 11,000.

"The following condition report has been provided by Henry Gentle, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. The canvas is lined with an off-centre vertical seam which has had some restoration, now discoloured. The paint layer is in a good stable condition, if a little raised. The background paint is thin and has been substantially augmented as have the shadows to the sister's dark hair on the right. The flesh tones, the dresses and the blue cloak are in good condition. The removal of the discoloured varnish would improve the overall tonality. Carved and gilt wood frame, minor chips."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

We are grateful to Mr Joseph Baillio of the Wildenstein Institute, New York, for proposing the attribution to Marie-Victoire Lemoine on the basis of photographs. The present painting was traditionally identified as by the hand of Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842), who was Lemoine's teacher, and was sold as such in 1907 (see Provenance), when it bore her signature. Many of Lemoine's works have been wrongly attributed to more celebrated artists in the past. Her oeuvre was first defined in its own right only very recently by Joseph Baillio in his article in the Extrait de la Gazette des Beaux-Arts, April 1996, pp. 125-63.

Marie-Victoire is perhaps best known for her Portrait of two female painters in an artist's studio in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which is traditionally believed to represent herself with Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun and which has become an icon of feminist art history.¹ She was one of four sisters, all of whom were distinguished painters themselves. Although she also painted genre scenes she is best known for her portraiture and was patronised by some of the grandest collectors of the turn of the century, including the Princesse de Lamballe and the Duc de Chartres. Very comparable double portraits were sold London, Sotheby's, 5 July 2007, lot 230 (for £88,000) and New York, Christie's, 25 May 2005, lot 221 (for $156,000).

1. See K. Baetjer, European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1980, vol. I, p. 105, cat. no. 57.103, reproduced vol. III, p. 538.