VIGÉE-LEBRUN,
Marie-Louise-Élisabeth (1755-1842)
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VIGÉE-LEBRUN, |
Élizabeth Vigée-Lebrun was the most famous female painter of the eighteenth century. The daughter of a pastel portrait painter who contributed to her training, she was primarily self-taught and started exhibiting at sixteen. She earned enough money to support herself, became a member of the academy at 23, and established herself as a major figure in the social life of aristocratic urban Paris. She had one daughter, Julie, from her marriage to Jean Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun, an artist, restorer, critic and dealer. A prolific artist, she produced over 800 paintings during her lifetime.
In 1778 she was invited by Marie Antoinette to become her court painter at Versailles, and she eventually produced 30 portraits of that unhappy queen. This reputation helped her gain clients from all the rich and powerful of the day. But with the outbreak of the revolution, her close association with the queen made it dangerous for her to remain in Paris. Therefore, in 1789, Vigee-Lebrun and her daughter escaped Paris on the day Marie Antoinette and family were brought to Paris as prisoners. Vigée-Lebrun was 12 years in exile in Italy, Austria, and Russia, where she continued to support herself with portraits of local nobility and other prominent figures. She was permitted to return to her beloved Paris in 1802, in response to a petition drafted by 255 fellow artists. However, her era had ended. She lived another forty years, out of place in the new Napoleanic France.
Vigee-Lebrun's artistic reputation has eclipsed her contemporary, Adelaide Labille-Guiard, and her historical importance is the fact of her remarkable successful career. She received prestigious commissions and critical acclaim. However, in her later life, her position as an ardent royalist to the court of Marie Antoinette helped relegate her to obscurity. She published a chatty account of her experiences with international dignitaries in her "Memoirs," of 1835, which also included accounts of friends killed during the Revolution. This work also contributed to a view of Vigée-Lebrun as more concerned with society than with art, and generations of art historians have sneered at her "feminine" limitations. But her prolific output resulted solely from a single-minded devotion to art. Characteristicaly, she painted a large number of self-portraits, a number of which are featured below. She was a woman determined to achieve success at her career, and did so, despite the obstacles posed to her as a woman in the eighteenth century. Today, unfortunately, her "politically incorrect" association with royalty continues to make her a neglected figure of art history.
For information on individual works, and enlargement of picture, click on thumbnail.
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Wife of Pierre Rousseau, Architect to the King, with their daughter (1789) |
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Show Slide Show -Vigée-LeBrun |
