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Roland Michel, Marianne

    Full Name: Roland Michel, Marianne

    Other Names:

    • Marianne de Cayeux

    Gender: female

    Date Born: 22 February 1936

    Date Died: 18 November 2004

    Place Died: Paris, Île-de-France, France

    Home Country/ies: France

    Subject Area(s): catalogues raisonnés, eighteenth century (dates CE), and French (culture or style)

    Institution(s): Galerie Cailleux


    Overview

    Scholar and catalogues raisonnés compiler; dealer of eighteenth-century French art; director of the Galerie Cailleux from 1982-1996. Roland Michel was a student of André Chastel who received her master’s degree at the Sorbonne in 1959 with a thesis on the still life and genre painter Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818). This artist served as the subject of Roland Michel’s first article that appeared in Burlington Magazine in 1960, and of the later monograph, Anne Vallayer-Coster (1970). From 1960 until 1981, Roland Michel regularly contributed articles to Burlington’s supplement on the eighteenth century, writing on artists like Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), Hubert Robert (1733-1808), and Nicolas Lancret (1690-1743), among others. In 1982, she began overseeing exhibitions at la Galerie Cailleux, the Parisian commercial gallery that her grandfather, Paul de Cayeux de Sénarpont (1884-1964), had established in 1912, and over which her father, Jean de Cayeux (1913-2009) had also presided. She completed a doctoral degree at the Sorbonne in 1983 under the supervision of Jacques Thuillier with a dissertation on the painter of Rococo interiors, Jacques de Lajoüe (1686-1761), which was published the following year as Lajoüe et l’art rocaille (1984). Roland Michel headed thirteen exhibitions during her time as director of the Galerie Cailleux. She also wrote exhibition reviews that appeared in journals like Master Drawings as well as the Burlington Magazine. Alongside her work as a dealer, Roland Michel published widely as a scholar of eighteenth-century art in French and Anglo-American journals and museum catalogs. In 2002-2003, Roland Michel organized the first and only solo retrospective exhibition on Vallayer-Coster, Anne Vallayer-Coster: Painter to the Court of Marie Antoinette, that travelled from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. to other venues in Dallas, New York, and Marseille.

    After Roland Michel’s sudden passing in 2004, the Fondation Marianne & Roland Michel was established by her husband and children to preserve her influence on eighteenth-century scholarship. Le Centre de Documentation Marianne Roland Michel opened in 2005 near Roland Michel’s home in Neuilly and provided scholars access to her reference collection of materials on seventeenth- thru nineteenth-century, primarily French, art. Since 2016, the collection has been housed at the research library of the Petit Palais museum. In 2006, Roland Michel’s family began funding an annual prize that supports the publication of manuscripts on themes related to her work. Roland Michel’s son, Christian Michel (1958-), is also an art historian, teaching as professor of art history at the Université de Lausanne (UNIL) in Switzerland since 2006. His specialty is the history of collecting and decorative arts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly Charles-Nicolas Cochin the Younger (1715-1790).

    Roland Michel catalogs for the gallery are considered her most “enduring contributions” to fellow collectors and scholars (Borne and Williams). Alongside her work as a dealer, Roland Michel published widely as a scholar of eighteenth-century art in French and Anglo-American journals and museum catalogs. A number of her texts have been translated into English and German. “Classic” monographs on artists like Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) (1982, 1984) and Jean-Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) (1994) bear evidence of her commitment to research based on direct study of original artworks, rather than reproductions (Rosenberg). The majority of her books she formatted as catalogues raisonnés, a style that suited her object-driven approach to art history (Borne and Williams; Rosenberg).


