Adélaïde Ducluzeau

Adélaïde Ducluzeau (née Marie-Adélaïde Durand; 15 March 1787– 1 August 1849) was a French porcelain painter, known for her work at the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres and for her master copies on porcelain. Active between 1818 and 1848, the artist also ran a small private art school. She died during the Paris cholera epidemic of 1849.

Marie-Adélaïde Durand was born in Paris on 15 March 1787 into a wealthy family.^[1][2][3] Her father, a building contractor, encouraged her artistic interests, which she shared with her sister Joséphine.^[4][5] At an early age, she trained under the neoclassical painter Jean-Baptiste Regnault, with whom she developed a foundation in academic figure painting.^[6]

Initially pursuing art for personal enjoyment, a change in her financial situation led her to turn to the commercial practice of painting on porcelain.^[6] Around 1816 she entered the studio of Marie-Victoire Jaquotot, a leading figure of the era, who subsequently introduced her to professional work at the Manufacture de Sèvres.^{[note 1][7][8]}

Durand-Ducluzeau married François Ducluzeau, a lawyer in the imperial court. In 1807, they had a daughter, Adélaïde Claire, who later became an artist.^[9][10][11] The Durand-Ducluzeau couple lived together at 14, rue Neuve-Saint-Roch, near the Louvre in Paris, and jointly owned property in the Charenton and Saint-Maurice area to the south of the city. In 1813 they sold this property to Emperor Napoleon, with the transaction formally accepted by Jean-Baptiste Nompère, Comte de Champagny, a high-ranking official.^[12] Records indicate that the couple were judicially separated in later years.^[13]

After their separation, Durand-Ducluzeau maintained a close connection to the neighbourhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where she, her daughter and sister Joséphine all lived within a few hundred metres of one another.^{[note 2][14][15][16]} Joséphine Durand exhibited at the Salon under her married name, Rullier, while Adélaïde Claire used the pseudonym Zodalie-Michel Ducluseau.^[17][11]

The Manufacture de Sèvres was the leading state porcelain manufactory in France and one of the most prestigious ceramic institutions in Europe. Founded in 1740 at Vincennes and transferred to Sèvres in 1756, it operated under royal patronage, producing porcelain for the court, elite clientele and for use as diplomatic gifts. While Durand-Ducluzeau was active there, the manufactory combined artistic production with technical research and employed highly trained painters, sculptors, and chemists, offering women artists opportunities for specialised professional work.^[18][19]

An assessment of Durand-Ducluzeau's work appears in the late 1980s within Jean-Pierre Cuzin's book on Raphaël and French art, which singles her out as one of the most accomplished porcelain painters at Sèvres during the directorship of Alexandre Brongniart, in the company of Victoire Jaquotot and Abraham Constantin.^[20] While working at the manufactory, she copied works after artists such as Carracci, Domenichino, and Gérard. Her pieces required exceptional technical skill, often involving multiple firings and careful repainting to achieve precise colour and detail.^[21] Her painted porcelain bowl, Coupe des sens (1825), remains one of the Manufacture's most celebrated decorative works of the period.^[8]

Durand-Ducluzeau joined the Sèvres manufactory in 1818 as a figure painter on a temporary basis, as was customary for women, and was formally appointed to the permanent staff six years later.^[22][20] Despite recognition at the Salon and patronage from King Louis-Philippe, contemporaries at Sèvres expressed doubt in her technical abilities.^[1][8] On 22 March 1821, Brongniart rejected her request to copy a full-length portrait of the Duchesse de Berry, citing doubts about her ability to execute a work of such significance. Brongniart's lack of confidence in her talent as a copyist has been cited as a reason why, unlike some of her contemporaries at Sèvres, Durand-Ducluzeau produced relatively few reproductions of the master Raphael.^[20]

Durand-Ducluzeau was also paid 2,000 francs (6738 euros) for the porcelain plaques of the Pendule de l'Horlogerie (1837), only half that awarded to the porcelain painter Antoine Béranger for the same designs.^[22][23]

