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0 Spanning the half-century from the pre-Revolutionary years to the Restoration, the exhibition featured some 70 works on display from public and private French and international collections. Devised by Martine Lacas, Doctor of art history and theory, author, independent researcher, the project aimed to bring the public s attention to a question that is rarely addressed: how was the feminisation of the fine arts linked to the changing spheres of artistic production and the transforming tastes of the time?

The exhibition also shifted the origin of the perspective on the production of women artists. Salon booklets, the proliferation of press articles, the works themselves (who commissioned them, in what context?) form a landscape that is totally different to the one offered to us by the traditional history of art as it is far more complex, the destiny of women artists appears less clear-cut and Manichaean. The aim of Women Painters, 1780 1830. Birth of a Battle was therefore to restore the hitherto-concealed importance of testimonies, as well as to return the works and artistic approach of women to their rightful place. Indeed, by choosing only to consider their work in light of their status, we corroborate the presuppositions that led historiography to forget their role, their input and their place in the significant changes to the sphere of the fine arts. The exhibition thus chose to battle the act of forgetting.

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