Caroline Ebert Sold at Auction Prices

Attributed to Caroline Ebert (French/German/American, b. 1812), "Self-Portrait"

Attributed to Caroline Ebert (French/German/American, b. 1812) "Self-Portrait with Probable Student" oil on canvas signed lower right "C. Ebert" on right side of canvas (in painting). Framed. 31-7/8" x 25", framed 40-3/4" x 33-3/4" Notes: Women in the history of art are rare; even more rare is a record of them, as most were denied access to the academies and exhibitions through which most records were kept. Ebert is listed in the artist indexes for auction records, though she has no known auction records. Caroline Ebert appears in the annals of art by happenstance of yet another record - a U.S. 1860 census record in which she had the aplomb to call herself an artist, two years after she and her two younger children arrived in Ellis Island from Le Havre. Records indicate Ebert was born around 1812 in the French colony of Trinidad, but returned to France by the time she married a German man, Ottermer Ebert, ca. 1835. Three French-born children followed, Gustavus (1837), Lindente (1839) and Andrew (1846). In the 1860s, Gustavus is registered as a New York engraver and her daughter a teacher. By the time Ebert became a U.S. citizen in 1872, she was still a self-proclaimed artist, but where was her studio, who, aside from this young woman by whom she poses, were her students? No advertisement with her name was found in extant classifieds, but then again would a woman have the temerity or be allowed to advertise a business as a woman at that time? Whichever the answer, now effaced by history, this work indicates that Ebert received training in France; the self-portrait as an artist, deftly drawn and modeled, lacks the naivete of an autodidact. No other "known" artist by the name C. Ebert, of this period, could have produced this painting, but the elusive Caroline Ebert, aforeknown by name alone.