Picture this: Marie Benoist

Marie Guillemine Benoist (1768-1826) was a painter right in the breaking point between traditional and modern art. She was a student of the great Jacques-Louis David, something that can be seen in her painting style as well as in her perspective and choice of motives.

Portrait of a black woman (1800) is a very special painting. It is one of the first portraits of real existing african person in western art. The earlier paintings of black people were mostly style studies or symbols. The same is true for pictures of women from this time period, as shown by for example Delacroix’s famous Freedom Leads The People (1830).

Benoists painting, on the contrary, is very much a fully matured portrait of a real modell. There is most probably a political undertone in it. Perhaps Benoist was making a connection between the French abolishing of slavery in 1794, and the struggle for women’s rights. But it’s the artists personal relation to the motive that makes it great art.

Picture this is a standing feature in weekly journal Flamman.