Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier, Chemist and Scientific Illustrator

 

Marie-Anne Paulze-Lavoisier, linocut, 9.25" x 12.5", by Ele Willoughby, 2023

I have been revisiting my entire collection of women in science prints and realized that only Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier (20 January 1758 – 10 February 1836) appeared with her husband Antoine Lavoisier (26 August 1743 – 8 May 1794), rather than on her own. I made a double-portrait of the Lavoisiers for an art show about Tarot, where I depicted "The Lovers" card. So, I decided she warranted a single portrait too, as she was a woman in STEM on her own merits. I based her appearance on David's portrait.

The Lavoisiers, working closely together, modernized and quantified chemistry and the scientific method, recognized and named oxygen and hydrogen, explained the role that oxygen plays in combustion, helped modernize chemical nomenclature and discovered that mass is conserved in chemical reactions. Traditionally Antoine has been called the "father of modern chemistry" (with little to no mention of his wife) though more modern scholarship points out that Paulze translated all his contemporaries' works from English and Latin to French (complete with footnotes pointing out errors in chemistry), took notes of all observations, illustrated all experimental set-ups, edited his reports and worked so closely with him we can't easily separate their roles. She was one of the supposed missing women in science and the history of science hiding in plain sight! They commissioned their friend, the famous painter Jacques Louis David to give her lessons in illustration. She clearly illustrated herself in her illustrations of chemical experiments. David also places her front and centre, next to Antoine and their glassware for chemistry experiments, expressing how they worked in concert in his famous portrait of the two. Attributing everything to him alone is clearly not the full picture. She fought to defend his legacy after he was executed during the French Revolution, and kept his name for the rest of her life, even during her short-lived second marriage to physicist Benjamin Thomson, Count Rumford. (She dumped Rumford as soon as she realized that he did not intend for her to work alongside him in the lab.)

One of Marie-Anne Paulze-Lavoisier's many illustrations of the chemistry experiments performed in their home laboratory. This was an experiment about respiration and she is seated at her own table, taking data and illustrating what is occurring.

You can also find my portrait of the two Lavoisiers together here and read more about my previous print here.

Portrait of M. and Mme Lavoisier by Jacques-Louis David, 1788 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan, New York City)