Marie denise villers biography

French artist (1774–1821)

Marie-Denise Villers (née Lemoine; 1774 – 19 August 1821) was a French painter who specialized in portraits.

Life

Marie-Denise Lemoine was born in Paris to Charles Lemoine and Marie-Anne Rouselle. Two of her three sisters, Marie-Victoire Lemoine (1754–1820) and Marie-Élisabeth Gabiou (1755–1812), as well as distant cousin Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet (1767–1832), were all trained as portraitists.

Sir john tenniel

Within her family, Marie-Denise was known as "Nisa." The family lived on the Rue Traversière-Saint-Honoré (today Rue Molière) near the Palais Royal in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. Little is known about Marie-Denise's childhood, however it is likely that through her much older sisters and cousin she would have been introduced to the salons of Paris.

It was in the Paris Salon of 1799 that she met the artist Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, and also began to take painting lessons with François Gérard and Jacques-Louis David.^[citation