Elisa de Lamartine


Elisa de Lamartine, born Mary Ann Elisa Birch, and also known as Marianne de Lamartine was a French painter and sculptor believed to be of English ancestry.

Biography

The artist was born 13 March 1790, in Languedoc, France.  She was the daughter of Major William Henry Birch and Christina Cordelia Reessen, and was baptized on 31 May 1792 at the parish of Saint Anne in Soho, City of Westminster, in London.
Elisa married the writer and poet Alphonse de Lamartine in the church of Saint-Pierre de Maché, in Chambéry, France, on 6 June 1820. The couple had two children: Félix Marie Emilius Alphonse de Lamartine and Marie Louise Julie de Lamartine, known as Julia,. Julia died in Beirut, Lebanon in 1832, at ten years of age, during a family expedition to Lebanon, Syria and the Holy Land in 1832–33.
Elisa died on 24 May 1863 in Paris at age 73.

Exhibits and works

In 2003, as part of the Lamartine biennial celebrations, an exhibition was dedicated to the artist titled, Evocation of Marianne de Lamartine at the Musee Lamartine in Macon, France.
In 1843, Lamartine worked with her teacher, the sculptor François Jouffroy, on a font made of Trinitarian marble at the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois in Paris, which was described as "a holy water font executed on the drawings of Mme de Lamartine, puppets parading around a cross."

Selected work in public collections

Lamartine was known as a painter, watercolorist, sculptor, draftswoman, illustrator and musician.