Brongniart's successor, Jacques-Joseph Ebelmen was supportive of Durand-Ducluzeau's talent, remarking that she stood alone in her ability to reproduce museum paintings on porcelain.^[20] Over three decades at Sèvres, Durand-Ducluzeau's work consisted primarily of finely detailed porcelain paintings, including both decorative objects and reproductions of master paintings.^[1]

In later life, Durand-Ducluzeau settled on the quai Voltaire, opposite the Louvre.^[24] From December 1844, in parallel with her work at the Manufacture de Sèvres, she ran a private atelier for women there where she instructed pupils in drawing, oil painting, and porcelain painting, based on direct observation rather than copying of other artworks.^{[note 3][25][26][27][28][29][30]}

Durand-Ducluzeau's career at Sèvres was curtailed by administrative reforms.^[6] On 28 April 1848, she was formally retired and granted a monthly pension of 150 francs.^[20] Shortly afterwards, a carriage accident left her in weakened health, and she was struck by cholera amidst the 1849 outbreak in Paris. Durand-Ducluzeau died at her home on 1 August 1849, aged 62.^[3] She was buried at the Cimetière de Montparnasse.^[31]

Durand-Ducluzeau exhibited regularly at the Paris Salons from 1831 to 1845, receiving official recognition for her work.^[32] She was awarded a third-class medal in 1831 and a first-class medal in 1843.^[1] Her submissions were primarily porcelain paintings, often reproducing well-known works by established painters. Her Salon entries included:

• 1831: Portrait of the Countess of F... / Portrait de Mme la Comtesse de F ...; Sainte-Thérèse, after Gérard^[14]
• 1833: A Holy Trinity (silence) / Une Sainte Famille (Le Silence), after Carrache; Portraits from Life / Portraits d'après nature^[33]
• 1836: Portrait of Van Dyck / Portrait de Van Dyck, after Van Dyck; Set of several portraits done from life, porcelain / Cadre de plusieurs portraits d'après nature^[11]
• 1843: Portrait d'homme, after Tintoretto^{[note 4][24][34]}
• 1845: End of the Mass / La fin de la messe; Seven porcelain portraits, including S.A.R. Mgr le duc d'Orléans, prince royal, after Ingres, and S.A.R. Mgr le prince de Joinville, along with five other portraits.^[35][1]

Durand-Ducluzeau enjoyed the patronage of King Louis-Philippe, whose commissions included works later presented to Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. In 1832, she painted a porcelain plaque of Louis-Philippe's wife Marie-Amélie, after a painting by Louis Hersent. The work entered the Sèvres sales inventory that year and was held in reserve by the Manufacture in 1847. Later it became part of the collection of the Musée national de Céramique (inv. MNC 6 393).^[36]

On 8 March 1836, the king commissioned a pair of monumental egg-shaped vases bearing portraits of himself and his daughter, Princess Clémentine. Durand-Ducluzeau's portraits were widely praised, noted as among the finest examples of porcelain portraiture produced by the Manufacture.^[8]

Durand-Ducluzeau further contributed the three porcelain plaques for the Pendule de l'Horlogerie (1837), a monumental clock produced at Sèvres after designs by Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard. Durand-Ducluzeau's plaques depict a Roman orator with a water clock, the fourteenth-century astronomical clock of Padua, and Christiaan Huygens demonstrating the pendulum clock. Originally intended for Louis-Philippe's private apartments at the Palace of Saint-Cloud, the clock was delivered in 1839 and later presented to Queen Victoria in 1844, who highly valued the work, keeping it on display in her private sitting room at Windsor Castle for fifty-seven years.^[23][37]

Louis-Philippe later commissioned Durand-Ducluzeau to produce a life-size porcelain copy of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres' portrait of the Duke of Orléans. This work was presented at the Exhibition of the Royal Manufactures on 3 June 1844 and subsequently shown at the Salon of 1845.^[8] Among her most ambitious royal commissions was a monumental porcelain portrait of Queen Victoria after Franz Xaver Winterhalter, painted on a plaque over one metre in height. Exhibited on 1 June 1846, the work drew significant attention.^[8]