Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun specialised in portraits that highlighted glamorous and wholesome maternal themes. She made her name as the favoured painter of Marie Antoinette for whom she created 30 portraits.
Modern art history touts Vigee Le Brun as a woman who was way ahead of her time, having gained immense success when female artists were unheard of or, worse, scoffed at. Famous contemporary artists such as Joshua Reynolds compared her work to that of Dutch Old Masters (1568-1648) and hailed her as one of the greatest portraitists of the late 18th and early 19th century.
An early exposure to art at seven or eight years old is credited to her father, the painter Louis Vigee. But this education abruptly ended at age 12 when he suddenly died. At the young age of 14, Vigee Le Brun officially became a professional portrait artist, with French and European aristocracy sitting for her.
Painting would remain Vigee Le Brun’s steady source of income all her life, not to mention her salvation. She found it necessary to rely on her talent throughout her life, especially since she couldn’t depend on her husband, a womanising and gambling spendthrift named Charles Le Brun whom she married when she was 20 years old.
The early years of Vigee Le Brun’s career were largely connected to Marie Antoinette. A 1783 portrait, Marie-Antoinette en gaulle or Marie-Antoinette in a muslin dress showed the controversial French queen clad in merely a simple cotton muslin dress. A scandal ensued, caused by the informality of the attire and the queen’s decision to be depicted in what was basically an undergarment. Vigée Le Brun immediately removed the portrait from view and repainted it to show Marie Antoinette wearing more formal attire. Rather than earn censure, Vigée Le Bree was able to charge more for her paintings after the controversy.
Another painting, Marie Antoinette and her Childrén, was commissioned in 1787 to counter negative judgement against the queen. The portrait depicted Marie Antoinette as a loving mother, surrounded by her three living children. An empty bassinet honoured the memory of a baby girl who died while the portrait was being completed.
As the situation leading up to what would become known as the French Revolution continued to escalate, Vigee Le Brun made the decision to leave Paris and obtained passports for herself, her daughter and their governess. Vigee Le Brun independently supported her child as they travelled through Europe, living and working in Italy, Austria, Russia and Germany. She would only return to France after 12 years.
Throughout an illustrious career, she created 660 portraits and 200 landscapes. In addition to works in private collections, her paintings are owned by the Louvre in Paris, the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among many other public collections in Europe and the United States.
