Artist in Exile: The Visual Diary of Baroness Hyde de Neuville

Artist in Exile is the first in-depth, illustrated exploration of the life and work of Anne Marguérite Joséphine Henriette Rouillé de Marigny, Baroness Hyde de Neuville (1771–1849), who arrived in America in 1807 as a refugee from Napoleonic France and embarked on an extraordinary journey of discovery. Her unparalleled, beguiling, watercolors and drawings―over 200, made while traveling through seven countries and on the high seas, published here together with previously unpublished documents and letters―provide an invaluable historical visual record of the early years of the American Republic and its racially diverse population. From this exciting material Henriette emerges as a cosmopolitan artist who exerted her influence in political and social circles on both sides of the Atlantic, courageously traversing the European continent, unescorted, to beg Napoleon to spare her husband’s life.

Neuville’s status as a woman, and an outsider, made her a particularly keen and sympathetic observer of individuals from a range of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. She drew the earliest ethnographically correct images of indigenous Americans, together with vistas predating the works of other traveler-artists, and long-vanished buildings. Although she arrived in America as an outcast, by the end of her second residency, as the celebrated wife of the French Minister Plenipotentiary, she was interacting with political leaders and making her mark on society in Washington, DC and New York City. Artist in Exile tells her compelling story.