Social Sharing

Portrait of Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland

1791

Elisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun

Curator Emily Beeny, radio journalist Hana Baba, and poet Devorah Major on “Portrait of Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland”
Gallery 16

Narrator: Set against a stormy sky, her hair cascading over bare shoulders, this woman is portrayed more informally than was usual in 1791. Partly that’s because she herself was unconventional. Hyacinthe Roland had been a Parisian actress. She was now a mother of several children with a British aristocrat, and not yet married to him.
But it’s also because of the remarkable artist, Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun. In 1791, both women were in Rome along with others fleeing the French Revolution. Back in Paris, the royal family was already in prison, awaiting execution.
Chief curator Emily Beeny:
Beeny: The reason why Vigee needs to get out of town at the beginning of the Revolution is that she was the official painter to Queen Marie Antoinette.
Vigée-Le Brun was the most highly paid portraitist in France in the years before the Revolution. She was a major celebrity, she was a rare female member of the French Academy. And I think was particularly good at striking up intimacies with her female sitters that allowed her to draw out individual character in a very special way.
Narrator: Poet devorah major:
Major: And that's really what Vigée-Le Brun was known for - she wanted to not do these stiff portraits of women, but rather to reflect the way a woman was, you know, in her truth. I think that that is what Vigée-Le Brun captured in this: that this woman is a free spirit.

Vigée Le Brun was among the most successful French portraitists of the eighteenth century and a rare female member of the Royal Academy. At the outbreak of the Revolution, she was forced to flee Paris, having served as first painter to the queen. Settling in Rome, she established a thriving practice portraying emigrés and expatriates, among them the sitter for this portrait. Hyacinthe-Gabrielle Roland (1766-1816) had been an actress at the Comédie Française before the revolution. In Rome, she became the lover–and later the wife–of a British aristocrat, the First Marquess Wellesley of Norragh. Windswept and free of extraneous ornament, the portrait exemplifies the engagingly informal style that Vigée adopted in Italy.

Curator Emily Beeny, radio journalist Hana Baba, and poet Devorah Major on “Portrait of Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland”
Gallery 16

Narrator: Set against a stormy sky, her hair cascading over bare shoulders, this woman is portrayed more informally than was usual in 1791. Partly that’s because she herself was unconventional. Hyacinthe Roland had been a Parisian actress. She was now a mother of several children with a British aristocrat, and not yet married to him.
But it’s also because of the remarkable artist, Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun. In 1791, both women were in Rome along with others fleeing the French Revolution. Back in Paris, the royal family was already in prison, awaiting execution.
Chief curator Emily Beeny:
Beeny: The reason why Vigee needs to get out of town at the beginning of the Revolution is that she was the official painter to Queen Marie Antoinette.
Vigée-Le Brun was the most highly paid portraitist in France in the years before the Revolution. She was a major celebrity, she was a rare female member of the French Academy. And I think was particularly good at striking up intimacies with her female sitters that allowed her to draw out individual character in a very special way.
Narrator: Poet devorah major:
Major: And that's really what Vigée-Le Brun was known for - she wanted to not do these stiff portraits of women, but rather to reflect the way a woman was, you know, in her truth. I think that that is what Vigée-Le Brun captured in this: that this woman is a free spirit.

Artist: Elisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun
Title: Portrait of Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland
Date: 1791
Place of Creation: Lazio
Object Type: Painting
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 39 x 29 1/2 in. (99.1 x 74.9 cm)
Credit Line: Museum purchase, Mildred Anna Williams Collection, Bequest Fund of Henry S. Williams in memory of H.K.S. Williams
Accession Number: 1991.29

The sitter, Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland (later Marchioness Wellesley) (1760?-1816), United Kingdom
By descent to her daughter Hyacinthe Mary Littleton, Lady Hatherton (1789?-1849), Teddesley Hall, Staffordshire, United Kingdom
Hatherton family, Teddesley Hall, Staffordshire, United Kingdom, until the 1930s
Lord Sanderson of Ayot (1894-1971), by 1964
Sold, London, Christie’s, June 26, 1964, lot 74
[Duits Ltd., London, by 1965] [1]
[Schaeffer Galleries, New York, by 1967] [2]
[M. Wildenstein] [3]
Elizabeth Parke Firestone (1897–1990), Newport, Rhode Island
Her sale, New York, Christie’s, March 22, 1991, lot 654
[Purchased by Guy Sainty] [4]
[Colnaghi, New York]
Sold to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1991

[1] Duits, Quarterly 9, no. 9 (Winter 1965): 12.
[2] [3] Per Christie’s 1991, p. 110.
[4] Per curatorial note, object file, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
New York, Stair Sainty Matthiesen; London, Matthiesen Fine Art, Autumn 1991. “Eighty years of French painting: from Louis XVI to the Second Republic,” no. 5.

Canberra, Australia National Gallery, November 14, 1992–January 31, 1993; Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, February 19–May 10, 1993; Auckland City Art Gallery, June 5–August 29, 1993. “Rembrandt to Renoir: European Masterpieces from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco,” no. 49.

