Marie-Victoire Jaquotot

French, 1772 - 1855

BiographyMarie-Victoire Jaquotot (Paris 1772-1855 Paris) apprenticed with miniaturist painter Étienne-Charles Le Guay. She was twenty-two when she married him in 1794. They divorced(!) in 1801. In the same year, Jaquotot started working at the porcelain factory at Sèvres as a figure painter, the highest rank. Most women at the factory were flower painters. Around 1820, the Sèvres factory developed its own porcelain copying workshop within the Louvre Museum and Jaquotot gradually began working there, specializing in copies of paintings on porcelain. The interest in copying old master paintings was driven in part by the desire to capture the appearance of paintings before their (further) deterioration. Painting on porcelain, given that the paint is fused to the porcelain support during the firing process, promised to preserve colors, while colors in oil on canvas or panel deteriorated and changed over time.

Between 1808 and 1836, she regularly exhibited at the Paris Salon. In 1808 she won a gold medal, the first awarded for a painting on porcelain. A portrait she painted of Napoleon in 1813-14 was bought by him as a gift for Empress Josephine (Fondation Napoleon, Paris, inv. 654). Her work was noticed by Louis XVIII (reigned 1814-1815, 1815-1824) in 1816 during a visit to the factory. The King was presented with the copy she had made of Raphael's Belle Jardinière (Louvre, inv. RF 379, on loan to the National Ceramics Museum). The King is said to have expressed: “Madame, if Raphael lived, you would make him jealous.” The King rewarded her with the title of “first porcelain painter to the king.” This title granted her an annual pension of 1,000 francs and allowed her to open a studio in which she taught porcelain painting for nearly twenty years, including to many women (such as Marie-Adélaïde Ducluzeau [1787-1849], who would also become a painter in Sèvres). Jaquotot was the best-paid artist in France at that time. Charles X (reigned 1824-1830) maintained her service as “First painter on porcelain, of the King and of the Manufacture de Sèvres.” On a side note, Jaquotot also was a composer of music and several of her compositions survive.

Person TypeIndividual

Terms