Anne Vallayer-Coster

Anne Vallayer-Coster (21 December 1744 – 28 February 1818) was a French painter best known for still lifes. She achieved fame and recognition very early in her career, being admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1770, at the age of twenty-six.

Despite the low status that still life painting had at this time, Vallayer-Coster's highly developed skills, especially in the depiction of flowers, soon generated a great deal of attention from collectors and other artists. but the fall of the French monarchy, who were her primary patrons, caused her reputation to decline.

In addition to still lifes, she painted portraits and genre paintings, but because of the restrictions placed on women at the time her success at figure painting was limited. One could assume that the artist's family tapestry business had some influence on her interest and skill in art. Many of her paintings were indeed copied into tapestries by the Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins. Since her childhood was spent in the factory, she had the opportunity to experience the entire operation of the business. In 1754, her father moved the family to Paris. Vallayer-Coster seems not to have entered the studio of a professional painter, possibly because such an apprenticeship to an unrelated male was difficult for a respectable woman. Like other women artists of the time, she was effectively trained by her father; but also learned from other sources including the botanical specialist Madeleine Basseport, and the celebrated marine painter Joseph Vernet. thumb

Career beginnings

By the age of twenty-six, Vallayer-Coster was still without a name or a sponsor; this proved to be a worrisome issue for her. She was unanimously elected into the Royal Académie once the Academicians saw her paintings, making her one of only fourteen women accepted into the Académie before the French Revolution. This moment of success, however, was overshadowed by the death of her father. Immediately her mother took over the family business, quite commonly the case during this time, and Anne continued to work to help support her family. Four years later, she began to enjoy the patronage of Marie Antoinette. With her Court connections and pressure from Marie Antoinette, she received space in the Louvre in 1781 which was unusual for women artists. A common image of Vallayer-Coster was not only as a virtuous artist but as a skilful diplomat and negotiator, sharply aware both of her potential patrons' interests and of her own unusual position as a prominent woman artist. Despite her noble status and her connection to the throne, Vallayer-Coster was able to avoid the pandemonium of the French Revolution in 1789,

In 1817 she exhibited Still Life with Lobster in the Paris Salon.

Vallayer-Coster used oil on canvas for most of her paintings. She achieved a great verisimilitude in the representation of materials and textures by the use of precise, finely blended brush strokes. In March 2019, the Kimbell Art Museum acquired Vallayer-Coster's 1787 painting titled Still Life with Mackerel.

Works by Anne Vallayer-Coster