Angélique Mezzara

Angélique Mezzara, born Marie Angélique Foulon, (1793 – September 13, 1868) was a French portrait painter and miniaturist, who frequently worked in pastels. During a time when few women were painters, she exhibited regularly for nearly 30 years at the Paris Salon, the major art event of the time. Two of her sons became sculptors, and a daughter exhibited with her at the Paris exhibition as a painter. Marie Angélique Foulon was born in 1793 to Nicolas Foulon and Madeleine Marotte du Coudray. Nicolas Foulon was an apostate Benedictine monk, who at one point drew up a French breviary to replace the Roman Catholic one. He left and was expelled from the Jansenist monastery of Blancs-Manteaux in Paris at the time of the French Revolution. His revolutionary political involvement reportedly included being bailiff at the Council of 500, and serving in the Tribunat and Senate. Madeleine Marotte du Coudray had been raised in a severe Jansenist family. Because of opposition from her family, the couple lived together for several years and had at least one child before formally declaring their union in a civil ceremony on January 11, 1793, as a mariage provisoire. Marie Angélique was the second of their four children. Her older sister, also named Marie, was born September 24, 1791, and is noted in the marriage declaration. By 1813, Marie Angélique Foulon, "an artiste peintre" was married to Thomas François Gaspard Mezzara, also known as Francis or Francesco Mezzara (1774–February 3, 1845). The couple lived in Paris at 16 Rue d'Enfer as of 1813, and at 89 Rue de Charonne as of 1818. Although identified at the time of his marriage as a "peintre d'histoire", his works were rejected when he submitted them to the Paris Salon in 1842 and 1844. A self-portrait was the only painting by Francesco Mezzara known to exist as of 2014. There are suggestions that his main source of income was as a dealer in art and antiquities. The couple traveled briefly in the United States in 1817 and again in 1819.