Portrait of Constance Pipelet

Public Domain

1797

Jean-Baptiste-François Desoria
French, 1758–1832

Painted in the aftermath of the French Revolution, Désoria’s Portrait of Constance Pipelet typiﬁes the Neoclassical style of portraiture practiced by Jacques-Louis David and his circle. The ﬁgure, placed parallel to the picture plane and silhouetted against the bright blue of the sky, evokes antique relief sculpture. Her white cotton dress was the fashionable attire of middle- and upper-class women in the 1790s, its antique associations reﬂecting Neoclassical ideals and its simplicity echoing the egalitarian spirit of the new French Republic. Constance Pipelet, later Constance de Salm-Dyck, was a noted poet, librettist, and feminist with a salon that attracted the literary and artistic notables of Paris.

Status: On View, Gallery 218
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Jean Baptiste François Désoria
Title: Portrait of Constance Pipelet
Place: France (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1797
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Inscribed at lower left, on the edge of the wall: DESORIA / 1797 an V
Dimensions: 130 × 99.1 cm (51 1/4 × 39 in.)
Credit Line: Simeon B. Williams Fund
Reference Number: 1939.533
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/31233/manifest.json

The Art Institute of Chicago, A Brief Illustrated Guide to the Collections (Chicago, 1941), p. 32.
Frederick A. Sweet, “Judith by Giovanni Martinelli,” Art Institute of Chicago Bulletin 36, 1 (1942), p. 6.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in The Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961) p. 126.
Jean Cailleux, “La Grande Peinture, de 1774 à 1830: Le Portrait,” Art et curiosité 55 (January-February 1975), p. 23.
Jean François Garmier, “Mâcon, Musée des Ursulines: Dernières Acquisitions,” La Revue du Louvre 29, 5/6 (1979), p.432.
Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion in the French Revolution, (London, 1988), fig. 83.
Susan Wise in Susan Wise and Malcolm Warner, French and British Paintings from 1600 to 1800 in The Art Institute of Chicago, (Princeton, N.J.. 1996), pp. 49-51, ill.
Renaud Temperini, “Le néo-classicisme” in La Peinture française, ed. Pierre Rosenberg (Paris, 2001), pp. 294, ill., 295.
Margaret A. Oppenheimer, The French Portrait: Revolution to Restoration, exh. cat. (Smith College Museum of Art, 2005), pp. 11, 62-64, ill., cat. 12.

Paris, Salon of 1798 (Year VI of the Republic), Musée central des Arts, no. 118, as Portrait de la citoyenne Pipelet.
San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Vanity Fair: An Exhibition of Styles of Women’s Headdress and Adornment through the Ages, 1942, no. 33, as Portrait of Mme Elisabeth Dunoyer.
Illinois, Decatur Art Center, Masterpieces of the Old and New World, 1948, no. 8, as Mme Elizabeth Dunoyer.
Detroit, Institute of Arts, French Painting from David to Courbet, 1950, no. 6, as Portrait of Mme Elisabeth Dunoyer.
Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, De David à Delacroix: La Peinture française de 1774 à 1830, 1974-75, no. 47, traveled to Detroit and New York, as Madame Elisabeth Dunoyer.
Chicago, Art Institute, Selected Works from Eighteenth-Century French Art in the Collections of The Art Insitute of Chicago, 1976, no. 20, as Madame Elisabeth Dunoyer.
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Age of Napoleon: Costume from Revolution to Empire, 1789-1815, December 5, 1989-April 15, 1990 (no cat.).
Northampton, Mass., Smith College Museum of Art, “The French Portrait: Revolution to Restoration,” 2005, cat. 12, as Portrait of Constance Pipelet.

Jacques Doucet (died 1929), Paris [according to a letter of September 25, 1939, from Paul M. Byk, Seligmann, Rey, and Co, to Daniel Catton Rich in curatorial files]. Arnold Seligmann, Rey, and Co., New York, by 1939; sold to the Art Institute, 1939.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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