Portrait of Constance Pipelet
Jean-Baptiste-François Desoria (French, 1758–1832)
1797
View the original$19
Type
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Materials & printing
Archival matte paper, 189 g/m² (10.3 mil), sourced from Japan, printed with multicolor water-based inkjet so every brushstroke stays crisp. Framed prints arrive ready to hang in a .75″ ayous-wood frame with an acrylite front. Sized to standard frames by cropping, never stretching — at most about 3% comes off one edge, which isn’t noticeable on most pieces, and we only offer a size when it stays that small.
Shipping & returns
Made to order and delivered in 5–8 business days (2–4 to print, 3–4 in transit). US shipping only for now. Because each print is made for your order, all sales are final — but if it arrives damaged or defective, send us a photo within 14 days and we’ll replace it free. Full policy.
Why is it this affordable?
A thin, flat margin on every piece — just enough to keep the store running. Most of what you pay is the print itself. We only sell sizes that reproduce at full quality, and we don’t mark up the large sizes the way most shops do.
About this work
Painted in the aftermath of the French Revolution, Désoria’s Portrait of Constance Pipelet typifies the Neoclassical style of portraiture practiced by Jacques-Louis David and his circle. The figure, placed parallel to the picture plane and silhouetted against the bright blue of the sky, evokes antique relief sculpture. Her white cotton dress was the fashionable attire of middle- and upper-class women in the 1790s, its antique associations reflecting Neoclassical ideals and its simplicity echoing the egalitarian spirit of the new French Republic. Constance Pipelet, later Constance de Salm-Dyck, was a noted poet, librettist, and feminist with a salon that attracted the literary and artistic notables of Paris.
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 130 × 99.1 cm (51 1/4 × 39 in.)
Museum record · 2 owners · 8 exhibitions
Provenance
- Jacques Doucet (died 1929), Paris.
- Arnold Seligmann, Rey, and Co., New York, by 1939; sold to the Art Institute, 1939.
Exhibitions
- Paris, Salon of 1798 (Year VI of the Republic), Musée central des Arts, as Portrait de la citoyenne Pipelet.
- San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Vanity Fair: An Exhibition of Styles of Women's Headdress and Adornment through the Ages, 1942, as Portrait of Mme Elisabeth Dunoyer.
- Illinois, Decatur Art Center, Masterpieces of the Old and New World, 1948, as Mme Elizabeth Dunoyer.
- Detroit, Institute of Arts, French Painting from David to Courbet, 1950, as Portrait of Mme Elisabeth Dunoyer.
- Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, De David à Delacroix: La Peinture française de 1774 à 1830, 1974-75, traveled to Detroit and New York, as Madame Elisabeth Dunoyer.
- Chicago, Art Institute, Selected Works from Eighteenth-Century French Art in the Collections of The Art Insitute of Chicago, 1976, as Madame Elisabeth Dunoyer.
- New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Age of Napoleon: Costume from Revolution to Empire, 1789-1815, December 5, 1989-April 15, 1990 (no cat.).
- Northampton, Mass., Smith College Museum of Art, "The French Portrait: Revolution to Restoration," 2005, as Portrait of Constance Pipelet.
