DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0105
ACADEMICIAN
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to do with that business, but in France a woman has no other standing
than that of her husband. The Queen honours by her kindness Madame
Lebrun, who merits it, not only by her talents, but also by her
conduct. Her Majesty has done me the honour of asking me if there
is not some means, without breaking the statute, and while preserving
all its force, to gain admittance for Madame Lebrun into that body, which
it is well to sustain in all the exactitude and the rigour of the statutes,
above all, since Your Majesty has granted freedom to the arts. I have
had the honour to reply that the protection with which Her Majesty
honoured Madame Lebrun fell upon a subject sufficiently distinguished
to make an exception in her favour rather a confirmation than an
infraction of the law, if it were based upon that honourable protection,
and that Your Majesty would be able to authorise it by a formal act.
“ I therefore beg Your Majesty to give me directions, and to order that
in future the number of women who can be admitted into the Academy
shall be restricted to four. That number is sufficient to recognise talent,
women never being able to assist the progress of the arts, because the
modesty of their sex makes it impossible for them ever to study from
nature and in the public school established and founded by Your Majesty.”
The composer of this document must surely have written with a smile
on his lips. It is one of the finest examples of “ special pleading” ever
seen, not surpassed by the reasoning of the learned brother concerning
the father’s will, in A Tale of a Tub. Because the statute was so
excellent, it was to be safeguarded by being flagrantly disregarded. There
were already three women members, and as four was the exact number
that ought to represent feminine talent, Madame Lebrun ought at once
to be let in.
In the last lines of M. d’Angiviller’s petition, “ nature,” which meant
still-life and fully-dressed friends when Elisabeth Vigee and Rosalie Bocquet
worked together as children, evidently implies the nude model, unless the
“ and” after nature is a slip, and the impossibility was merely that of men
and women studying together.
The tortuous reasoning of M. d’Angiviller convinced the King, who
was glad to do anything he could to please his wife, and in the minutes of
the Academy of Painting for the meeting of May 31 the swallowing of the
royal pill by that body is thus recorded : “ The Academy, executing with
profound respect the orders of its sovereign, has received the demoiselle
4i
to do with that business, but in France a woman has no other standing
than that of her husband. The Queen honours by her kindness Madame
Lebrun, who merits it, not only by her talents, but also by her
conduct. Her Majesty has done me the honour of asking me if there
is not some means, without breaking the statute, and while preserving
all its force, to gain admittance for Madame Lebrun into that body, which
it is well to sustain in all the exactitude and the rigour of the statutes,
above all, since Your Majesty has granted freedom to the arts. I have
had the honour to reply that the protection with which Her Majesty
honoured Madame Lebrun fell upon a subject sufficiently distinguished
to make an exception in her favour rather a confirmation than an
infraction of the law, if it were based upon that honourable protection,
and that Your Majesty would be able to authorise it by a formal act.
“ I therefore beg Your Majesty to give me directions, and to order that
in future the number of women who can be admitted into the Academy
shall be restricted to four. That number is sufficient to recognise talent,
women never being able to assist the progress of the arts, because the
modesty of their sex makes it impossible for them ever to study from
nature and in the public school established and founded by Your Majesty.”
The composer of this document must surely have written with a smile
on his lips. It is one of the finest examples of “ special pleading” ever
seen, not surpassed by the reasoning of the learned brother concerning
the father’s will, in A Tale of a Tub. Because the statute was so
excellent, it was to be safeguarded by being flagrantly disregarded. There
were already three women members, and as four was the exact number
that ought to represent feminine talent, Madame Lebrun ought at once
to be let in.
In the last lines of M. d’Angiviller’s petition, “ nature,” which meant
still-life and fully-dressed friends when Elisabeth Vigee and Rosalie Bocquet
worked together as children, evidently implies the nude model, unless the
“ and” after nature is a slip, and the impossibility was merely that of men
and women studying together.
The tortuous reasoning of M. d’Angiviller convinced the King, who
was glad to do anything he could to please his wife, and in the minutes of
the Academy of Painting for the meeting of May 31 the swallowing of the
royal pill by that body is thus recorded : “ The Academy, executing with
profound respect the orders of its sovereign, has received the demoiselle