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A painting by Rachel Ruysch and Michiel van Musscher for the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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18/5/23 - Acquisition - New York, Metropolitan Museum - At a time when American and European museums have made the acquisition of female artists a top priority, the European Paintings department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art can point with pride to their holdings by female old masters, most of them gifted or bequeathed. Among them is a major Artemisia Gentileschi of Esther Swooning before Ahasueras, three recently bequeathed pictures by the seventeenth century nun Orsola Maddalena Caccia (see the news item of 15/1/21), a small portrait by Lavinia Fontana, a sumptuous floral still life by the rare Margareta Haverman, part of the museums first painting purchase of 1871, a small flower-piece by Anne-Vallayer Coster, The Interior of the Studio of a Female Painter by Marie-Victoire Lemoine (1957), Rose Ducreux’ Self-Portrait With Harp (1966), four fine portraits by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, and the spectacular Self-portrait with the artists pupils Marie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard which when offered to the Louvre as a gift in 1878 was rejected as being of “insufficient merit”. It is worth mentioning that two fine portraits given to the Met as by Jacques-Louis David have been reattributed to Marie Guillelmine Benoist and Marie Denise Villers, the latter’s haunting Marie Joséphine Charlotte du Val d’Ognes sketching, which, regardless of authorship, is one of the most popular pictures in the museum.

Clara Peeters exquisite Still Life with a Vase of Flowers (see the news item of 24/3/20), and Still Life with a Vase of Flowers, Melon, Peaches, and Grapes (see the news item of 31/8/22) by Charlotte Eustache Sophie de Fuligny Damas, marquise de Grollier (purchased respectively in 2020 and 2022) are especially welcome as the Met’s collection of old master still-lives is surprisingly paltry. The aforementioned Margareta Haverman [1] and a Flowers in a Stoneware Jug by Jacob Vosmaer (also part of the museums ‘1871…

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