Louyse Moillon

We know relatively little about the life of Louyse Moillon or that of her family¹. All the information that has come down to us comes from the central register of deeds in the Archives Nationales and from notaries’ deeds. Yet what we can say is that she had the good fortune to be born into a family of established Parisian painters and goldsmiths. We know of her debt to her family circle from the inventory draughted on her father Nicolas Moillon’s death². The inventory, commissioned on the day he died, some time in September 1619 (we do not know the actual date) and draughted from 30 June to 16 September 1620, paints a picture of her family circle. Drawn up at the request of Louyse’s mother Marie Gilbert, it informs us of the number and age of the Moillon couple’s children : «…Marguerite aagée de douze ans, Louyse aagée de dix ans et demy, Ysaac aagé de six ans et Salomon Moillon aagé de trois ans…»³ (Marguerite aged twelve, Louyse aged ten and a half, Ysaac aged six and Salomon Moillon aged three). If we take the inventory start date, 30 June 1620, as our reference, we can work back to the four children’ s birthdays, thus Marguerite was born in 1608, Louyse in January 1610, Isaac in 1614 and Salomon in 1617⁴. If we add the three children whom the inventory fails to mention because they were already dead, we come up with a total of seven children⁵ (four boys and three girls). In this paper, only two of them need concern us, Isaac and Louyse, whose work – without going as far as the adulatory Crozet⁶ – certainly made its mark on the art of their day.

Nicolas Moillon probably arrived in Paris at the very beginning of the 17th century. He appears to have been born c. 1580 in Rocroi in the French Ardennes, a town close to the tiny principality of Sedan, which served as a refuge for numerous Protestants during the Wars of Religion. Nicolas’ father, a Protestant, was a master tailor, but Nicolas himself, after a training period of which we know nothing, opted not to follow in his father’s footsteps, choosing instead to become a painter. Like many Protestants, he left this border area after the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes to try his luck in Paris. By 1605⁷ he had settled in the fairground of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, an area inhabited by foreign artists and artisans on this part of the Left Bank that stood under the great abbey’s protective wing. The painters of Saint-Germain-des-Prés could forego applying for admission to the confraternity of master painters of Saint-Luc. They enjoyed a master’s diploma and could freely exercise their trade, because they were not under the authority of the merchants’ provost charged with policing trade on the right bank of the Seine.

Nicolas’ marriage also points to the importance of the business ties and trade networks that he was building. In fact, we may attribute part of his climb up the social ladder to his membership of a family of goldsmiths. Marie Gilbert, a wealthy goldsmith’s daughter, had a brother-in-law of Flemish birth named Corneille Van Clève⁸, who lived in the Rue du Crucifix Sainct-Jacques parroisse dudict Sainct-Jacques. It was he who valued the pieces of jewellery at Marie Gilbert’s request after her husband died in 1619.

One final aspect of Nicolas Moillon’s numerous activities is to be found in the same inventory, which remains our sole source of information for his family life and career. Like many Paris bourgeois and tradesmen, he lent money for interest⁹ in both financial and legal circles, which guaranteed him a degree of affluence. His material wealth transpires between the lines of his property, and in particular of his house on the Pont Notre-Dame under the sign of the Franc Gaulois¹⁰. The house in question, la dix-huictiesme maison dudit pont nostre Dame du costé d’amont¹¹ (the eighteenth house on said bridge of nostre Dame, on the upstream side) was both his workshop and his and his family’s home.

Louyse Moillon was born into a professional milieu with now consolidated roots in the capital with its networks and its many businesses, including trading in works of art and lending for interest, in addition to her father’s own painting profession. In short, Nicolas Moillon and his wife Marie Gilbert were comfortably off, and their children were to benefit from that condition.

Both of them quite naturally learnt the rudiments of painting in their father’s workshop. The works of art hanging in the rooms of their home on the Rue du Pont Notre-Dame, listed in the inventory that his widow had draughted on his death in September 1619, reveal the commercial value of this merchant painter’s trade and provide us with a picture of the second part of his business, that of art dealer. Nicolas Moillon held a number of stands at the fair of Saint-Germain.

