Genevieve de Boullongne

Entry by Sandrine Lely, 2003

Geneviève de Boullongne was born in Paris, where she was baptized on August 22, 1645, and died in Aix-en-Provence on August 5, 1708. Like all her siblings, she studied painting with her father Louis de Boullongne (1609-1674), one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. On December 7, 1669, she and her sister Madeleine were admitted to the academy, Geneviève thanks to a painting of a "large vase full of diverse flowers, and a Damascus rug" (since lost). Her reception piece, produced jointly with Madeleine, was a "group of several drawings of figures drawn from life, and some of Architecture" (lost some time before the French Revolution). From 1673 until at least 1675, she worked on the castle at Versailles, then under construction, decorating the Royal Apartments in particular. At the 1673 Salon, Geneviève exhibited a Landscape.

In 1680 (the marriage contract is dated September 20) Geneviève married a fellow member of the royal academy, the Provençal sculptor Jean-Jacques Clérion, who died in 1714. The couple had two children, Geneviève (1681-1684) and Jacques-François (1686-1689). Although they were based in Paris, they frequently traveled to Marseilles and Aix-en-Provence, where Clérion continued to receive commissions regularly. There are no extant works by Geneviève de Boullongne, who specialized in flowers and landscapes. The trophies of arms still in place in the Queen's Apartments are often held to be by both Geneviève and Madeleine, but the catalog of the 1673 Salon and the inventory of the king's paintings carried out in 1709-10 by Nicolas Bailly attribute them to Madeleine alone.

(translated by Susan Pickford)

Works

- v. 1669 : Un grand vase rempli de diverses fleurs et un tapis de Damas, disparu.
- v. 1670 : Amas de plusieurs dessins de figures faits d'après le modèle et quelques-uns d'architecture, peint avec sa soeur Madeleine, morceau de réception à l'Académie, disparu.
- v. 1673 : Paysage, salon de 1673, disparu.

Selected bibliography

- Boyer, Jean. «La peinture et la gravure à Aix-en-Provence aux XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles». Gazette des Beaux-Arts, t. LXXVIII, 1971, p.36-37, 91-92.
- Faré, Michel. Le Grand Siècle de la nature morte en France: le XVIIe siècle. Fribourg, Office du Livre, 1974, p.245-248.
- Loire, Stéphane. «Le Salon de 1673». Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de l'Art français, 1992, p.60.
- Petteys, Chris. Dictionary of Women Artists, Boston, G. K. Hall, 1985.
- Rivet, Jean. «Louis de Boulogne d'après les sources contemporaines». Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de l'Art français, 1997, p.137.