The most important exhibitions in 18th-century Paris were the Salons, in general held every other year, and open only to artists associated with the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. After the French Revolution the Académie was abolished, and meanwhile the Salon of 1791 was open to all contenders. This canvas, which is dated 1789, is by Marie Victoire Lemoine, one of many women artists who later emerged into public view. It is identified quite certainly with a painting she exhibited in 1796, and accordingly the title is drawn from the hand list for the exhibition. This may be Lemoine’s most significant work if, as is widely believed, it is the one she sent to the Salon of 1796, where it was exhibited as number 284, Interior of an Atelier of a Woman Painter. In 1791 the Salon, previously open only to members of the Académie (whose number included as few as four women), became for the first time a public venue. Lemoine did not seize the first opportunity but five years later showed several miniatures and three paintings, all figure subjects. According to the exhibition list, Interior of an Atelier measured four by three and a half pieds, or 130 by 113.7 centimeters. The size differs from that of the present canvas, but the difference could be accounted for simply as an error or if the frame was included, either of which is possible. Our present knowledge of Lemoine’s oeuvre is limited to no more than thirty works, mostly half- or three-quarter-length portraits or allegorical figures of women, a number of which are signed and several of which are close in style to Interior of an Atelier. Additionally the picture is said to have descended in the family of the artist, who was to all intents unknown when it came on the art market in 1920, so that her name would not at that time have constituted an inducement. In 1926 Wildenstein lent the picture to an exhibition in Paris and it was provided with a subtitle in the catalogue that translates "Madame Vigée-Lebrun in her studio giving a lesson to her pupil Mademoiselle Lemoine." Since then, the picture has often been described either as a portrait of or as an homage to Vigée. However, as Lemoine is not known to have studied with Vigée, as the two artists were the same age, and as such an interpretation was not advanced by any contemporary critic, this seems unlikely. (http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436875)