Adèle de Romance, peintre libre. The Art of portrait

First monographic exhibition devoted to Adèle de Romance, the small retrospective at the Musée Fragonard continues the cycle dedicated to women artists of the same generation as Marguerite Gérard, the leading painter represented in its permanent collection. It was launched in 2023 with a remarkable first instalment focusing on the Lemoine sisters and their cousin Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet (see the article), already curated by art historian Carole Blumenfeld, a specialist in genre painting and portraiture from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth century, who clearly has a gift for uncovering forgotten figures.

Faced with biographical sources riddled with errors and an almost entirely silent French bibliography, the task was a daunting one — particularly since the artist used various surnames that only added to the confusion, born “de Romance” before appearing in the Salon under the names “Romance”, “Romany”, “Romani”, “Romanée”, “Romany-de-Romance” or “AR”. Thanks to extensive research and the study of previously unpublished archival material — some of which is transcribed in the appendices to the exhibition catalogue — the curator has produced one of the clearest biographies to date and enhanced our understanding of the corpus associated with the artist, revealing previously unknown paintings as well as new attributions and identifications.