Overview

The first English-language monograph on Vallayer-Coster in two decades offers a renewed feminist lens on one of eighteenth-century France's most celebrated painters. Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818) was a renowned French still-life painter who earned the patronage of Queen Marie Antoinette. She began her career as one of just four female artists admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in the late eighteenth century before making her debut at the Paris Salon. Vallayer-Coster's still lifes, which depicted a wide range of objects, including food, guns, game, shells, and flowers, captivated critics. Her talent ultimately won her commissions from the French royal family and her very own studio at the Louvre. In this book, the first English-language monograph dedicated to Vallayer-Coster in over twenty years, author Kelsey Brosnan closely examines the artist's still-life paintings. Brosnan's analysis provides a fresh feminist reevaluation of Vallayer-Coster, situating her alongside contemporaries such as Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, and Jean-Siméon Chardin. Anne Vallayer-Coster is an astute, accessible introduction to the artist that offers a new framework for experiencing the visceral qualities of her paintings.

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Reviews

""In her nuanced descriptions, Brosnan focuses our gaze on the tactile surfaces of Vallayer-Coster's still lifes while also situating them in a broader cultural context. In her telling, the inanimate objects of Vallayer-Coster's paintings have much to say."" --Perrin Stein, Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art ""Studies of the artist have rested on sound but limited scholarly foundations. Kelsey Brosnan's book widens the aperture through which we can examine--and experience--Vallayer-Coster's beautiful, intelligent paintings."" --Katharine Baetjer, curator emerita, Metropolitan Museum of Art ""This illuminating study transforms our understanding of Anne Vallayer-Coster's art by examining it through the lens of Enlightenment sensory philosophy. Brosnan reveals how the artist's still lifes engage all five senses, uncovering the cultural meanings they carried and how their sensuality helped her navigate the gendered expectations of her time."" --Aaron Wile, Associate Curator, Department of French Paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Author Information

Kelsey Brosnan is a writer and art historian specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French paintings, works on paper, and decorative arts.

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