Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun: Art and Gender during the French Revolution

by James Rodgers

Elisabeth Louise Vigée Lebrun was a French artist working during the French Revolution who subverted gender norms and hierarchies in the male-dominated academy. As the official painter to Marie Antoinette, she found success among the aristocracy due to her picturesque and idealized style of portraiture. Her success continued even after her exile following the revolution. Owing to the request of Marie Antoinette she was admitted to the Académie Royale in 1783, and submitting the history painting Peace Bringing Back Abundance as her reception piece. 

Feminist Art Historian, Griselda Pollock writes that sexism and sexual division in society has always been a factor in the production of art, as well as plays a role in the social and governmental context and cannot be set aside. Art history is a form of cultural male hegemony in that it reinforces dominant social relations. The ideology of the artist as a free, individual, and creative spirit is associated with the male persona, and thus the role of the artist is contradictory to the social definition of women from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries as passive, domestic, and maternal. This fiction of an eternal hierarchy of men over women has fomented in society to become seemingly “natural” and “biologically” determined, one which the ideological basis of art history is founded upon. Therefore it is not enough to simply insert the work of female artists into the timeline of history, or to claim that they exemplify a shared sense of femininity – to say that women artists exemplify this constructed trait “teaches us nothing about what being, doing, or thinking as a woman at different historical moments and in different social conditions might be”. In this way women have spoken from a different place within the history of culture. This is determined by the ways in which they negotiated their situations as a woman and as an artist at any given historical moment. As art is part of social production, they had to consider the interplay of ideologies, forms of production, social classes, family, and sexual practices. 

Fig 1. Self Portrait with a Straw Hat, 1783. Oil on canvas.

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/elisabeth-louise-vigee-le-brun-self-portrait-in-a-straw-hat

Vigée-Lebrun intentionally subverted these hierarchies through a number of layers in her Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat, exhibited at the 1783 Salon (fig. 1). In this work Lebrun asserts herself as a history painter rather than a passive object for the male gaze, deliberately transgressing gender norms. Judith Butler writes that the physiological body is separate from the social meanings of gender, that “gender identity is a performative accomplishment compelled by social sanction and taboo” which is constituted through repeated acts, a set of possibilities that are determined both historically (through a “shared social structure”) and individually. Mary Sheriff breaks down how Lebrun subverts gender norms. She matches the viewers gaze and strongly holds her palette and brushes, evoking the stance commonly associated with accomplished portrait artists, demonstrating that she is engaged in an intellectual pursuit. At the same time she presents herself as fashionable, showing off her white chemise (which was a popular but intimate fashion of the period), but in a way that shows her ability as an artist to create beautiful works, rather than being idealized for her feminine beauty. Furthermore, the work pays tribute to her artistic influence, Rubens, by mirroring his portrait Susanna Lunden nee Fourment (c. 1622-1625), thus also in a sense adopting his artistic identity. In this way her self-portrait posits no single, essential identity. Instead she “assumes a theory of art within which paintings are not expressions of an artist’s inner self, but skilful artistic performances dependent on the ability to mimic signifying codes, gestures, and styles”. 

Fig 2. Marie Antoinette en Chemise, 1783. Oil on canvas.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/656930

In the same year Lebrun exhibited a portrait the Queen, Marie Antoinette en Chemise, which caused a lot of controversy at the time (Fig. 2). As the chemise was considered revealing and intimate, the portrait established an inappropriate relationship between the royal sitter and the audience. It was later repainted with more conservative clothing to assuage critics. By the eve of the French Revolution Marie Antoinette had become widely unpopular among the people for her lavish and indecent lifestyle. French culture was becoming more conservative, with the rising bourgeois class critiquing and discouraging the lavish and excessive Rococo lifestyle of the aristocracy. Philosophers and critics were moving towards a vision of French society as centred on the nuclear family where the woman was not only expected to raise the children but to find pleasure in her matriarchal duty. 

Fig 3. Marie Antoinette and Her Children, 1783. Oil on canvas.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/656654

Thus, Lebrun was commissioned to paint another portrait of the Queen in 1787, Marie Antoinette and Her Children, to demonstrate that the Queen was a loving and caring mother both to her own children and to the state (fig. 3). In the portrait the Queen is shown with her three children, the youngest resting on her lap, in a triangular composition that is reminiscent of the Holy Trinity from traditional painting conventions, in an attempt to create the propaganda of monarchical power. 

Fig 4. Julie with a Mirror, c. 1786. Oil on canvas.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/652427

Lebrun herself was not immune to the shift in popular viewpoints as evidenced in her painting Julie with a Mirror which sought to reconcile her public success with her role as a mother through allegory (Fig. 4). In the portrait we see Lebrun’s infant daughter, Julie, gazing into a mirror in which her reflection is skewed to look back at the viewer. The mirror itself demonstrates an allegory of true, innocent insight, while the intimate, softly rendered portrait of the daughter reinforces the maternal virtues of the artist and fuses the identity of the artist with her child. Thus, the work becoming a symbol of the artists motherhood. 

Fig 5. Self Portrait with Daughter, 1789. Oil on canvas.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Self-portrait_with_Her_Daughter_by_Elisabeth-Louise_Vigée_Le_Brun.jpg

Later, a more explicit reference to motherhood is made in her 1789 Self-Portrait with Daughter, emphasizing again the triangular composition as well as a classical robe (Fig. 5). Here Lebrun seems to be anticipating the rising Neoclassical style in France with its emphasis on duty, thus trying to portray herself as in line with gender and societal norms.

As an artist during the period leading up to the revolution, Vigée-Lebrun used her talents and connections to become a successful artist through royal patronage. She not only navigated the dynamic social forces of the rising discontent of the bourgeoisie but subverted and challenged her role as a female artist in France, asserting her talent and right to be a painter within a male-dominated artistic profession.