Caroline Swagers (1808-1877) - Portrait Of A Woman In A Bonnet

Oil on canvas. Original canvas. Signed and dated. In the heart of 19th-century Paris, amidst the turmoil of revolutions and the lingering scent of turpentine emanating from the family workshops, the figure of Caroline Swagers (1808-1877) flourished, a painter who inherited not only a name, but also a way of breathing through pigments. Daughter of the Dutch landscape painter Frans Swagers and the virtuoso miniaturist Élisabeth Méri, Caroline grew up in an environment where observation was cultivated even before speech. She watched as her mother, a student of the legendary Augustin and Labille-Guiard, captured the immensity of the human soul on the smallest surface of an ivory plaque. Her training was discreet, an apprenticeship in techniques passed down within the intimacy of the home, transforming her house into a veritable private academy, defying the veto of the École des Beaux-Arts. There, she distilled the precision of her mother's brushstrokes and the Nordic melancholy of her father's painting style. From 1831 onward, Caroline defied the conventions of the time by exhibiting regularly at the Paris Salon, transforming her canvases and miniatures into windows onto the psychology of the bourgeoisie and aristocracy of the July Monarchy. Works such as *The Young Coquette* tell stories of seduction through the blushing of skin, while her *Portrait of a Lady at a Mirror* departs from vanity to offer a silent, existential dialogue with oneself. She even ventured into historical romanticism with pieces like *Mary Stuart Walking to the Scaffold*, where she captured the tragic dignity of the Queen of Scots, demonstrating a versatility that transcended the limitations imposed on women artists of her time. With the decline of miniature painting brought about by the advent of photography in the 1850s, Caroline retreated to the private sphere, remaining loyal to a clientele that still appreciated the luxury of the handmade and the warmth that a daguerreotype could not offer. Her works, now held in institutions such as the Musée Garinet and the Musée Antoine-Lécuyer, bear witness to a technical mastery that overcame the barriers of a male-dominated world. At her death in 1877, Caroline Swagers closed a page of elegance and precision, leaving behind a legacy of faces that time refuses to forget, forever engraved in the chromatic memory of France.- Dimensions of the image without frame: 72 x 90 cm / 87 x 105 cm with an exclusive custom-made antique frame.