Marie-Suzanne Giroust is not often counted among the famous woman artists of the 18th century, yet she is one of the few to have been admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Because of her early death from cancer at the age of thirty-eight, she left few works.
The daughter of Barthélemy Giroust, merchant and jeweler of the Garde-Robe du Roi whose shop was situated close to the Église de Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie in Paris, and his second wife, Marie-Suzanne Le Roy, M.-S. Giroust was raised by her grandmother following her father’s death in 1742 and that of her mother in 1745. The child soon showed a talent for drawing and an inclination towards the arts that led to her being placed in the studio of the painter Joseph-Marie Vien (1716-1809). Under the master’s guidance she would acquire the rudiments of painting. It was also there that she met Alexandre Roslin (1718-1793). The Swedish portraitist found himself drawn to the young woman, and she to him. Being foreign and of a Reformed religion, the couple had to wait five years before they could obtain the necessary authorisation to marry, which they finally did on 8 January 1759 at the Église Saint-Eustache in Paris.

The two were particularly close and happy. M.-S. Roslin managed to balance her family life – she gave birth to six children – with her artistic practice. In 1759, the year of their marriage, the artist already enjoyed a certain reputation. This is evidenced in an edition of 2 April of La Feuille nécessaire : contenant divers détails sur les sciences, les lettres et les arts, where the writer describes how “today, women share all kinds of talents with men: when it comes to painting, though their composition may be less vivid, a beauty of palette is more often found in their works. Madame Rosselin, a pupil of the celebrated M. de La Tour, recently completed various works in pastel, in which we recognise some of the freshness and truth of colour of her excellent master. Her portraits are particularly successful, she is adept at capturing likenesses and skin tone.”
The young artist may have entered the studio of Maurice-Quentin de La Tour (1704-1788) a few years before this critique was published, as she appears to have copied his portrait of the Countess of Coventry depicted alongside her dog as early as 1752. It seems likely that the famous pastelist was generous in his tutelage, since she would later, possibly in 1760, pay heartfelt homage to him by depicting herself in the process of copying M.-Q. de La Tour’s celebrated “pointing” self-portrait (private collection).

With A. Roslin’s support, M.-S. Roslin was accepted into the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture on 1 September 1770, on presentation of her pastel portrait of the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Pigalle (Paris, Musée du Louvre). Praise was abundant. On the subject of the tribute, Denis Diderot wrote: “It is a good portrait, a good likeness, and a credit to Madame Roslin; the colours are beautiful and vigorous. And of course, independently of its beauty, when it is taken only as a record of the features of M. Pigalle, this piece should be as dear to art lovers as it is to artists.” (Salon de 1771, Seznec et Adhémar, 1957-1967, IV, p. 165-229). M.-S. Roslin died from breast cancer in late August 1772, without having offered art lovers any further proof of her great talent.