Elizabeth vigee-lebrun biography

As author May Gita said in her biography of Vigee-Le Brun, "She had not only survived the greatest crisis of her personal and professional life she was now poised alone to face the multiple challenges awaiting her in her quest for artistic achievement beyond the borders of her native country. During her stay in Italy she found a community of French emigres and was commissioned in aristocratic circles to paint portraits, however she worried about her brother, husband, and the royal family under siege back in France.

Her husband was briefly imprisoned, and he and Vigee-Le Brun were forced to divorce in in a move of political and financial expediency. Although her husband loyally supported her return, he had squandered her earnings from the early part of her career. A music lover, Vienna with its society balls and concert halls is perhaps where she felt the most at home during the years As official portraitist of Marie Antoinette she was warmly welcomed in the queen's native country of Austria.

Two of her portraits executed while there reflect the influence of pre-Romanticism. Her portraits of the Countess Bucquoi and the Countess Von Schonfeld both display backgrounds with luminous skies, distant mountains and trees. It was during that watershed year of that she received the news in a letter from her brother that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and her former benefactors had gone to the guillotine, an event which deeply affected her and to which she would only refer to as the "awful assassination.

When she arrived in Russia in she turned forty years of age. Once again she was warmly received by nobility and painted numerous members of the family of Catherine the Great who was at the peak of her power and prestige along with the great city of Saint Petersburg.

Elizabeth vigee-lebrun biography: After earning the favours of

Vigee-Le Brun was impressed with Catherine's patronage of the arts, architecture and sculpture and with her creation of the famed Hermitage Museum. However, mother and daughter parted ways, at least for a period of time, when Julie married a Russian nobleman against Vigee-Le Brun's advice. She was welcomed back to France during the reign of Emperor Napoleon I.

In she acquired a country home in Louveciennes, France - a town which would become an idyll of Impressionist painters during the nineteenth century. Once again political turmoil encroached on Vigee-Le Brun's attempts to live peacefully when the Prussian army pillaged and ransacked Louveciennes during the war of Personal loss soon followed when in Vigee LeBrun's daughter died of what was probably pneumonia.

She published her memoirs, Souvenirs in and which consisted in part of letters written to friends of Russian and Polish nobility. She wrote about some of the most notable personalities that had lived during an era spanning the Old Regime, the Revolution, the Empire, The Restoration and the July Monarchy - philosophers and thinkers of the era such as Benjamin FranklinVoltaire and Tallyrand.

Inshe left her husband and country.

Elizabeth vigee-lebrun biography: Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le

Fearing the progress of the Revolution and a slanderous press campaign against her due to her association with the Queen, she fled to Italy with her young daughter, Julie. Despite living in exile, working and travelling across Europe, and raising her daughter single-handedly, Le Brun was able to maintain a successful career. Her portraits, distinct for their emotional tenor, continued to be commissioned by European nobility and royalty.

At 15 she was painting the aristocracy, in her 20s she was the favoured painter of Marie-Antoinette, and by her 30s she was fleeing the French Revolution. She became the queen's favorite portraitist and painted her a total of 30 times over the next decade; for one portrait, datedMarie Antoinette posed with her three children. She also painted several informal and sensitive self-portraits, including one of herself with her daughter.

Although she was best known for her work in portraiture, she also executed occasional mythological and allegorical scenes, such as "Peace Bringing Back Abundance" and "Bacchante" She traveled through first Italy, and then Austria, Czechoslovakia and Germany, finding herself warmly received by the foreign nobilities, who knew her artistic and social reputation.

She worked consistently throughout this time, producing elizabeths vigee-lebrun biography of royalty and aristocrats in her signature style. Finding France much changed since her departure, she chose to live and work in London from —, and then she came home permanently in Her eldest daughter looks adoringly up at the regal mother, who holds her youngest child, who would have typically been with a wet nurse, on her lap.

Evangelia Karvouni describes in a article for The Journal for International Women's Studies"The figure of the Queen with a lively baby on her lap and her daughter leaning affectionately against her brings to mind Raphael's,portraits of the Virgin Mary with child Jesus and St John the Baptist, such as for example the Madonna of the Meadow.

Unfortunately, the painting was not particularly successful in its mission. The posture and facial expressions of the queen were criticized for being too stiff. The depiction of the immense jewelry armoire in the background, was also of symbolic importance, for it is accorded only a secondary position in the composition. Instead of showing the queen wearing extravagant jewelry, she is "showing her children as treasures" in front of her riches, as seen in the popular depictions of the Roman heroine Cornelia.

This was meant to counter a recent scandal involving a stolen necklace of immense value rumored to have been made for the notoriously extravagant queen. That the necklace had been made for the prior king's beloved mistress, the ever-popular Madame du Barry, was dismissed by a discontent public. Although the queen is noticeably not wearing a necklace in this portrait, the association to the rumor was too powerful to overcome.

