Adèle Varillat

Adèle Tornézy-Varillat
Believed to be a self-portrait of Adèle Tornézy-Varillat
Born(1769-03-22)22 March 1769
Fontaine-Française, Côte-d'Or
Died1 December 1861(1861-12-01) (aged 92)
Paris

Adèle Tornézy-Varillat, née Anne Henriette Adélaïde Tornézy (1769–1861), was a French portraitist and genre painter active from the French First Republic into the early decades of the 19th century.

Life

Tornézy-Varillat was born on 22 March 1769 into an upper-middle-class family in Fontaine-Française. She was the daughter of Anne Claudine Thévenin and Jean-Baptiste Marie Tornézy, a lawyer before the sovereign court who was also holder of the office of royal tax collector in Besançon. Her godfather was canon of the King’s Sainte-Chapelle in Dijon.[1]

Her family’s resources enabled her to study art privately, first under the neoclassical painter Jean-Baptiste Regnault, and later with Guillaume Guillon-Lethière.[2][3] Tornézy-Varillat’s work was first shown at the Salon de Paris in 1795, where her name appeared as Citoyenne Tornézy, following the revolutionary practice of replacing titles with the republican “citizen”. Her studio at this time was on rue de Saint-Pierre in Montmartre.[4]

On the twelfth day of Brumaire, Year VI of the Republican calendar (6 November 1797) Tornézy married Claude-Joseph Varillat, a wine merchant.[5] The couple moved to a building behind the Louvre on rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, where Tornézy-Varillat occupied a fourth-floor studio until her husband's death in 1807. An inventory taken in May of that year recorded Tornézy-Varillat's working tools, including two easels, a box of paint, a set of plaster models, and two palettes.[5][6]

Following her husband’s death, Tornézy-Varillat's appears to have ceased her exhibition activities for close to a decade.

In 1817 she began showing at the Royal Academy, having settled in London on Great Castle-Street near Cavendish Square.[7] While in England, Tornézy-Varillat offered private painting lessons for young women, teaching figure painting in oils as well as miniature painting in watercolours. Classes were held at her studio for a fee of two guineas per month plus an entrance charge of half a guinea. Her advertisement in the Times described her as "a well-educated Parisian" from a "highly respectable circle of society".[8]

She exhibited at the Royal Academy until 1820 and had returned to Paris by 1833, when she was recorded living on the rue du Colombier in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.[3] Tornézy-Varillat remained active as an artist into her sixties, but few records survive concerning her later life. She died on 1 December 1861 at the institution Sainte-Périne in Paris at the age of 92 and was buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre.[9][10]

Exhibition history

Year Venue Work(s) Exhibited
1795 Paris Salon Portrait of a Woman (Portrait de femme)[11]
1798 (Thermidor, Year VI) Paris Salon Portrait of a Man, Oval (Portrait d'homme, ovale)[12]
1804 Paris Salon A Young Girl Trying to Read Her Fortune in a Daisy (Une jeune fille cherchant à lire son sort dans une reine-marguerite); A Young Woman Weeping Over Her Divorce (Une jeune femme pleurant sur son acte de divorce); A Young Woman Leaving the Baths (Une jeune femme sortant des bains)[13]
1806 Paris Salon The Satisfied Mother (La mère satisfaite); Portraits Under the Same Number (Portraits sous le même numéro)[14]
1817 Royal Academy, London Portrait of a Gentleman; Portrait of a Lady; Portrait of the Duc de Chartres[15]
1818 Royal Academy, London Portraits of a Lady and Her Daughter; The Recovery, or filial affection[16]
1819 Royal Academy, London Portrait of a Professor of the Harp[17]
1820 Royal Academy, London Portrait of a Lady[18]
1833 Paris Salon A Portrait of a Woman (Un portrait de femme)[19]

References

  1. ^ "Baptism of Adèle Anne Adélaïde Henriette de Tornézy". archives.cotedor.fr (in French). 1769-03-23. p. 268. Retrieved 2025-12-21.
  2. ^ Guiffrey, Jules (1871). Collection des livrets des anciennes expositions depuis 1673 jusqu'en 1800 (in French). Oxford University. Liepmannssohn et Dufour.
  3. ^ a b Naud, François (2004). 1830 - 1834 (in French). Librairie Droz. ISBN 978-2-900791-68-4.
  4. ^ "Salon (1795 ; Paris)". data.bnf.fr. Retrieved 2025-12-21.
  5. ^ a b "Anne Henriette Adélaïde, known as ... | Old Masters (before 1870): bids". drouot.com. Retrieved 2025-12-21.
  6. ^ Documents du Minutier central des notaires de Paris concernant l'histoire économique et sociale (1800-1830): inventaire (in French). Centre historique des Archives nationales. 1999. ISBN 978-2-86000-266-0.
  7. ^ "The exhibition of the Royal Academy, MDCCCXVII. (1817). The forty-ninth. | Exhibition Catalogues | RA Collection | Royal Academy of Arts". www.royalacademy.org.uk. Archived from the original on 2022-07-01. Retrieved 2025-12-21.
  8. ^ "Madame Varillat, known in London as a Portrait Painter". The Times. 1818-01-16. p. 1.
  9. ^ "Adèle Tornézy-Varillat death certificate, no.1756". archives.paris.fr. Paris, 8th arrondissement. p. 4. Retrieved 2025-12-21.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: location (link)
  10. ^ "Registres journaliers d'inhumation". archives.paris.fr. p. 11. Retrieved 2025-12-21.
  11. ^ "Salon (1795 ; Paris)". data.bnf.fr. Retrieved 2025-12-21.
  12. ^ Guiffrey, Jules (1871). Collection des livrets des anciennes expositions depuis 1673 jusqu'en 1800 (in French). Liepmannssohn et Dufour.
  13. ^ "Explication des ouvrages de peinture et dessins, sculpture, architecture et gravure des artistes vivans..." Gallica. 1804. Retrieved 2025-12-21.
  14. ^ "Explication des ouvrages de peinture et dessins, sculpture, architecture et gravure des artistes vivans..." Gallica. 1806. Retrieved 2025-12-21.
  15. ^ "The exhibition of the Royal Academy, MDCCCXVII". Royal Academy of Arts. Archived from the original on 2022-07-01. Retrieved 2025-12-21.
  16. ^ "The exhibition of the Royal Academy, MDCCCXVIII". Royal Academy of Arts. Archived from the original on 2022-07-01. Retrieved 2025-12-21.
  17. ^ Royal Academy of Arts, London (1819). Royal Academy of Arts, Summer Exhibition Catalogue, Vol 51, 1819.
  18. ^ "The exhibition of the Royal Academy, MDCCCXX". 1820.
  19. ^ "Explication des ouvrages de peinture et dessins, sculpture, architecture et gravure des artistes vivans..." Gallica. 1833. Retrieved 2025-12-21.
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