Henriette Lorimier

Elisabeth Henriette Marthe Lorimier, born in Paris on 7th of August 1775 and died on the 1st of April 1854, was a popular portraitist in Paris at the beginning of Romanticism.
She lived with the French diplomat and philhellene writer Francois Pouqueville (1770-1838).

Education and Inspiration

from 1800 to 1806 and from 1810 to 1814.
In 1805 Princess Caroline Murat-Bonaparte, a sister of the Emperor, purchased "La Chèvre Nourricière" a painting exhibited at the 1804 Salon and in 1806 Henriette Lorimier was awarded a First Class Medal for her painting of ""Jeanne de Navarre"" which was then purchased by the Empress Josephine de Beauharnais, consort of the Emperor Napoleon Ier. The painting is still displayed at Josephine's Chateau de la Malmaison to this day.

Parisian celebrity

Jeanne de Navarre

An article published in "l'Atheneum", however, confirmed the necessity of her remaining in the domain of genre painting: "We venture to promise her still greater success if she wants to confine herself to painting the sweet emotions of the soul, tender and delicate sentiments, in short, to represent scenes of domestic life, and leave to men historical subjects."

La chevre nourriciere

However, her first painting that was commented upon was "La Chèvre Nourricière" (The nursing goat) which represents a young mother who is unable to nurse her child, sadly watching a goat performing this service (partly visible in the background of her autoportrait on the top right). Critics claimed that this scene of maternal love and regret could only have been painted by a woman and confirmed the approprieteness of such subjects for women painters. This praise has to be considered in its context in 1804 and with the fact that the painting was purchased in 1805 by Caroline Bonaparte, wife of Prince Murat, and that, obviously, Henriette Lorimier and her paintings were projected in the limelight of Paris at the time of "l'Empire".
This rise in celebrity culminated with the purchase of her second painting by the Empress herself in 1807!

Artistic and intellectual social life

At that time, Henriette Lorimier met Francois Pouqueville who had just returned from his adventures as a prisoner of the Ottoman Empire, and she concentrated on studying and perfecting her painting technique until she felt ready again to exhibit her newer work by 1810.
The couple was frequently seen in the various "salons" where the intellectual and artistic gentry of Paris was meeting, notably at the Comtesse de Segur's salon. They befriended many influential figures of the Empire and of the Restauration, such as Chateaubriand, Alexandre Dumas, Ingres, Arago, and David d'Angers, to name but a few.

Works

ome portraits by Henriette Lorimier

"Mme de Margolis
musée de Grenoble"

"Luthier Nicolas Lupot
musée de la musique

"Marquise de Reinepont
1817"

"Madame Desmarets
1807"

Bibliography

* Magnin, Un Cabinet d'un amateur parisien en 1922 - Peintures et dessins de l'école française, sculptures, II, Paris, 1922 (n° 474 repr. (Haudebourg-Lescot)
* Magnin, Musée Magnin. Peintures et dessins de l'école française, Dijon, 1938 (n° 498 (attribué à Haudebourg-Lescot)
* F. Pupil, Le style troubadour, Nancy, 1985 (p. 501 (H. Lorimier)
* A. Pougetoux, "Peinture troubadour, histoire et littérature : autour de deux tableaux des collections de l'Impératrice Joséphine", Revue du Louvre, n° 2, 1994, p. 51-60 (p. 53, fig. 2 (H. Lorimier)
* A. Pougetoux, "Un autoportrait d'Henriette Lorimier", Bulletin de la société des amis des musées de Dijon, n° 1, 1995, p. 47-51" (p. 47-51, fig. 1 (H. Lorimier)
* I. Julia et J. Lacambre, dans cat. exp. Les années romantiques, Nantes, Paris, Plaisance, 1995-1996 (p. 468 (répertoire Haudebourg-Lescot)
* L. Starcky, Les Peintures françaises, catalogue sommaire illustré, Dijon musée Magnin, préface d'Emmanuel Starcky, avec la participation d'Hélène Isnard, Paris 2000 (n° 340, p. 134 repr. (H. Lorimier)
* Denton, Margaret, "A Woman's Place: The gendering of genre in post-revolutionary French Painting, History, 21, 1998, p.219-246
* Gabet, Charles, Dictionnaire des artistes de l'école française au XIXe siècle, Paris, 1831, p.457
* Oppenheimer, Margaret, Women Artists in Paris: 1791-1814, Ph. D. dissertation, Institute of Fine Arts, New York,199
* Les Chefs d'oeuvre du Musée de Grenoble