A young woman leaning on the edge of a window
(Une jeune femme appuyée sur le bord d’une croisée)
(c. 1798-1799)
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
(195.6 × 137.5 cm)
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Gift of Krystyna Campbell-Pretty AM and Family through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2022
Gallery location
17th to 18th Century European Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
Born into a middle-class family in Paris in 1754, Marie Victoire Lemoine was to share her passion for painting with two of her sisters, Marie Élisabeth and Marie Denise, and with her cousin Jeanne Élisabeth Chaudet. A young woman leaning on the edge of a window was first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1799. It depicts a fashionable woman of the type known at the time as a merveilleuse (marvellous one). She is wearing a lightly flowing, sheer and sleeveless muslin tunic, cinched under the bosom instead of the waist in emulation of how women in ancient Greece were believed to have dressed. Women who dressed like this in the late 1790s delighted and scandalised Parisian society in equal measure.
Artwork Details
Place/s of Execution
Paris, France
Inscription
inscribed in black paint l.r.: M...Vic’… / Lemoine
Accession Number
2022.1527
Department
International Painting