A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG WOMAN. 12mo. [13.5 x 8.5 cm]. (4), 170 pp, (2), plus engr. frontispiece of a painting studio for girls, as well as added steel-engr. title-page printed in red and black. Bound in contemporary dark blue embossed boards with gilt-and-red title label on spine. Spine a little perished; discreet collector's stamp ("Fanet") at foot of added title; occasional light foxing through the text. A good, unsophisticated copy. Extremely rare early edition (first, 1836) of this early 19th century novel exploring contemporary social attitudes towards female artists, as well as the process by which young women were trained in an atelier, could attempt to make a living, and if successful became teachers themselves. Sophie Ulliac Trémadeure composed a number of novels aimed at a young, female audience in which the protagonist is often forced to decide between pursuing a career in the arts or committing herself to family life. All of them survive poorly, and the present work is recorded only at the BnF and the universities of Augsburg and Amsterdam. As Finch notes, while “the value and joy of creativity are stressed…. Ulliac Tremadeure is also anxious to prove that the woman artist can be morally good”. “Valerie and her widowed father live in poverty, but he decides she should be a painter; uneducated himself, he wants to give her the opportunities he missed. The art-master tells him Valerie has remarkable talent; this fills him with joy, and he is henceforth kinder to her… The art-master urges her and her fellow-pupils to put aside ‘feminine’ concerns: ‘Young ladies…. understand this: the woman who wants to be an artist while busying her mind with frills and furbelows will never be an artist in the noble sense of that word’ (pp. 44-45). But Valerie for a time succumbs to the blandishments of her coquettish cousin Héloise, ‘and now the woman’s character triumphed over that of the artist; Valerie was nothing but a vain girl, in love with clothes’ (pp. 66-67). However, she does keep up her art, and is advised to try painting on porcelain. This is not ‘real’ art (as against, say, oil-painting), but the woman who employs her for her porcelain decoration suggests she start with saleable work: ‘resign yourself to turning out things that are often beneath your talent’… Valerie’s father and art-master regret that she is sacrificing that aspect of her studies which could have contributed to the development of ‘a fine talent’. But she perseveres, earns money through hard work which leaves her no leisure (a sacrifice beyond the understanding of her wealthier cousin), and eventually comes back to painting, acquiring her own pupils…” (Finch, Women's Writing in Nineteenth-Century France, pp. 102-103). Trémadeure (1794-1864) penned editorials on women’s emancipation in the Journal des Femmes and the Conseiller des Femmes. Called upon to inspect conditions at the women’s prison in Clermont, she met Elizabeth Fry and promptly translated the latter’s Sketch of the Origin and Results of Ladies' Prison Associations with an adulatory preface for a French audience (1838). We have traced just three copies of the first edition worldwide in OCLC (none in the US or UK). A further 1837 Brussels edition is held at Amsterdam only; the present 1839 Paris edition is at Western University (Ontario); and we note that the BnF also holds a collective edition of Trémadeure novels dated 1836. * Cf eg. Isabelle Pannier, “Sophie Ulliac Trémadeure: les contradictions de la vertu”, Romantisme, no 77 (1992), p. 33-36.