Marie-Denise Villers was a French portrait painter.
Background
Marie-Denise Villers was born in 1774 in Paris, France, into an accomplished artistic family of Charles Lemoine and Marie-Anne Rouselle. Two of her three sisters, Marie-Victoire Lemoine and Marie-Élisabeth Gabiou, as well as distant cousin Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet, were all trained as portraitists. Within her family, Marie-Denise was known as "Nisa." The family lived on the Rue Traversière-Saint-Honoré near the Palais Royal in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. Little is known about Marie-Denise's childhood, however it is likely that through her much older sisters and cousin she would have been introduced to the salons of Paris.
Education
Marie-Denise was a pupil of Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson. Villers was also a student of Jacques-Louis David.
Career
Marie-Denise first exhibited artwork at the Paris Salon of the Year VII in 1799. Villers' most famous painting, "Portrait of Charlotte du Val d'Ognes", created in 1801, has been attributed to various artists and shown under a variety of titles through its long history. Originally, the portrait was in the du Val d'Ognes family for generations, where it had been attributed to Jacques-Louis David. When the Metropolitan Museum of Art bought it in 1917, it was known as "the New York David." However, in 1951 curator Charles Stirling hypothesized that it was actually painted by a "little known woman." For decades afterwards, it was stripped of its title and artist, as per the Met's policy. In 1995, Margaret Oppenheimer successfully argued that Villers painted the work.
Villers exhibited "Study of a young woman sitting on a window" and two other works at the Salon of 1801, followed in 1802 by a genre painting entitled "A child in its cradle" and "A Study of a Woman from Nature." Her last known work is a portrait of the Duchess of Angoulême, exhibited in 1814. Her husband supported her art, during a time when many women were forced to give up professional art work after marriage. Her life between the time of her last dated painting in 1814 and her death in 1821 remains unknown.
Achievements
Marie-Denise Villers was highly famous for her paintings "A young woman seated by a window", "Bildnis einer jungen Frau an einer...", and "Portrait de jeune femme."
