Marie-Thérèse Reboul (26 February 1735—4 January 1806), commonly called Madame Vien, was a French painter and engraver of natural history subjects, still lifes, and flowers. In 1757, Marie-Thérèse Reboul married the painter

Joseph-Marie Vien Joseph-Marie Vien (sometimes anglicised as Joseph-Mary Wien; 18 June 1716 – 27 March 1809) was a French painter. He was the last holder of the post of Premier peintre du Roi, serving from 1789 to 1791. Biography He was born in Montpellier ...

, who was nineteen years older. Nineteenth-century sources state that she was taught by her husband, but Joseph-Marie Vien's autobiography does not mention it. She may have been a student of Madeleine Françoise Basseporte. Prior to her marriage, Reboul-Vien engraved specimens for ''Sénégal: Coquillages'' (1757) by the French naturalist

Michel Adanson Michel Adanson (7 April 17273 August 1806) was an 18th-century French botanist and naturalist who traveled to Senegal to study flora and fauna. He proposed a "natural system" of taxonomy distinct from the binomial system forwarded by Linnaeus. ...

and ''Dissertation sur le papyrus'' (1758) by the French antiquarian

Anne Claude de Caylus Anne Claude de Tubières-Grimoard de Pestels de Lévis, ''comte de Caylus'', marquis d'Esternay, baron de Bransac (Anne Claude Philippe; 31 October, 16925 September 1765), was a French antiquarian, proto- archaeologist and man of letters. Born i ...

Reboul-Vien was one of only fifteen women to be accepted as full academicians in the 145-year history of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris. She was admitted in 1757, the same year in which she married Joseph-Marie Vien. It had been 37 years since the last woman,

Rosalba Carriera Rosalba Carriera (12 January 1673 – 15 April 1757) was a Venetian Rococo painter. In her younger years, she specialized in portrait miniatures. Carriera would later become known for her pastel portraits, helping popularize the medium in eigh ...

, became an academician. Reboul-Vien's husband was a prominent member of the Académie, which likely led to her acceptance. At the time, Reboul-Vien was described as "a painter of miniatures and gouaches specializing in flowers, butterflies and birds." Her

reception piece In art, a reception piece is a work submitted by an artist to an academy for approval as part of the requirements for admission to membership. The piece is normally representative of the artist's work, and the organization's judgement of its skil ...

was ''Two Pigeons Pigeons on a Tree Branch'', which she submitted to the Académie in 1762. She exhibited her works at the Salons of 1757, 1759, 1763, 1765, and 1767. These included watercolors of a hen with her chicks, a kestrel killing a small bird, a

golden pheasant The golden pheasant (''Chrysolophus pictus''), also known as the Chinese pheasant, and rainbow pheasant, is a gamebird of the order Galliformes (gallinaceous birds) and the family Phasianidae (pheasants). The genus name is from Ancient Greek ...

from China, a brooding pigeon, and a bird of prey following a butterfly. At the Salon of 1767,

Denis Diderot Denis Diderot (; ; 5 October 171331 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the '' Encyclopédie'' along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a promi ...

praised ''A Crested Hen Watching over Her Chicks'' as a "very handsome small painting" that was "painted with great vigor and coloristic truth ... Everything's right, including the bits of straw scattered around the hen." He concluded, more critically, "I'm surprised by her hen; I didn't think she was this accomplished." Even so, reviews of Reboul-Vien's works were mostly positive. Several of her works were acquired by Catherine the Great. By the late the nineteenth century, few of her watercolors could be located.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reboul, Marie-Therese 1738 births 1806 deaths French women painters 18th-century French painters 19th-century French painters French still life painters 19th-century French women artists 18th-century French women artists Painters from Paris