Before long, Vigée Le Brun had installed herself in Russia, and later London, where she continued to paint figures of note, before returning to Paris and to her husband in 1805. She was forced to leave France, her daughter in tow, travelling over a number of years through Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Germany, where she was warmly received by those who had heard of her previous success. Perhaps partly as a result, the period of serene success she enjoyed was short-lived: in 1789, as France was thrown into the French Revolution, Vigée Le Brun’s close personal ties with the newly executed queen drove her into exile. Vigée Le Brun was working at a time when women weren’t expected to be artists at all, so the minor scandals which trailed in her wake – in 1787, for example, she painted a smiling self-portrait in which her mouth is slightly open, a move which was entirely at odds with the tradition of the time – reverberated further than any of those by her male peers. Before long she was considered one of the most fashionable portrait artists of the 18th century. By the 1780s, she was working in the French royal court, building an enduring relationship with Marie Antoinette that would see her paint 30 images of the French queen. Even as a teenager she drew critical attention – wealthy customers came to her home to sit for portraits, and before long the young artist had established herself as a portraitist to such an extent that she had an esteemed, aristocratic clientele. Born in Paris in 1755, Vigée le Brun grew up in a convent and, banned as women were from taking art classes, taught herself to draw over hours spent copying from plaster casts and works by the Italian and Flemish royal collections. Who? Elisabeth Louise Vigée le Brun, or Madame Le Brun as she would later come to be known, produced some of the most famous paintings of the French aristocracy ever hung – but her drive to paint, even when to do so threatened her own life, elevates her story far beyond the wooden-panelled halls of an art gallery.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |