Anne VALLAYER COSTER (Paris, 1744 - 1818) Pot of plums, cakes, jam and oranges on an entablature Original canvas and stretcher 50 x 60.5 cm Signed lower right "Melle Vallayer fecit"; inscribed on reverse "Madlle VALLAYER agée de 18 ans / je donne ce tableau à ma fille Delphine / respecttez ma volonté pouzol i janvier 1841 à la commune d'Etoile / Sayp". Old frame Old restorations Provenance : Collection from the Lyon region. This composition of simple, everyday objects on a parapet can be compared with the first paintings Anne Vallayer made between 1765 and 1770, before being admitted to the Académie Royale de peinture et de sculpture on July 28, 1770 as a still-life painter. Her financiers can be seen in her 1769 painting, Panier de prunes (canvas, 38 x 46.2 cm) at the Cleveland Museum of Art (see catalog of the exhibition Anne Vallayer-Coster: Painter of the Court of Marie-Antoinette, Washington, Dallas and New York, 2002 - 2003). Anne Vallayer married Jean-Pierre Sylvestre Coster, a lawyer at Parliament and Receiver General, in 1781. Along with Adélaïde Labille-Guiard and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, she was one of the few female painters to make a name for herself during the reign of Louis XVI.