Through Her Eyes
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was the favorite portrait artist of Marie Antoinette. With her brush, she captured the court of Versailles, and later, the courts of Europe.
Over the holidays, I had the chance to visit the Huntington Library, an extensive botanical garden, library, and art museum in Los Angeles. It was once the home of the Huntington family, who built their fortunes in the railroad industry during the Gilded Age. Henry and Arabella Huntington were avid collectors, and they had a particular fondness for 18th-century French art.
When one thinks of the most exciting artistic movements throughout history, even this art lover will admit that portraits of courtiers from the 1700s are not usually at the top of the list. Most people come to the Huntington to see its glorious gardens and collection of rare books and manuscripts, including its Gutenberg Bible.
That day, I entered the museum with the goal of seeing the Raqib Shaw exhibit (which my partner and I had already seen in Nashville, and we were eager to drag my family to see it, as well). But in the main hall, I noticed that one portrait stood out amongst the aristocrats lining the walls.
It was his eyes. There was true character, personality in what could have otherwise been just another display of wealth and power. The eyes gave it away.
That kid-in-a-candy-shop feeling rushed over me, though I restrained myself from darting across the room. I stopped in front of the painting—Portrait of Joseph Hyacinthe François-de-Paule de Rigaud, comte de Vaudreuil (1784).
Sure enough, the artist was Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.
Vigée Le Brun has painted some of my favorite portraits of women, including those of herself. She was one of the most sought-after portrait artists in Europe, and once one surveys her works, the reason why becomes abundantly clear. She had a way of capturing her subjects’ inner lives, and she correctly anticipated the shift from Rococo to Neoclassical art. Her works embraced the balance of Neoclassical compositions while maintaining the soft palette and downright prettiness of Rococo.
Her portrait of Yolande de Palastron, Duchess of Polignac (below) is a strong example. The Duchess of Polignac was a favored friend of Marie Antoinette and an informal political advisor to both the queen and Louis XVI. (As the Crossroads patrons know, Marie Antoinette was far more involved in French politics than fictional portrayals of her life concede.) There’s a depth to the Duchess of Polignac in Vigée Le Brun’s work, a weight in her gaze. Her lips are parted, and one can just see her teeth—a style that Vigée Le Brun pioneered in her portraits, and something that attendees at the Paris Salon found to be quite scandalous. (But honestly, what didn’t the Salon attendees find scandalous?) This particular painting was modeled on Vigée Le Brun’s Self Portrait in a Straw Hat from that same year, 1782.
Years later, after the revolutionaries took control of France, and anyone with any connection to the monarchy who wasn’t dead or imprisoned had fled the country, the artist was visiting Vienna when she learned of the duchess’s fate. The Duchess of Polignac had been living out her exile in Vienna, until she heard about the death of Louis XVI:
which affected her health very seriously, but when she heard the dreadful news of the Queen’s death she succumbed altogether. Her grief changed her to such an extent that her pretty face became unrecognisable, and every one foresaw that she had not much longer to live. She did, in fact, die in a little while, leaving her family and some friends who would not leave her disconsolate at their loss.1
Luckily for us, Vigée Le Brun had the foresight to write a memoir of her experiences. Her life was nothing short of extraordinary.
Patrons of The Crossroads Gazette can access an in-depth video about Vigée Le Brun’s life here. For those learning about her work for the first time, Élisabeth Vigée was born in 1755 to a family of artists, and painted over 800 works before she died in 1842. She lived to see the splendor of Versailles, the chaos of the French Revolution, the rise and fall of Napoleon. During her twelve years in exile, she traveled throughout Italy, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, and even after her return to France, she made excursions to Switzerland and England, working continuously every step of the way.
The young Vigée began painting professionally as a teenager, with the encouragement of her father. But tragedy struck the Vigée family when Élisabeth’s beloved father died in 1767. She was only twelve, and her mother was forced to remarry a successful jeweler in order to support her children. Élisabeth despised her stepfather; she described him in her memoirs as being a stingy and controlling man with a terrible temper. Any money she earned prior to marriage was his.
