Marie guillemine benoist bio

Guest post by Paris A. Spies-Gans, Harvard Society of Fellows 

In July 2020, an oil painting appeared on the art market that had long been thought lost (fig.

1).

Marie guillemine benoist bio

A medium-sized canvas, 111 x 145 centimeters (3.6 x 4.7 feet), it depicted a sinuous woman in white, one arm in the air, parting from a group of mournful figures in classical attire. Two pairs of women stand entwined, another figure prays, and a crowned man holds his face in his hands.

Behind the bereaved group loom rocky crags and a clouded sky. This painting, portraying The Farewell of Psyche to her Family, had last appeared publicly in 1791, as part of the Louvre Salon debut of the painter Marie-Guillemine Benoist, b.

Leroulx-Delaville (1768–1826). The presiding auction house in Bordeaux estimated a hammer price of 45,000 to 60,000 euros, a reasonable enough guess for a little-known woman artist whose last auctioned canvas had garnered 114,884 euros in 2004.