Figures of Conformity, Gestures of Distinction: Civility and Portraits of Women in France (1815-1848)
Creators: name: Gillet, Isabelle
Publisher: name: My University
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Civility
subject: Portraiture
subject: Nineteenth Century
subject: France
subject: Civility, during the post-revolutionary French monarchies, exerted new pressures on women's-self presentation as reflected in their portraits.
subject: Art History
subject: Arts

description: This dissertation examines portraits—almost exclusively of women—painted in France in the first half of the nineteenth century, when the country was undergoing dramatic changes as a result of the 1789 Revolution and subsequent political upheavals, both at home and abroad. Among the criteria that defined belonging to the new France was the somewhat amorphous notion of civility, composed of non-codified norms and practices of everyday behavior, from public and private conduct, to dress and demeanor. Civility functioned as a token of civil status, situating individuals within the republic—including those who did not enjoy the full rights and privileges of citizenship, such as women, foreigners, and people of color. In this dissertation, I explore the meaning of civility and pay attention specifically to its application to women. My project asks: how were they required to act or present themselves in order to be considered civil(ized), and how were these norms expressed through or reflected in their portraits? This generation of adults grew up under an entirely new set of legal frameworks—the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), the first Constitution (1791), and the Civil Code (1804)—which both granted and limited each individual’s liberties and duties. The frictions created by revolutionary ideals of equality, the emerging feminist movements, and post-revolutionary concepts of individualism constitute the underlying tensions of the era and the backdrop of my dissertation. The everchanging social and political realities of this period, I argue, resulted in a pressure toward conformity in portraiture, particularly for women; and created challenges for them and the artists in how to meet these expectations while still doing justice to the distinctness of particular sitters. My thesis thus addresses a paradox and difficulty of nineteenth-century portraiture: within a genre that is predicated on certain specificity, sitters and artists were called upon to suppress or restrict their individuality and subjugate it to the somewhat ambiguous parameters of civility. Although, as a result of these complex circumstances, the distinctiveness of portraits was often lost in the sea of uniformity, their homogeneity was strategic and revelatory of the era: it reflected the pressure to conform to the newly established norms of how one should look and act as part of the post-Revolutionary citizenry. The portrait’s emphasis shifted from conveying distinct individuals to showing them as representative and approved members of a given class or group. Even artists who were esteemed and commercially successful thanks to their particular styles tailored their portraits to the new norms. The artists examined are not necessarily household names today, such as Louise Bouteiller, Edouard and Claude-Marie Dubufe, Ary Scheffer, and Adèle Ferrand, but others are more well-known artists such as Eugène Delacroix, Hippolyte Flandrin, and Ingres. Complicating this picture further, I examine how encounters with French former or still coveted colonies contributed to shaping definitions and conceptions of (French) civility. In this context, civility, if properly constructed and enacted through a set of social behaviors and visual tropes, could make colonial subjects viable candidates for citizenship, which further anchors my discussion in the period’s complicated social, political, and legal contexts.