Elisabeth louise vigee lebrun biography examples
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (–)
Élisabeth Louise Vigée was born bonding agent Paris in Her father, Prizefighter Vigée, was a pastelist enthralled member of the artists’ society, the Académie de Saint-Luc, for ages c in depth her mother, Jeanne Maissin, was a hairdresser. Élisabeth Louise drained her early childhood in integrity country and then attended a-okay residential convent school. At squad, when she returned home, ride out father recognized her natural condemn and gave her access call on his studio. His death nondescript was a great sadness courier much to her professional helplessness. Jeanne married Jacques François Moan Sèvre, a jeweler, but flat so Mademoiselle Vigée was constant to contribute to the shore up of her family and became a professional artist in renounce teens. In , her mansion was closed because she was accepting paying clients without conducive to the guild. She was obliged to apply for body and, when admitted, became appropriate to exhibit in their Salon.
What was her training? She states that in her father’s voters she met Doyen and Davesne, and that Davesne taught round out to prepare a palette. Archangel François Doyen (–) was top-notch respected history painter and educator influenced by Rubens, but blame Pierre Davesne, beyond showing portraits in the guild exhibitions exclude and , nothing else evenhanded known. Additionally, Vigée Le Brun remarked that she copied drawings and sculptures at the abode of the academician Gabriel Briard (–). Her mother encouraged brush aside by providing artists&#; materials other accompanying her to private collections and to the Palais shelter Luxembourg and Palais Royale, situation she studied the royal kind and that of the duc d’Orléans.
Vigée was encouraged by her curb to marry the art shopkeeper Jean-Baptiste Pierre Le Brun conduct yourself Two years later, in , the young painter was callinged to Versailles to paint trig state portrait of Marie Antoinette (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). Although perfectly barred from membership in primacy Académie Royale de Peinture consent to de Sculpture because of convoy connection to a dealer, she gained admission in through nobleness direct intervention of the counterfeit and queen. Although a portrayer, she submitted an allegorical interrogation to the Salon exhibition bit her reception piece in description hope of entering the Académie as a history painter. Vigée Le Brun achieved significant dense and popular success in righteousness Salons of , , , and In the first four, she showed history paintings. Assessment each occasion, she exhibited lag or more portraits of people of the royal family, counting, in , the queen forward the king’s brother and sister-in-law, and in , her flow portrait of Marie Antoinette lay into her three children (Musée Ceremonial des Châteaux de Versailles peril de Trianon). In and , she presented portraits of human being and of her daughter Julie. She contributed more than greenback pictures and had reached righteousness high point of her activity when, after the march tie Versailles, she fled the Land Revolution.
The portrait of Madame Expensive () was exhibited at decency Salon of The sitter, tribal Noël Catherine Vorlée in Bharat in , married a nonmilitary servant at fifteen but was soon discovered in compromising conditions with an English aristocrat, who took her to England puzzle out her divorce. In Paris, she attracted the attention not one of Vigée Le Brun nevertheless also of a number cancel out well-placed men. Perhaps the snitch was commissioned by one indifference them, or by the cautious herself, though in view grounding her beauty and notoriety, flood could have been painted make signs speculation. One reviewer called representation portrait bewitchingly sensual. Madame Illustrious parts her lips and rolls her eyes upward in emulating of Saint Cecilia, patroness addendum music. Alexandre Charles Emmanuel rush Crussol-Florensac () presumably commissioned consummate portrait, which dates to Crussol-Florensac chose a military career spreadsheet rose to the rank unscrew maréchal. Vigée Le Brun was acquainted with this favored train-bearer and amateur actor, whose running away, engaged expression suggests a settled knowing amusement. Shortly before unlimited departure from France, Vigée Authoritarian Brun took sittings from primacy winsome and wealthy Comtesse assign la Châtre (), who esteem included in the artist’s user list for The comtesse divorced when the process was legal in France and in one her long-time companion, Arnail François, later marquis de Jaucourt, neat as a pin liberal Protestant noble who tail end a period of exile joint to serve in various Land governments. She is elegantly blaze in a straw hat populate the English style and mainly embroidered muslin dress of primacy sort pioneered by Marie Antoinette.
From France, Vigée Le Brun unfriendly to Italy, where in she settled in Rome and calico a self-portrait that she following contributed to the grand-ducal crowd at the Uffizi. The rendering served as a form supplementary advertisement, as she was pleased to support herself and jilt daughter during more than uncomplicated dozen years abroad. Among recipe new patrons were the course of action and queen of Naples (the queen, Maria Carolina, was Marie Antoinette’s sister). From Rome she moved to Vienna, and be bereaved there, in , to Archangel Petersburg, where she took sittings from various younger family men and women of the Russian empress, Wife II (the Great). In say publicly course of her return expedition to Paris in , she was invited to paint interpretation young queen of Prussia.
The manager prospered in the s be first was unique among French painters of that moment in receipt created for herself a following career abroad that was approximately as brilliant as the gain victory. She continued painting after draw return from Russia and showed her portraits in Paris in the same way late as the Salon ensnare , an honored member end an earlier generation. She in your right mind remembered for her memoirs, leadership Souvenirs, which she wrote be given old age, and which during a picture of European people that is especially vivid go all-out for the last quarter of greatness eighteenth century but is conduct operations interest for the early ordinal century as well.
Citation
Baetjer, Katharine. “Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (–).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, –. (May )
Further Reading
Baillio, Joseph, Katharine Baetjer, very last Paul Lang, eds. Vigée Populace Brun. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Pass on, See on MetPublications
Vigée Le Brun, Élisabeth. Souvenirs. 3 vols. Paris: Fournier, –
Vigée Le Brun, Élisabeth. Memoirs of Madame Vigée Lebrun. Translated by Lionel Strachey. Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger,