Madeleine Boullogne

Madeleine Boullogne (baptised 24 July 1646 – 30 January 1710) was a French Baroque still life painter.

Biography Boullogne was born in Paris. She was the daughter of Louis Boullogne, a painter and one of the founders of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, and the sister of the painters Bon, Louis and Geneviève Boullogne. On 7 November 1669 she was received into the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. She began working in the royal workshops, notably at the Palais des Tuileries, where she painted four canvases for the antechamber to the Grand appartement du roi, but also at the Versailles, where she painted for the antechamber of the Grand appartement de la reine.

Madeleine Boullogne lived an austere and pious life, teaching many students, remaining unmarried and living with her brother Bon. Marked by a strict Augustinism bordering on Jansenism, she lived a semi-monastic life. Her presence in the Nécrologe de Port-Royal well shows this lifestyle:

She painted many works on life at Port-Royal-des-Champs, that Louise-Magdeleine Horthemels then engraved and which were extremely popular. She also painted still lifes and many portraits, as well as many religious paintings.

Boullogne died in 1710 in Paris. She was forgotten little by little over the 18th century, with some of her paintings being attributed to others. She is best known for her paintings on Port-Royal, especially since many of her paintings at the Tuileries have disappeared and most of her work at Versailles was destroyed in the construction of the Galerie des Glaces.

Works Salon of 1673: six paintings of trophies and one still life of fruits Salon of 1704: one still life of fruits, one still life of musical instruments Versailles, château, above the door to the antechamber of the Grand Couvert, 1673

Notes and sources

Caix de Saint-Aymour, Une famille d’artistes et de financiers : les Boullongne, Paris, Henri Laurens, 1919. Notice sur le site de la Société Internationale pour l’Étude des Femmes de l’Ancien Régime (SIEFAR) Dictionnaire de Port-Royal, sous la direction de Jean Lesaulnier et Anthony McKenna, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2004. Michel Faré, Le Grand Siècle de la nature morte, le XVIIe siècle, Paris, Fribourg, 1974, p. 245-9.