Françoise Duparc Biography

Françoise Duparc (1726-1778) was a Spanish-born Baroque painter who later lived in France.

Duparc was born in Murcia, where her father Antoine Duparc, a French sculptor from Marseille, had settled and married a local Spanish woman. The family returned to Marseille in 1730, and Françoise was introduced to painting by her father and served her apprenticeship in the studio of Jean-Baptiste van Loo in Aix-en-Provence from 1742 to 1745.

It is quite difficult to follow Duparc's career as she worked in different European cities: Paris and London, where she participated in two exhibitions in 1763 and 1766, and Wrocław, where she spent time with one of her sisters, Claire.

She returned to Marseille in 1771, where she joined the Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1776. She died shortly after 2 October 1778. Her estate inventory reported forty-one paintings that have not been found, except for the four paintings bequeathed by the artist to the city of Marseille, which are currently in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille. These works, whose style takes the humble realism of the Le Nain brothers, are Woman with Book, Tea Merchant, Old Woman and Man.

Duparc's works are marked for their simplicity. She usually depicted scenes in all their sincerity, stripping any embellishments. She mostly painted scenes of daily life, common people on the streets, and in their homes. Her work bore the influence of the Dutch style.

Françoise Duparc was a member of the Academy of Painting and Sculpture of Marseille and the city gave its name to a street: Rue Francoise Duparc.