Paris, Grand Palais, September 23, 2015–January 11, 2016; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 15–May 15, 2016; Ottawa, Musée des Beaux–Arts du Canada, June 10–September 11, 2016. “Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France,” no. 48.
Vigée-Le Brun, Élisabeth, Souvenirs de Madame Louise–Élisabeth Vigée–Lebrun:
de l'Académie Royale de Paris, de Rouen, de Saint–Luc de Rome et d'Arcadie, de Parme et de Bologne, de Saint–Pétersbourg, de Berlin, de Genève et Avignon, vol. 2, Paris: H. Fournier, 1835, pgs. 39, 368.

Nolhac, Pierre de, Madame Vigée–Le Brun: Peintre de la reine Marie–Antoinette, Paris: Goupil & Cie., 1908, pg. 94.

Nolhac, Pierre de, Madame Vigée–Le Brun: Peintre de Marie–Antoinette, Paris: Goupil & Cie., 1912, pg. 162.

Helm, W.H., Vigée–LeBrun: 1755– 1842, Her Life, Works, and Friendships, Boston: Small, Maynard and Co., 1915, pgs. 111, 219.

Blum, André, Madame Vigée–LeBrun; Peintres des Grandes Dames du XVIII Siècle, Paris: H. Piazza, 1919, pgs. 56, 100.

Duits, C., “Portrait of Mademoiselle Roland (Later the Marchioness Wellesley),” Duits Quarterly, no. 9 (Winter 1965), pgs. 11–16, repr. pg. 12.

Baillio, Joseph, “Vigée Le Brun and the Classical Practice of Imitation,” in Paris: Center of Artistic Enlightenment, eds. George Mauner, Jeanne Chenault Porter, et. al., University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1988, pg. 102, pg. 124, fig. 4–25.

Eighty years of French painting: from Louis XVI to the Second Republic, exh. cat., New York: Stair Sainty & London: Matthiesen Fine Art, 1991, pgs. 18–20, no. 5, repr.

Hassell, Christa von, “Sammlung Firestone, Christie’s New York,” Weltkunst, no. 9 (March 1991), pg. 1340, repr.

Stewart, Marion C., “Recent Acquisition: A Portrait by Vigée Le Brun.” Triptych, no. 61 (April–June 1992), pg. 24, repr., 25.

The Burlington Magazine 133, no. 1063 (October 1991), pg. xxxvi, repr.

Hall, Nicholas H.J., Colnaghi in America: A survey to Commemorate the First Decade of Colnaghi in New York, New York: Colnaghi, 1992, repr., n.p.

Wintermute, Alan, The French Portrait: 1550–1850, New York: Colnaghi, 1996, pg. 60, fig. 43, pg. 62.

Nash, Steven A., Lynn Federle Orr, and Marion C. Stewart, Masterworks of European Painting in the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1991, pg. 106, repr., entry by Marion C. Stewart.

Nash, Steven A., Lynn Federle Orr, and Marion Stewart, eds., Rembrandt to Renoir: European Masterpieces from The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, exh. cat., Canberra: Australian National Gallery, 1992, no. 49, repr., entry by Marion Stewart.

Bryant, Julius, Apsley House: The Wellington Collection, London: English Heritage, 2007, pg. 40, repr.

Elliot, Virgil, Traditional Oil Painting; Advanced Techniques and Concepts from the Renaissance to the Present, New York: Watson–Guptill, 2007, pg. 129, repr.

Brilliant, Virginia, ed., A history of taste: collecting French & Italian old master paintings for America, exh. cat., London: Robilant + Voena, 2010, pg. 78, fig. 1, pg. 80, entry by Mercier Kinney.

Gereben, Janos, “Who are those people in the paintings?,” The San Francisco Examiner, March 9, 2010, pg. 19, repr.

Baillio, Joseph, Katharine Baetjer, and Paul Lang, eds., Vigée Le Brun, exh. cat., New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016, pgs. 152, 153, repr., no. 48, entry by Stéphane Guégan.

Baillio, Joseph, “The Artistic and Social Odyssey of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun,” in Vigée Le Brun, exh. cat., New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016, pg. 25.

de Young

Legion of Honor

de Young

Legion of Honor

Portrait of Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland

Curator Emily Beeny, radio journalist Hana Baba, and poet Devorah Major on “Portrait of Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland”
Gallery 16

Curator Emily Beeny, radio journalist Hana Baba, and poet Devorah Major on “Portrait of Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland”
Gallery 16

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de Young

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Social Sharing

Curator Emily Beeny, radio journalist Hana Baba, and poet Devorah Major on “Portrait of Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland” Gallery 16

Transcript

Curator Emily Beeny, radio journalist Hana Baba, and poet Devorah Major on “Portrait of Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland” Gallery 16

Transcript

Provenance

Exhibition History

Bibliography

Scene from "The Mikado," with Louise Paullin, 1886

Lux Aeterna, 1914

The Road Near the Farm, 1871

Civil Rights Demonstration, 1963

Girl Dinner, 2023

Head of Persephone, early 1st century AD

The Adrian Panel, ca. 1690

Untitled, ca. 1957

Curator Emily Beeny, radio journalist Hana Baba, and poet Devorah Major on “Portrait of Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland”
Gallery 16

Curator Emily Beeny, radio journalist Hana Baba, and poet Devorah Major on “Portrait of Hyacinthe Gabrielle Roland”
Gallery 16