Join Justine De Young, Associate Professor, History of Art, at the Fashion Institute of Technology, for this year’s Richard R. Brettell Lecture, where she’ll explore the perception of women in 19th-century France using the DMA's Portrait of Isabelle Lemonnier with a Muff by Edouard Manet.
Prior to the lecture, a performance of 19th-century French music will be held in the European Art galleries on Level 2.
Edouard Manet was celebrated for his paintings of chic Parisiennes such as Isabelle Lemonnier, one of his favorite models. The elegant and charming Lemonnier, the sister of famous salon hostess Marguerite Charpentier, fascinated Manet. Both were masters of the art of Parisian chic, aligning dress, appearance, and behavior in line with expectations of the time, as this talk will explore.
Looking at a rich array of visual sources—from portraits to modern-life paintings, and from photographs to fashion plates—Professor Justine De Young will reveal how women like Lemonnier were seen, how they aspired to be seen, and how they navigated public life in Second Empire and Belle Epoque Paris. A book signing for her new publication, The Art of Parisian Chic: Modern Women and Modern Artists in Impressionist Paris, will follow. Dr. De Young's book will be available for purchase in the DMA Store.
Dr. Justine De Young is Associate Professor of the History of Art at the Fashion Institute of Technology (SUNY), where she teaches courses on modern art and fashion history. Her latest book, The Art of Parisian Chic: Modern Women and Modern Artists in Impressionist Paris (2025), decodes the details of dress, behavior, and styling that defined late 19th-century Parisian women and traces the invention of the chic Parisienne in art and life. She is also the editor of Fashion in European Art: Dress and Identity, Politics and the Body, 1775–1925 (2019) and of the Fashion History Timeline website.
Schedule:
12:45–1:30 p.m. Music performance on Level 2
1:30 p.m. Horchow Auditorium doors open
2:00 p.m. Lecture in Horchow Auditorium
Portrait of Isabelle Lemonnier with a Muff, about 1879–1880. Edouard Manet. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Algur H. Meadows and the Meadows Foundation, Incorporated, 1978.1.
This program is presented by the Richard R. Brettell Lecture Series.