Isaac, for his part, was born on 8 July 1614 and died, a bachelor, at the age of fifty-eight on 26 May 1673¹². He clearly trained in his father’s workshop¹³, his favourite subjects being history, portraits and landscapes, together with a handful of still lifes. His funeral notice¹⁴ confirms that he was a member of the R.P.R. «Religion Prétendue Réformée» («So-called Reformed Religion»).

Isaac was a peintre ordinaire du roi, one of a group of painters to the king, and indeed in 1663, he is listed among the painters elected to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. He appears to have painted only historical subjects and portraits¹⁵, our difficulty in identifying them only exacerbated by the fact that so few have survived.

Does the same apply to his sister Louyse?

Very few sources provide us with the precise dates of her birth or death. Some tell us that she was born in 1615¹⁶ or 1616, or even 1609 or 1610¹⁷, and that she died in 1693¹⁸ or after 1674¹⁹. To what do we owe such disparity in these reports of her birth and death…?

The inventory draughted on her father Nicolas’ death in September 1619 informs us that Louyse²⁰, the Moillon-Gilbert couple’s second child, was aged ten and a half when her father Nicolas died, which allows us to state that she was born in Paris²¹, while her will, draughted on 25 December 1686²², specified that Louyse was aged seventy-seven at the time. These two documents thus make it tricky to establish her correct date of birth. In the first instance she would have been born on 1 January 1610, while in the second instance the date would be 25 December 1609, in other words five days’ difference. I would opt for 1 January 1610 on mnemotechnical grounds²³.

If we look at the paintings of Louyse Moillon and her father-in-law François Garnier (c. 1600-1672), we cannot help but notice the extraordinary similarities that exist between the two, and indeed there is a tradition that it was he who trained the young Louyse.

It was clearly her father who taught her the rudiments of painting, but it was her father-in-law who guided her in her choices as a painter, at an age where the influence of the circle a person frequents is of such crucial importance. With her temperament, she seemed destined to produce still lifes. One has but to inspect her works to see and to grasp the delicacy with which they were painted. Louyse has been called a child prodigy and, while that may appear to be something of an exaggeration, it is not surprising because, if we look at the clauses of the inventory draughted on her mother’s death on 23 August 1630, the section showing the evaluation of paintings by Pierre Forest, who had also valued those in her father Nicolas’ inventory, is divided into nine groups. Group seven lists pictures painted by Louyse Moillon, the proceeds from the sale of which, after deducting expenses, was to be shared out between the artist and her father-in-law on the basis of an agreement made on 30 June 1620. This is followed by a listing of works on wood, which number fourteen²⁴. We could find comparable works on the list, but endeavouring to establish matches would be a little rash because their descriptions are far too summary. The terms of the agreement suggest that Louyse was beginning to show outstanding talent as a painter and that her father-in-law, through the exploitation of that talent, was banking on a considerable future output and future sales, because we should remember that at the time Louyse was still only a child²⁵.

From her family training, Louyse appears to have retained her father-in-law’s lessons rather than those of her father and brother. The work of both Nicolas and Isaac is rather mediocre, whereas the technique that her father-in-law taught her shows a perfect mastery of palette and brushwork.

At the age of thirty, with a marriage contract signed on 15 November 1640 based on joint ownership of assets and joint liability, Louyse married²⁶ Etienne Girardot (de Chancourt)²⁷.

There were five families named Girardot at the turn of the 17th century. The «de» was an attempt to differentiate them and indicated a place. These different families with the same name were all related, all came from the Nivernais and all were involved in the wood trade in Paris. Louyse’s husband, a merchant and bourgeois of Paris, died in 1680. The inventory draughted on his death at the request of «dame» Louyse Moillon reveals a number of things, including the couple’s home, a house with several stories and outhouses on the Quai de la Tournelle in the parish of Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet. This is followed by a list of the eleven paintings valued in the document, comprising historical scenes, landscapes, portraits and still lifes, all unattributed²⁸.

