Marie Benoist
Once attributed to Jacques-Louis David, the preeminent painter of Neoclassicism, this portrait is by his pupil, Marie Guillelmine Benoist. David taught a significant number of women artists whose works were made newly visible to the public through the Salon, which prior to the French Revolution had severely restricted submissions by women. Marie Guillelmine Benoist was one of the best ones. This portrait of Jeanne Eglé Fulcrande Catherine Mourgue, called Égle, and her son was probably shown at the Salon of 1802. In 1799 she had married into the Desbassayns family, whose immense fortune came from their sugar and coffee plantations on the island of La Réunion, about 700 kilometers from Madagascar, where they ran a vast enslaved labor force from the late 17th century until the French abolition of slavery in 1848.
P.S. If you would like to learn more about women artists, often forgotten by the art history, check out our postcards and notebooks with their works in our DailyArt Shop!
P.P.S. Marie Guillelmine Benoist wasn't the only female painter whose work was attributed to male contemporaries. We present five other women artists whose art was misattributed to men! Below you can also read about a complicated relationship between two talented artists, Constance Mayer and Pierre Prud’hon, in which Mayer's work was also overshadowed by her male partner.