Marie Thérèse Vincent de Montpetit

Private collection, Asuncíon, Portugal.

This recently rediscovered portrait by Marie Thérèse Philiberte (née Vincent de Montpetit) is the only known oil painting by the French artist. The daughter of Armand Vincent de Montpetit, himself a painter and pastellist, she likely trained under him, as was common for women pursuing careers as painters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, her only documented work is a portrait in "demi pastel" of her father executed when she was only eleven and exhibited at the Salon de la Correspondance.¹

The sitter, Anne Françoise Elisabeth Lange was a celebrated actress who performed with the Comédie-Française under the stage name Mademoiselle Lange. A "merveilleuse," who associated with the upper echelons of aristocratic French society and was imprisoned for her royalist sympathies, Mademoiselle Lange is shown here not in a theatrical guise, but with a charming sincerity.²

Marie Thérèse signed the present work with both her married (Philiberte) and given (Montpetit) names, indicating that she continued to pursue her artistic career following her marriage to the naval surgeon and army lieutenant Jean Philibert.

¹ See N. Jeffares, "Vincent de Montpetit, Marie-Françoise, dite Thérèse," in Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, online edition, updated 25 February 2023.

² In marked contrast with Anne-Louise Girodet's satirical depiction of Mademoiselle Lange as Danaë (Minneapolis Institute of Art, inv. no. 69.22).