Portrait of the Artist at Work. Painting Self-Portraits in Late Eighteenth-Century France
Abstract
In this text, I study the practice of painted self-portraiture in late eighteenth-century France, with a focus on the social and material conditions that could lead artists to depict themselves. Then, I examine self-portraiture as practiced by women in the context of the unprecedented process of feminization the Parisian art world was then undergoing – one of the consequences of which was, precisely, the sudden vogue for images of women at their easels.