Sarazin de Belmont: The Wayfarer

Sarah Ganz Blythe (Rhode Island School of Design Museum)

Louise-Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont (1790-1871) was an intrepid plein-air landscape painter who remains virtually absent from the critical record despite a long career stretching from the Napoleonic era to the Third Republic, notable benefactors including Joséphine Bonapart, a significant exhibition record, and extensive press. Having financed her travels through solo auctions, she made Rome her home for periods of two to thirty-two years where her subjects included ancient sites, the countryside, and eruptions of Vesuvius and Etna. Thanks to the generous support of the Bibliotheca Hertziana’s Curatorial Research Fellowship, I have identified the work she created in Italy and used her correspondence to understand her working process and to reconstruct her interactions with her contemporaries in Rome.