ADELAIDE VINCENT.
Adelaide Vertus Labille was born in Paris in 1749, and received her earliest lessons in painting in that city, from J. E. Vincent, of Geneva. This artist had come to Paris a short time before her birth, had gained consideration as a painter of miniature portraits, and was received a member of the Academy. Adelaide’s teacher in pastel-painting was at first Latour; but when the son of her childhood’s master—François Antoine Vincent, who had shared her studies in his father’s atelier, as a boy, three years older than herself—came back to Paris, she determined to join him both in the pursuit of art and the journey of life. Her first husband had been M. Guyard; her second was the younger Vincent.
Adelaide painted a great number of portraits, among which those of artists were most noted. One of these—the portrait of the sculptor Gois—won the prize offered by the Academy, and gained for the fair artist such celebrity that even the works of her famous rival Madame Le Brun were thought inferior to it.
A distinguished mark of appreciation was the appointment of Madame Vincent as regular member of the Academy; this took place on the 31st March, 1781. When the storm of the Revolution burst upon France she adhered to the party of her husband, whose attachment to the royal family caused him to live in continual hostility with the republican painter David. One of her works was a large picture, in which the figures were of life size, representing herself before the easel, and her pupils around her; among them Mademoiselle Capet, the Duchess of Angoulême, and several other members of the royal family, by whom she was greatly esteemed and frequently employed.
Another of her greatest productions represents the reception of a member into the Order of St. Lazarus, by Monsieur, the king’s brother, grand master of the order, who had given her the appointment of court painter. This picture was destroyed during the Revolution, and its loss caused the artist so much vexation that she would rarely touch the brush afterward. Among her subsequent productions, a portrait of her husband was celebrated at the time.
This accomplished woman, crowned with honors by her contemporaries, both as an artist and in social life, and esteemed by a large circle of friends, died in 1803.