Marie-Victoire Lemoine
Marie-Victoire Lemoine was a French classicist painter.
Life
Born in Paris, Marie-Victoire Lemoine was the eldest daughter of four sisters to Charles Lemoine and Marie-Anne Rousselle. Her sisters, Marie-Denise Villers and Marie-Élisabeth Gabiou, also became painters. She was first cousins with Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet through her mother's side. Unlike her sisters, she remained unmarried and became one of the few women in contemporary art that made a living through painting.She was a student of François-Guillaume Ménageot in the early 1770s, with whom she lived and worked in a house acquired by the art dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun, next to the studio of Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun, France's leading woman painter. Ménageot was ten years older than Lemoine. From 1779, Marie-Victoire Lemoine lived in her parents' home until she moved in with her sister Marie-Elisabeth, where she remained even after her sister's death. She died six years after her last exhibition, aged sixty-six. At the time of her death, she only left 10 Francs in cash and clothing and linen valued at 181 Francs and 50 Centimes, which amounts to only US$ in cash and US$ for the clothing and linen in today's currency.