Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun

Self Portrait in a Straw Hat, 1782

Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (Marie Élisabeth Louise; 16 April 1755 – 30 March 1842) was a painter. Her style is considered Rococo with an interest in Neoclassicism. Sometimes, her name is spelled Vigée-Lebrun.

She painted more than 30 portraits of Marie Antoinette over a six year period. She was accepted as a member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1783. She left France after the arrest of the royal family during the French Revolution. She lived and worked in Italy, Austria, and Russia. Her work met great critical acclaim in Rome. She was elected to the Roman Accademia di San Luca. In Russia, she painted many aristocrats including Catherine the Great's family. She was made a member of the Academy of Fine Arts of Saint Petersburg.

Vigée Le Brun returned to France during the reign of Emperor Napoleon I. Her relationship with the new regime was not completely harmonious. After all, she was a royalist and the former portraitist of Marie Antoinette. She visited England and painted British notables including Lord Byron. In 1807 she traveled to Switzerland where she was made an honorary member of the Société pour l'Avancement des Beaux-Arts of Geneva. She published her memoirs in 1835 and 1837. She lived in Paris, and died there on 30 March 1842. Vigée Le Brun's legacy includes 660 portraits and 200 landscapes.

Gallery

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  Duchess de Polignac, 1782

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  Marie Antoinette, 1783

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  Hubert Robert, 1788

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  Self portrait with daughter, 1789

Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun Media

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  Pastel self-portrait by Elisabeth Vigée at age sixteen, 1771.

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  MadameVigeeLebrunandherdaughter,JeanneLucia(Julie)

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  Marie-Antoinette en gaulle, 1783. The criticism for this portrait's casual spontaneity had been so intense that Le Brun had it removed only a few days after it was displayed in the salon of 1783, and quickly made a copy of it with the Queen wearing a blue silk dress, which was displayed instead.

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  Princess von Esterhazy as Ariadne, 1793. Princely Collections, House of Liechtenstein.

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  Alexandra and Elena Pavlovna, 1795–1797. Hermitage Museum.

Related pages

• List of French painters

Other websites

• Large gallery of Vigée LeBrun's work; also articles, Memoirs, biographies Archived 1998-12-05 at the Wayback Machine
• Artcyclopedia entry on Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le brun
• Vigée-Lebrun's Portrait of Carlo Gastone della Torre di Rezzonico at artnet
• Old Masters: Overlooked Women Artists
• Memoirs of Madame Vigée Le brun, translated by Lionel Strachey
• Neil Jeffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800, online edition