Constance Marie Françoise Mayer (1775-1821)

• Was a French painter.
• She produced portraits, allegorical subjects, miniatures and genre works.
• She studied with Joseph-Benoît Suvée and Jean-Baptiste Greuze.
• Mayer painted portraits of women and children, family scenes, self-portraits and miniatures of her father.
• She worked in Jacques-Louis David's studio in 1801.
• She studied with Pierre-Paul Prud'hon beginning in 1802, but they did not have the typical pupil-master relationship.
• During the time when Prud'hon was painting the portrait of Empress Josephine, his wife, in a fit of jealousy, claimed that he was having an affair with the empress.
• Prud'hon's wife was held in an asylum and Prud'hon was given custody of their children.
• After the artist Prud'hon had separated from his wife, the Emperor Napoleon gave him an apartment in the Sorbonne.
• At about the same time (c. 1803), Napoléon, who had purchased two of her paintings, gave Mayer an apartment there too.
• She served as Prud'hon's assistant, raised his five children and was known as his "favorite pupil."
• Prud'hon's wife died and Mayer had expected that she would marry him.
• Prud'hon refused to acknowledge her assistance and marry her after the many years she had served as his assistant and his housekeeper", she then seized "the artist's razor, drew it across her throat."  
• Prud'hon organized a retrospective of her works the following year but, distressed by her death, died in 1823.
• They are buried together in Paris's Père Lachaise cemetery.
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