Selbstbildnis mit zwei Schülerinnen

When Adelaide Labille-Guiard showed this at the Paris Salon of 1785, the Royal Academy admitted women but capped their number at four at any one time, and gave them no real teaching. She answers that quietly. She paints herself at the easel in a grand satin gown, palette in hand, turning to look out, while two of her students, Marie-Gabrielle Capet and Marie-Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond, lean in to watch her work. The message to visitors was plain, that a woman could both make ambitious pictures and train the next generation of women to do the same. Labille-Guiard spent years pressing the Academy to lift its limit on female members. Carreaux de Rosemond, the pupil at the back, would die just three years later.