The still lifes are valued at between 4 and 30 pounds, the most important being number one, «un grand tableau peinct sur toille representant des fruictz et legumes garny de sa bordure de bois doré, prisé 30 livres et vingt, un grand tableau peinct sur toille representant des legumes et fruictz garny de sa bordure de bois doré, prisé 30 livres» (a large picture painted on canvas depicting fruit and vegetables adorned with a gilded wooden frame, valued at 30 pounds twenty, a large picture painted on canvas depicting fruit and vegetables adorned with a gilded wooden frame, valued at 30 pounds). They are estimated at the same value as number twelve, «un grand tableau peinct sur toille representant le passage de la Mer Rouge garny d’une bordure de bois cizelé» (a large picture painted on canvas depicting the crossing of the Red Sea adorned with a carved wooden frame) even though the subject matter is different. One is a still life, the other a landscape, and yet we have two similar estimates. The still lifes are unlikely to have been anonymous, because we should remember that unlike landscapes or portraits, still lifes were considered a minor genre. Nor can we rule out the possibility of an overvaluation, because the still lifes had very probably been painted by Louyse Moillon, the deceased’s widow, and so the master painters felt «bound» to up their value. An estimate of 30 pounds is a considerable sum, given that a majority of prices tended to be under 10 pounds²⁹.

With no children of her own, Louyse Moillon was to name her nephew, Etienne de Meuves, as her sole heir. The terms of her will, draughted in late 1686 – in other words, a year before her death – and in which she forgets no one, point to a generosity that we can also detect in her opulent fruit baskets overflowing with foliage.

The terms of the will, drawn up a year after Henri IV repealed the Edict of Nantes in 1598, authorising the practice of Calvinism everywhere other than at court and in Paris, specify that she «rend a Dieu du plus profond de mon humiliation et de ma recognoissance…, il m’a faict naistre en son Eglise et persévérer en la religion crestienne…» (renders unto God from the depths of my humility and my gratitude…, He caused me to be born into His Church and to preserve the Christian religion). During the minority of Louis XIV, the Protestants’ rights were abolished one after the other, and the king himself repealed the edict of tolerance on 18 October 1685. Thus the specific mention of her subscribing to the Catholic faith can only be explained by an underlying fear of persecution. A cousin, Jean Girardot de Chancour, had sent several of his children abroad, and his family only pretended to recant when threatened with violence. A police note dated 11 January 1686 states: «Si l’on ne presse les femmes, serviteurs et enfants de Monsieur Girardot, ils promettront toujours comme ils font, et ne finiront jamais que quand ils verront les archers chez eux». (If we do not press the women – a sister of Madame Girardot, possibly Louyse, lived with her –, the servants and the children of Monsieur Girardot, they will always promise as they do, and will never stop until they see the archers in their house).

Louyse’s brother-in-law, Jean Girardot, who spent a long time in jail in the Bastille, had sent his daughter Jacquette abroad and she acquired English nationality in 1696.

A letter from Seignelay to La Reynie, dated 26 May 1686, states: «On a donné avis au Roi que les marchands de bois de la porte Saint-Bernard, nouveaux convertis, ne font point leur devoir de catholiques…» (The King has been advised that the wood merchants of Porte Saint-Bernard, newly converted, are not performing their duty as Catholics), and on 31 August, «J’ai fait mettre Alexandre Morisset et le nommé Girardot aux Nouveaux-Catholiques» (I have had Alexandre Morisset and the above-mentioned Girardot placed in the Nouveaux-Catholiques).

These documents point to an entire Protestant community built on a strong bond of solidarity.

The significance of some of the terms in the will³⁰ draughted by Louyse Moillon lies in this climate of permanent insecurity.

On 21³¹ December 1696, on her death³² in her home in the «cul de sacq de la rue des Bourdonnais paroisse de Sainct-Germain-de-l’Auxerrois» (cul-de-sac in the Rue des Bourdonnais, Parish of Saint-Germain-de-l’Auxerrois), she received a church burial and died in the company of the person who appears to have been closest to his aunt, Etienne de Meuves.