Marie guillemine benoist bio

Guest post by Paris A. Spies-Gans, Harvard Society of Fellows 

In July 2020, an oil painting appeared on the art market that had long been thought lost (fig.

1). A medium-sized canvas, 111 x 145 centimeters (3.6 x 4.7 feet), it depicted a sinuous woman in white, one arm in the air, parting from a group of mournful figures in classical attire. Two pairs of women stand entwined, another figure prays, and a crowned man holds his face in his hands.

Behind the bereaved group loom rocky crags and a clouded sky.

Marie guillemine benoist bio

This painting, portraying The Farewell of Psyche to her Family, had last appeared publicly in 1791, as part of the Louvre Salon debut of the painter Marie-Guillemine Benoist, b. Leroulx-Delaville (1768–1826).

The presiding auction house in Bordeaux estimated a hammer price of 45,000 to 60,000 euros, a reasonable enough guess for a little-known woman artist whose last auctioned canvas had garnered 114,884 euros in 2004.