Born into an aristocratic family from the Dauphiné region in southeast France, Stéphanie de Virieu lived to be 88 years old. Her oeuvre consists of some 3,000 drawings, and some sculpture, which she began making late in life as her eyesight started to fail.

De Virieu’s family had close ties to the court of Louis XVI, thus the French Revolution and Reign of Terror had a profound and devastating impact on her childhood. Throughout these tumultuous years, Stephanie’s mother remained committed to her daughter’s education which included instruction in drawing, albeit in an ad hoc manner. The artist would later regret her lack of a conventional or consistent art education which stunted her creative growth, as she wrote to her brother in 1816, “I believe that I was born a painter, but the worthlessness of my studies means that I am, and will only ever be a failure.”

De Virieu’s talent and passion for art were given a better outlet during the course of two stays in Paris when, at age 13, she took lessons from two former students of Jacques-Louis David, De Lavoipierre, an artist from Rouen, and Albertus-Jacop-Frans Grégorius (1774-1853), a Belgian portraitist. Drawing remained a central activity in de Virieu’s life, and it was in her memoirs around the time of her stay in Paris that she wrote “I draw with an incessant ardor.”

During the 1860s, driven by failing eyesight and a deep commitment to her faith and her family (both her brother and sister had died, so she became very involved with the upbringing of her nieces and nephews), de Virieu turned to sculpture, collaborating with the renowned architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc on the restoration of her family’s ancestral home, the Château de Pupetières. Stephanie contributed to the interior décor, and at age 78, sculpted a stone fireplace mantle depicting her 12th-century ancestors.