Depiction of Women Artists in Art History - Depictions - Mistaken Identity

Mistaken Identity

  • 1. Incorrect Attribution. Finally, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, work by women was often reassigned. Some unscrupulous dealers even went so far as to alter signatures, as in the case of some paintings by Judith Leyster, seen in a self-portrait at right, which were reassigned to Frans Hals.
  • 2. Incorrect Attribution.

Marie-Denise Villers (1774–1821) was a French painter, who specialized in portraits. She was born Marie-Denise Lemoine in Paris. She came from an artistic family, and her sisters Marie-Victoire and Marie-Élisabeth Lemoine were also accomplished artists. In 1794, Marie-Denise married an architecture student, Michel-Jean-Maximilien Villers.

Villers was a student of the French painter Girodet. She was first exhibited at the Paris Salon of the Year VII (1799). Villers' most famous painting, Young Woman Drawing, (1801) is displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The painting was attributed to Jacques-Louis David at one time, but was later realized to be Villers' work. It is considered to be a self-portrait of the artist.

By contrast, in the late twentieth century, in a rush to acquire paintings by women, there have been cases of paintings wrongly attributed to women.

Read more about this topic:  Depiction Of Women Artists In Art History, Depictions

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