One has to wonder if these earlier obstacles contributed to her unrelenting work ethic as an adult; she was known for sitting for multiple sessions per day. The fact that her husband Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun had a gambling problem didn’t help. She was twenty years old when she married, and it was a decision over which she agonized considerably:
But my mother, who believed M. Lebrun to be very rich, incessantly plied me with arguments in favour of accepting such an advantageous match. At last I decided in the affirmative, urged especially by the desire to escape from the torture of living with my stepfather, whose bad temper had increased day by day since he had relinquished active pursuits. So little, however, did I feel inclined to sacrifice my liberty that, even on my way to church, I kept saying to myself, “Shall I say yes, or shall I say no?” Alas! I said yes, and in so doing exchanged present troubles for others. Not that M. Lebrun was a cruel man: his character exhibited a mixture of gentleness and liveliness; he was extremely obliging to everybody, and, in a word, quite an agreeable person. But his furious passion for gambling was at the bottom of the ruin of his fortune and my own, of which he had the entire disposal, so that in 1789, when I quitted France, I had not an income of twenty francs, although I had earned more than a million. He had squandered it all.2
Though it’s difficult to find an exact conversion to today’s currency, a million francs in 1789 could be over 30 million euros today. She earned a great fortune, her husband squandered it, and when she left France in 1789, she earned her fortune back in the courts of Europe. It speaks to both the gargantuan hurdles women faced when they lacked control over their finances, as well as the artist’s unrelenting drive.3
In addition to her work ethic, Vigée Le Brun wasn’t afraid to ruffle feathers. Above, you’ll find her two most famous portraits of Marie Antoinette: Marie Antoinette with a Rose and Marie Antoinette in a Chemise Dress, both painted in 1783. Though the pose and composition closely mirror each other, their gowns were worlds apart. On the left, Marie Antoinette wears the silk robe à la française typical of a woman of her rank.
On the right, she wears a simple muslin dress that soon became known as a chemise à la reine. To those who saw the painting at the 1783 Salon, the chemise was not only far too informal for a queen, but the cotton fabric was considered unpatriotic. (This likely did not help Marie Antoinette’s dwindling reputation.) Imported cottons posed a major threat to the domestic silk industry, and the importation of chintz in particular was banned in France until the 1750s.4 Marie Antoinette in a Chemise Dress would become one of the most controversial paintings to be shown at the Salon—and it would also launch an enduring fashion trend.
Vigée Le Brun’s life was characterized as much by tragedy as it was by adventure. She outlived both of her children, and her husband Jean-Baptiste was forced to divorce her in order to avoid the wrath of the revolutionaries. Theirs was a complicated relationship, and Élisabeth maintained a fondness for him that comes through in her writing—probably because her stepfather was so awful by comparison, and also because Jean-Baptiste fought tooth-and-nail for Élisabeth to be able to return to France. (Another interesting fact: Jean-Baptiste was an art dealer, and he played a key role in the establishment of the Louvre Museum.)
Despite her troubles, Vigée Le Brun traveled extensively, met many of the leading figures of her day, and experienced a life of exploration unavailable to almost all people in the 18th century. Through her eyes, we can visit a time of untold decadence, and in her portraits, rich with psychological depth and insight, we gain a sense of who these otherwise lofty and distant figures were. This is portraiture at its best—a peek into the soul behind the mask.
Related from The Crossroads Gazette:
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Memoirs of Madame Vigée Le Brun, translated by Lionel Strachey (Doubleday, Page & Company, 1903), chapter 6. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/lebrun/memoirs/memoirs.html#II
Vigée Le Brun, Memoirs, chapter 2.
For a complete biography, readers can access the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Vigée Le Brun, edited by Joseph Baillio, Katharine Baetjer, and Paul Lang (2016). While the title is out of print, the Met has made it available for free online here.
Melinda Watt, “Textile Production in Europe: Printed, 1600–1800,” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–), http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/txt_p/hd_txt_p.htm.
I love when I stumble upon a Vigée Le Brun at a museum. You captured my feelings perfectly — her portraits really do bring such humanity to that time period
Wonderful writing!
Who wouldn’t want someone to paint a portrait of them - one that truly captures their personality. No wonder she was so successful!