Miniature self-portrait of Marie-Thérèse de Noireterre (c. 1786)
Marie Thérèse de Noireterre (1760-1823) was a French miniaturist.
Biography
She was born in 1760 in Paris as daughter of Etienne Charles de Noiretterre and sister of Valentin de Noiretterre, niece of
Claude Bornet [
fr] ’s wife and perhaps cousin of
Guillaume Voiriot ’s brother-in-law. She was one of
Adélaïde Labille-Guiard ’s female pupils as
Marie-Gabrielle Capet (1761 - 1818) and she showed miniatures in the Salon de la Correspondance in 1786 and 1787 and in the
Salon (Paris) from 1791 to 1803. Her autoportrait at the 1787 exhibition was previously shown in
London, as her reception piece at the
Society of Artists in 1785 where she appeared, as “Mlle de Noireterre, Paris”. Encouraged by the Society’s corresponding member in Paris,
Charles-Étienne Gaucher (1740 – 1804) whom she portrayed in miniature, as well as his wife, she applied for membership in november 1786 in a letter, and was elected unanimously. She lived in Paris first at 25, rue Mazarine and then 290, rue St Honorè. An inventory in the Archives nationales suggests the date of her death on May 2, 1823.[1]
Among the famous sitters of her miniatures we can remember:
Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754 – 1838),
Count Louis Henri Loison [
fr] (1771 – 1816),
Francois Guillame Ducrai Dumenil [
fr] (1761 – 1819),
Marie Salmon and many others.[2][3]
Artwork
Her drawing is faultless and she captures the sitter's expression in representing its inner psychological dimension. But the most amazing feature of this work is the great attention of particulars and the sense of realism in the definition of the faces wonderfully modeled through a delicate game of nuances. She used a yellowish colouring with greenish shades and the sitter's darkly underlined eyelashes and dull colours.[4][5]
^Dictionnaire International Peintres Miniaturistes, Peintres Sur Porcelaine, Silhouettistes, Harry Blattel, Harry Blättel, Arts & Antiques Edition Munich, 1992
^Nathalie Lemoine Bouchard "Les peintres en miniature" Les Editions de l'Amateur, Paris, 2008