[3] In eighteenth-century France, the Royal Academy of Art was responsible for training artists and exhibiting artworks at the Salon that glorified heroic values promoted by the Bourbon monarchy.

Until the French Revolution, the Royal Academy of Art in Paris was the central institution for official artistic practice, and limited its number of female students to four at a time.

[4] In 1781, twenty-year-old Capet moved to Paris to become the student of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (1749–1803),[3] a Neoclassical artist who was admitted to the Academy in 1783.

[5] Capet showed her early work at the Exposition de la jeunesse in 1781 and 1783,[3] and later exhibited at the Salon when it was opened to all artists after the French Revolution.

[17] The work of Marie-Gabrielle Capet contains a large collection of miniature portraits, the majority of which are housed in The Louvre.

[18] Though little work of Capet is known, there have been some miniatures attributed to her that are speculated to be of Elisabeth-Philippine-Marie-Helene de France, often called Madame Elisabeth.