Marie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond

Marie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Labille-Guiard was one of a small group of successful women artists working in France in the second half of the eighteenth century. She drew this study of the heads of her two students in preparation for her lifesize Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, which is in the Metropolitan Museum's European Paintings collection. Although the figures are full-length in the painting, this study focuses on the placement of the two heads, their proximity to one another, their crossed gazes, and the effects of light and shadow.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Marie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de RosemondMarie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de RosemondMarie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de RosemondMarie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de RosemondMarie Gabrielle Capet and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.