The two are set against a bare, softly illuminated elizabeth vigee-lebrun biography and clasp each other in a warm embrace whilst looking towards the viewer. They are not clothed in fashion that would have actually been worn during this period, but dressed in a manner that evokes the ancient past. This represents the rising influence of the Neoclassical style on artists working in France.

Although it might be seen as a fashionable affectation, it could also be interpreted as lending the gravity of the classical to motherhood and female relationships, where it was usually only reserved for masculine fraternity and civil values, particularly in the paintings of Jacques-Louis David. Her revival in the 20 th century, however, has not always been positive, with notions of vanity and sentimentality clouding the resuscitation of her legacy.

The two become almost one, and their extreme proximity and shared gaze unites them against the viewer. Sadly, this close relationship would become estranged during their stay in Russia, only to be united shortly before the daughter's early death in The Portrait of Emma, Lady Hamilton, as Bacchantedepicts the famous, and scandalous, society figure in the guise of one of the ancient worshipers of Bacchus, the god of wine.

She looks at the viewer over her shoulder, holding a tambourine above her, with her hair and dress tumbling behind.

Elizabeth vigee-lebrun biography: Born in Paris on 16

In the background, smoke ominously spews from a volcano. An actress-turned-noblewoman, the fashionable Emma had a series of high-profile affairs, including with Lord Nelson, and was the muse of artist George Romney. She was also famous for her "attitudes," a charade-type affair in which she dressed up and posed in the guise of different mythological figures calling upon the audience to guess which goddess or nymph she portrayed.

Combining her lyrical Rococo style of portraiture with Neoclassical history painting, the figure marks a dramatic diagonal line from top left to bottom right. Her smile as she turns to the viewer, as well her clothing, hair, and the gentleness with which she holds her instrument, suggest a lightness and elegance. The Bacchantes themselves were devotees of Bacchus who would supposedly drink and dance themselves into an orgiastic and violent frenzy.

Elizabeth vigee-lebrun biography: Élisabeth Louise Vigée was born in

In Euripides' play The Bacchaethese women are so overcome by the libertine deity that one of them tears her own son to pieces. This sense of danger hiding underneath her beauty is echoed in the landscape, whose soft smokiness and mountain-peak hint at a devastating eruption. The dark plume of rising ash appears to be clasped by Lady Hamilton, as if she embraces the destruction it portends.

In her published memoirs, titled Souvenirsshe describes how she was attracted to drawing from a very early age, admitting, "I scrawled on everything at all seasons; my copy-books, and even those of my schoolmates had their margins crammed with tiny drawings of heads and profiles. The young Elisabeth was sent away to a convent for schooling at the age of five, as was customary for a young girl of her class in the mid th century.

Her mother, Jeanne Maissin, worked as a hairdresser, which would have put the family in contact with wigmakers and, by association, the aristocratic class, along with the clientele of her artist father. Her father recognized the young child's talent and began her artistic training in earnest upon her return from the convent. However, by the time Elisabeth was 12, her father died, leaving the family both emotionally devastated and financially vulnerable.

The marriage proved largely unhappy and fiscally strained, and the young artist soon thereafter began taking painting commissions that helped her to support the family. From her father's example, however, she understood the importance of cultivating a strong artistic and intellectual circle, later forming friendships of her own with famous landscapists Claude Joseph Vernet and Hubert Robert, who provided her with advice as well as friendship.

There, she sketched from plaster casts and copied works by the Italian and Flemish masters on view, later noting her particular admiration for RubensVan DyckRembrandtand Raphael. The Academy was perhaps second only to the Royal Academy in prestige for artists in Paris, and more lenient in accepting woman artists among its ranks. Two years later, inshe married the influential art dealer Jean-Baptiste Le Brun.

The marriage was heartily promoted by her mother and provided Elisabeth with further access to collections of art and important connections in the upper echelons of French society. As feminist art historian Whitney Chadwick describes in her influential text Women, Art and Societythe elizabeth vigee-lebrun biography "established her as a major figure in the social life of aristocratic urban Paris.

To this point, both the queen and her mother had been quite unsatisfied with any portraits depicting Marie Antoinette. I have a sense that this must have mattered in some way. This anecdote was described decades later in the artist's memoirs, as to having occurred during her second pregnancy, which sadly ended in a miscarriage. Whether this actually occurred, however, is unclear; it may be that an event from the year prior to the scene depicted partially inspired the event.

During this period, in addition to the numerous portraits of the queen, she also depicted other members of the royal family and aristocracy. She was active in the royal court and held Salons at her home throughout the s, hosting members of the aristocratic class as well as other artists, including the prominent artist Jacques-Louis David, who was said to once compliment her painting by saying it appeared to have been painted by a man.