Adèle Ferrand
1817–1848 · French Romantic painter and draughtswoman in La Réunion
Adèle Ferrand (Nancy, 20 October 1817 – La Réunion, 1 April 1848) was a French painter and draughtswoman of the nineteenth century who worked on the island of La Réunion, in the southwestern Indian Ocean. Born in Nancy, she mastered the Romantic style at a very early age, a training that shaped both her paintings and her drawings.
She settled in the colony then called Bourbon to join her husband, a half-brother of the extremely wealthy Gabriel Le Coat de Kerveguen. She continued to paint and draw there until her death. Her Self-Portrait (1840) is among the works known today. She died of typhoid fever on the island at the age of thirty.
Her paintings and drawings are held at the Musée Léon-Dierx and can be viewed online through the Iconothèque historique de l'océan Indien. Her career offers a rare glimpse of women's artistic production in the colony during the nineteenth century.
Works (1)
This oil-on-canvas self-portrait, dated 1840, shows the painter Adèle Ferrand herself in a small format. The record gives no details about commission, context or the artist's career, so it is best described with caution: it is a portrait of the painter made by herself, a genre common in nineteenth-century painting for exploring the artist's own identity and way of looking.
Where to see the work
- Musée Léon-Dierx Saint-Denis · 1