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| Portrait of Victoria Dubourg by Edgar Degas |
"Victoria Dubourg, Henri Fantin-Latour's wife, trained privately in the studio of artist Fanny Chéron (born 1830) and established her independent practice in Paris by the early 1860s. Archival records place Dubourg at the Louvre in 1866, when she received an 800 franc commission from the Ministry of Fine Arts to execute a replica of Pietro da Cortona’s 17th-century painting 'Virgin and Child with Saint Martina.'
This assignment coincided with an extensive arts initiative undertaken during the reign of Napoleon III to expand and reorganize the Louvre’s collection. As part of the state’s oversight, the institution’s holdings were copied and sent to churches and administrative offices throughout the country. Dubourg later fulfilled a similar request to copy Titian’s 'Pilgrims of Emmaus,' 16th or 17th century, no doubt granting her some financial independence to study and copy artworks in the Louvre’s collection for her own personal development.
The Louvre provided a gateway to art history outside the confines of a formal educational body. This proved advantageous to emerging female artists like Dubourg, who were not eligible for admission into the École des Beaux-Arts until 1897. Crucially, the museum also provided a rare forum for women - whose training was typically conducted in a very private setting - to form connections with fellow artists whom they painted alongside.
In 1869 Dubourg met her future husband and collaborator, Henri Fantin-Latour, while both were copying Correggio’s 'The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria.' Perhaps their encounter was inevitable, as both socialized with a circle of progressive artists that frequented the museum, including Édouard Manet (1832–1883), a guest at their 1875 nuptials, Berthe Morisot (1841–1895), and Edgar Degas (1834–1917).
Modern study of Dubourg’s production has been somewhat limited and has often explored her biography through that of her husband, whose works Dubourg fastidiously documented in a catalogue raisonné published in 1918, seven years after Fantin’s death. They shared a studio space at 8 Rue des Beaux-Arts in Paris and together sourced fresh blooms to paint from the family estate in Buré, Normandy (which Dubourg inherited from an uncle).
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| "Flowers" by Victoria Dubourg |
Though Dubourg and Fantin-Latour developed a similar style from working side by side, Dubourg signed the prodigious number of pictures she displayed at the annual Paris Salon and other international art exhibitions with her maiden name, perhaps in an effort to hold on to a discrete artistic identity.
Victoria Dubourg exhibited at the Salon in Paris from 1869, then at the Salon of French artists and at the Royal Academy in London, of which she was a member like her husband. In Paris, she obtained an honorable mention in 1894 and a medal in 1895. She was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1920."
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