Marie Guillemine Benoist Portrait Of A Lady

While visiting the San Diego Museum of Art I chose to examine the artwork Portrait of a Lady, by Marie-Guillemine Benoist which was painted in 1799. The artist of this painting was a frequent salon contributer after the Paris Salon began to allow female artists to submit their own artwork. Benoist often paints portraits of varius people in the same fashion with oil on canvas. Portrayed in this artwork is a woman wrapped in a gold shawl with a soft and pleasant face. The woman grasping her gold shawl wears a white silk dress with blue ribbon wrapped around her waist and a blue ribbon tie in her hair. The artist rendered the woman to feel so friendly and warm, but adds a sense of power to her at the same time. From a painted woman on a canvas,
The artwork brings a woman into view who seems to have an immense strength to her. Her right arm looks like the focal point and is the center of the painting, her arm is the brightest part of the painting. The arm itself doesn’t look weak but looks full of strength as it grips her gold cloth. The artist made her head slightly tilted up along with her eyes so that the person viewing the piece will be looking up at her in admiration just as I did. It confused me that a painting of a woman wearing only two items on her and just a slight smirk on her face could bring upon me a feeling of strength, dependability, admiration, and holiness. The artist is very successful at bringing forth its message into the viewer. Most artist unlike Benoist include multiple items in their paintings such as: books, clocks, or dogs to bring forth a meaning so it will be apparent to the viewer. But Benoist makes us think about the simply painted woman staring away from us with only a dress and a shawl wrapped around her. She skillfully gave us emotions to recognize without having to forcefully shove it in our face. Benoist masterfully rendered this artwork along with many other portraits which I examined online for
I noticed that Portrait of a Lady and Portrait of a Negress both have a woman that seems to be kind yet powerful. The women in the paintings are of different race but still bring the same feelings to me. After examining one of Benoist’s paintings, Portrait of Napoleona Elise Baciocchi I felt no connection between itself and Portrait of a Lady. Napoleona seems dead in the face and is just staring blankly back at me. Her hair in this piece feels lopsided and uneven unlike the “Lady’s” hair in Portrait of a Lady. Then we move onto Self Portrait Painting David’s Belisarius which also feels awkward in the facial region and seems rather gross to myself. Her hair seems to be done as well as of that in Portrait of a Lady but her skin has a pinkish tone to it and does not bring the same warmth to me as the “Lady”. One of the last paintings I examined by Benoist was Portrait of Baron Larrey which was a portrait of a man who actually stares a bit to his left and not centered like the two previous paintings. Baron Larrey feels more similar to Portrait of a Lady even though they are of the opposite sex. Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s portrait paintings all seem to still bring the sense of admiration to themselves even though they may all not be