Rating and value of paintings by Hortense Haudebourt Lescot

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Rating and value of the artist Hortense Haudebourt Lescot

Hortense Haudebourt Lescot is an artist known to lovers of neoclassical canvases and portraits. Now, prices for her works are rising at the auctioneers' gavel.

Her oils on canvas are particularly prized, especially by French buyers, and the price at which they sell on the art market ranges from €70 to €65,000, a significant delta but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to the artist's works.

In 2012, his oil on canvas Autoportrait à la palette was sold for €65,000, while it was estimated at €5,000 to €6,000. Its value is on the rise.

Order of value from a simple work to the most prestigious

Style and technique of artist Hortense Haudebourt Lescot

Hortense Haudebourt Lescot (1784 - 1845) was a French painter known for her genre scenes and portraits at the turn of the 19th century. She studied with Guillaume Guillon Lethière, a neoclassical painter of Guadeloupean origin, who introduced her to a rigorous practice of drawing and composition.

She is strongly influenced by neoclassicism in the structure of her works, with a pronounced taste for anecdote and everyday life inherited from genre painters. She develops a personal style that fuses academic precision with narrative vivacity.

Her drawing is solid, precise, often executed from life or on the spot during her stays abroad. She frequently uses frieze compositions, with a frontal staging, like a little indoor or street theater.

Her frames are tight and the construction of pictorial space is fairly classical : she favors clarity of reading and the balanced arrangement of figures. Her palette is luminous, with light, delicate and nuanced tones, and a subtle use of local color.

She works with discreet but effective chiaroscuro effects to model bodies and give relief to scenes, also showing a taste for varied textures (silks, laces, stones and peasant fabrics), which are rendered with great technical virtuosity.

She shows a predilection for Italian genre scenes, particularly scenes of popular Roman or Neapolitan life, inspired by her stay in Rome. Her painting is narrative, often smiling or tenderized, featuring female figures, children, musicians and artisans.

Hortense Haudebourt Lescot knows how to combine the picturesque and the elegant, with a desire for vivid rather than idealized representation. In her portraits, she pays particular attention to clothing details and facial expression, with a touch of psychology.

She uses oil on canvas as her main medium, but also practices preparatory drawing and painting on panel. Her technical know-how is inherited from academic training, but adapted to more modest formats and more intimate subjects.

Surfaces are smooth, meticulously treated with little impasto, as she seeks sharpness more than substance.

The career of Hortense Haudebourt Lescot

Hortense Haudebourt Lescot (1784 - 1845) was a French painter active during the Empire and Restoration periods. Her full name was Antoinette Cécile Hortense Haudebourt, adding Lescot after her marriage.

A student of Guillaume Guillon Lethière, director of the Académie de France in Rome, she followed his rigorous teaching. He encouraged her to develop an art that was both classical and lively, with a strong grounding in the observation of reality.

She left to live in Rome in 1808: her stay there lasted several years and was fundamental to her career. There she discovered Italian popular life, which became her main source of inspiration, and frequented the Roman artistic colony, rubbing shoulders with other French artists, but developing a very personal style.

Rome became a living laboratory for her : she painted from the motif, in the streets, markets and workshops. She returned to Paris and began exhibiting at the Salon in 1810, where she was well received by critics.

She specialized in Italian genre scenes, which were very popular under the Restoration. She obtained several official commissions, including portraits and small-scale historical paintings, and became a recognized artist, despite the rarity of women admitted to the Salon at the time.

In 1827, she was appointed official painter to Queen Marie-Amélie, wife of Louis-Philippe. This institutional recognition confirmed her status in the Parisian art world.

She was also involved in the training of young artists, particularly women, and married the architect Louis-Pierre Haudebourt -Lescot, hence the adoption of her full name.

She died in Paris in 1845, aged 60, after a discreet but consistent career. Today, she is being rediscovered for her quality of execution, her humanist outlook and her pioneering role among women painters travelers.

Focus on Young Girl Playing Guitar, circa 1820

Young Girl Playing Guitar is a medium-format oil on canvas painted around 1820, typical of genre scenes, housed at the Musée du Louvre in the permanent collections. She painted it on her return from Rome, after her immersion in Italian popular culture.

It depicts a young woman seated, concentrated and playing a six-string guitar. The setting is simple but evocative, depicting a stripped-down bourgeois interior with a few decorative elements, curtain and rustic chair.

The light is soft, lateral, illuminating the musician's face and hands. Ancillary objects are present in the composition (sheet music, cloth, vase) providing a discreet narrative supplement.

The drawing is meticulous, with clean contours, typical of an academic training. Her palette is luminous and harmonious (cameos of ochre, pink, beige and brown) creating a hushed atmosphere.

The touch is fine, smooth and impasto-free, with great attention paid to textures (fabrics, wood, skin). She makes moderate but subtle use of chiaroscuro to model volumes without dramatization.

The theme of the young girl musician is chosen to enhance feminine sensibility and the pleasure arts in the neoclassical tradition. The image suggests concentration, happy solitude, even a suspended moment.

There is no marked anecdote but a sense of familiarity. The artist mixes individual portrait and genre scene, as the young girl becomes the center of an inner world. The work is representative of the intimist turn in post-Napoleonic painting, and testifies to Haudebourt-Lescot's ability to paint femininity without mawkishness, with quiet dignity.

This work can be compared to the interior portraits of Marguerite Gérard or Élisabeth Vigée le Brun, but with a more realistic anchoring. The painting embodies a refined, accessible and sensitive art, at the crossroads of observation and elegance.

Recognizing the artist's signature

Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot does not necessarily sign her works. Copies may exist, which is why expertise remains important.

Knowing the value of a work

If you happen to own a work by Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot or after the artist, don't hesitate to request a free valuation using our form on our website.

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