    Selected Bibliography

    • “Tapestries on Designs by Anne Vallayer-Coster.” Burlington Magazine 102, no. 692 (November 1960): i-ii;
    • “The Theme of ‘The Artist’ and of ‘Inspiration’ as Revealed by Some Fragonard’s Drawings.” Burlington Magazine 103, no. 704 (November 1961): i-iii;
    • “Of Women and Flowers…” Burlington Magazine 108, 760 (July 1966): i-v;
    • “Sur quelques représentations de fleurs dans la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle.” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de  l’Art Français (1966): 169-176;
    • “Observations on Madame Lancret’s Sale.” Burlington Magazine 111, no. 801, Special Issue Devoted to Claude, Nicolas and Gaspard Poussin in Connection with the Claude Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (December 1969): i-vi;
    • Anne Vallayer-Coster. Paris: CIL-Odege, 1970; “Fragonard Illustrator of the ‘Contes’ of La Fontaine.” Burlington Magazine 112, no. 811 (October 1970): i-vi;
    • “A Taste for Classical Antiquity in Town-Planning Projects: Two Aspects of the Art of Hubert Robert.” Burlington Magazine 114, no. 836 (November 1972): i-vi;
    • L’art et la sexualité. Tournai: Casterman, 1973; “A Basket of Plums.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art (February 1973): 52-59;
    • “A propos d’un portrait par Tischbein au Musée des Beaux Arts de Bordeaux.” Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France 23, no. 3 (1973): 173-178;
    • “Un problème d’attribution pour un dessin du musée des Beaux-Arts, à propos de la Mascarade du sultan à la Mecque, 1748.” Bulletin des Musées et Monuments lyonnais 5, no. 2 (1975): 303-321;
    • “Représentations de l’exotisme dans la peinture en France de la première moitié du XVIIIe siècle.” Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century 151-152 (1976): 1437-1457;
    • “Concerning Two Discoveries in Neo-Classical Painting.” Burlington Magazine 119, no. 889, Special Issue in Honour of Benedict Nicolson (April 1977): i-viii; “Cochin illustrateur, et le Missel de la chapelle royale.” Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen 21 (1979): 153-179;
    • “Eighteenth-Century Decorative Painting: Some False Assumptions.” The British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 2, no. 1 (April 1979): 1-18;
    • “François-Thomas Mondon, artiste ‘rocaille’ méconnu.” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de l’Art Français (1979): 149-158;
    • [and Catherine Binda]. “Un portrait de Mme du Barry.” Revue de l’Art 46, (1979): 40-45;
    • Tout Watteau. Collection “La Peinture.” Rizzoli, 1981, Flammarion, 1982;
    • “Un peintre français nommé Ango.” Burlington Magazine 123, no. 945 (December 1981): i-viii;
    • “L’ornement rocaille : quelques questions.” Revue de l’Art 55 (1982): 66-75;
    • “French Eighteenth-Century Drawings [in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam].” Apollo 117, no. 256 (June 1983): 469-475;
    • “Le bruit dans la peinture.” Corps écrits 12 (1984): 125-132;
    • Watteau, un artiste au XVIIIe siècle. Paris: Flammarion, 1984, English Watteau, an Artist of the Eighteenth Century. Londres, Trefoil, New York, Alpine, 1984, German Watteau 1684-1721. Munich, Prestel, 1984;
    • Lajoüe et l’art rocaille. Neuilly: Arthéna, 1984;
    • “A propos de portraits de famille : Quelques nouvelles attributions.” Burlington Magazine 128, no. 1000 (July 1986): 546-552;
    • Le dessin français au XVIIIe siècle. Fribourg: L’Office du Livre, 1987, German Die französische Zeichnung im 18. Jahrhundert, Munich, Prestel, 1987;
    • “Portraits français du XVIIIe siècle.” Bulletin de la Société des Amis du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes 6, Numéro spécial sur Le Portrait (1988): 17-26;
    • “Landscape painting in the eighteenth century. Theory training and its place in academic doctrine.” In French landscape painting; Claude to Corot, the development of landscape painting in France. New York: Colnaghi, 1990, p. 99-110;
    • Chardin. Paris: Hazan, 1994 English, Chardin. London: Phaidon, New York: Abrams, 1994;
    • “On some collectors of Eighteenth-Century French Drawings in the United States.” In Mastery and elegance. Two centuries of french Drawings from the Collection of Jeffrey E. Horvitz. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 1998, p. 53-76;
    • Maurice et Pauline Feuillet de Borsat collectionneurs – Dessins français et étrangers du XVIIe au XIXe siècle. Marseille: Musées de Marseille, 2001;
    • “Vallayer in her time.” In Anne Vallayer-Coster Painter to the Court of Marie-Antoinette. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press and Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 2002, French Anne Vallayer-Coster: peintre à la cour de Marie-Antoinette. Marseille: Musée des beaux-arts and Paris: Somogy, 2003;
    • “Exoticism and Genre Painting in Eighteenth-Century France.” In The Age of Watteau, Chardin, and Fragonard: Masterpieces of French Genre Painting. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press and Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 2003, p. 106-119;
    • “De Watteau à Boucher: formation d’une manière et d’un genre.” In François Boucher et l’art rocaille dans les collections de l’École des Beaux-Arts, Paris: Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts, 2003, p. 38-45;
    • “Le trésor de leurs études….” In L’apothéose du geste. L’esquisse peinte au siècle de Boucher et Fragonard. Paris: Hazan, Strasbourg: Musées de Strasbourg, Tours: Musées des beaux-arts de Tours, 2003, p. 49-59;

    Catalogs for exhibitions at la Galerie Cailleux:

    • Watteau et sa génération.1968;
    • Autour du Néo-classicisme: peintures, dessins, sculptures. 1973;
    • Giambattista Tiepolo 1696-1770, Domenico Tiepolo 1727-1804 [et] Lorenzo Tiepolo 1736-1776: peintures, dessins, pastels. 1974;
    • [with J. Cailleux and A. Rambaud]. Eloge de l’ovale. Peintures et pastels du xviiie siècle. 1975;
    • [with J. Cailleux and A. Rambaud]. Sanguines, dessins français du XVIIIe siècle. 1978;
    • [with J. Cailleux]. Des Monts et des eaux: Paysages de 1715 à 1850. 1980-1981;
    • Rome 1760-1770:  Fragonard, Hubert Robert et leurs amis. 1983;
    • Le dessin en couleurs. 1984;
    • Oeuvres de jeunesse de Watteau à Ingres. 1985; Artistes en voyage au XVIIIe siècle. 1986;
    • Aspects de Fragonard  Peintures – Dessins – Estampes. 1987;
    • Les étapes de la création: esquisses et dessins de Boucher à Isabey. 1989;
    • Le Rouge et le Noir – Cent dessins français de 1700 à 1850. 1991.

    Sources

    • Fondation Marianne & Roland Michel, accessed July 1, 2020; Bazin, Germain. Histoire de l’histoire de l’art; de Vasari à nos jours. Paris: Albin Michel, 1986, p. 193;
    • Maës, Gaëtane. “Nécrologie: Marianne Roland Michel.” Revue de l’art 148 (2005): 86-88;
    • Rosenberg, Pierre. “Marianne Roland Michel (1936-2004).” Burlington Magazine 147, no. 1225 (April 2005): 257-258;
    • Borne, François and Eunice Williams. “Obituary.” Master Drawings 43, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 242.


    Contributors: Yasemin Altun


    Citation

    Yasemin Altun. "Roland Michel, Marianne." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/rolandmichelm/.


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