Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun 1755-1842

By Analia Kaufman

Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun, Marie Antoinette with a Rose, 1783, Oil on canvas, (117×89 cm), Palace of Versailles, Versailles. 

Female artists in the early modern period faced extreme challenges based entirely upon their gender; disallowed from attending academies and dissuaded from pursuing independent artistic careers. Even as late as 1855, the Pennsylvania Academy only permitted women to attend a life-class where a cow served as a model for the women to learn to draw natural organic bodies, as opposed to the traditional nude model. The careers of women that did manage to succeed were plagued by “amorous rumour” and confusion between their skill and personal charm. People often said that no one beautiful could be a successful artist, and it’s practically impossible to find discussion of the female artists of the time without reference to their appearance, manner, husband, family, or social deportment.

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was one of these rare artists who managed to make a name for herself outside the bounds of her home, becoming the favoured portraitist of Marie Antionette and other notable aristocrats, creating an estimated 860 works, 660 of which were the portraits for which she is now known.

Born in Paris in 1755, Élisabeth had a mixed upbringing. Her mother was from a peasant family and worked as a hairdresser, while her father was a well-known portraitist and member of the Académie de Saint-Luc and provided her with her first teachings. However, he died when she was young, so Élisabeth was largely self-taught, copying works of the Old Masters to practice. Her mother’s new husband was wealthy and moved them to the 1st Arrondissement where she connected with other famous French artists who advised her work. By the time she was 15, she had built up a modest clientele, and at 19 when her studio was seized for practicing portraiture without a proper license, she joined the Académie de Saint-Luc, as her father had. Her subsequent marriage to the art dealer Jean-Baptiste Le Brun provided her with important connections and commissions, and although she had already built up a clientele of her own, this marriage was likely pivotal in her success as a female artist at the time. Jean-Baptiste was well-documented to be adulterous and profligate, gambling away most of Élisabeth’s commissioned income. Despite this, she and her husband remained together for many years.

 As her career grew, Marie Antoinette formally patronised her, and Élisabeth painted more than 30 portraits of the queen and her family. Élisabeth must have shared Antoinette’s taste for scandal, as the 1783 exhibition of Marie-Antoinette in a Muslin Dress caused uproar not only due to the informality of the depiction of the Queen, but that Antoinette wanted to be portrayed that way. Though a 1787 portrait of Antoinette and her children seemed directed towards smoothing over the scandal, that same year, Élisabeth exhibited Self-portrait with Her Daughter Julie in which she was shown smiling and with her teeth showing, a scandalous pose for which she was labelled a narcissist.

Though Antoinette’s patronage skyrocketed Élisabeth’s career initially, it became a liability as the French Revolution gained traction. She was harassed and threatened for her associations with the royals so, obtaining passports for herself, her daughter, and their governess, they fled France. They left behind her husband, who defended her exile to authorities, saying she was not an émigré, but that she “merely did what all great artists had always done: ‘On account of her love for her art she left for Italy in the month of October, 1789. She went to instruct and improve herself.’” This began a 12-year exile which ranged through Italy, Austria, Russia, and Germany. In each new country she maintained her portraiture, depicting powerful figures, and even nearly painting Catherine the Great, though the Empress died before she was able to sit for Élisabeth. It was during this exile that she dissolved her marriage. After a long campaign to remove her name from the list of counter-revolutionary émigrés, headed by her ex-husband, she returned to Paris and resumed her career. Though she travelled still, she lived in France for the rest of her life, dying in 1842 at the age of 86, outliving both her ex-husband and daughter. Her memoirs have been reprinted and translated many times, and her life has inspired retrospectives, docudramas, and even a video game character.

Bibliography

May, Gita. Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun: The Odyssey of an Artist in an Age of Revolution. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2005.  

Nicholson, Kathleen. "Vigée Le Brun [Vigée-Le Brun; Vigée-Lebrun], Elisabeth-Louise." Grove Art Online. 2003. https://www.oxfordartonline.com/groveart/ view/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.001.0001/oao-9781884446054-e-7000089458. 

Nochlin, Linda. “From 1971: Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” ARTnews.com. Penske Media Corporation, October 20, 2020. 

Parker, Rozsika, and Griselda Pollock. Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology. New York City, NY: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd, 2013. 

Sheriff, Mary D. The Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997.  

Weidemann, Christiane, Petra Larass, and Melanie Klier. 2008. 50 Women Artists You Should Know. Munich: Prestel.