{"id":713,"date":"2015-12-22T13:23:31","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T13:23:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/?p=713"},"modified":"2016-04-01T09:22:20","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T08:22:20","slug":"louise-elisabeth-vigee-le-brun-au-grand-palais","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/delladrees.com\/wordpress\/?p=713","title":{"rendered":"Louise \u00c9lisabeth Vig\u00e9e Le Brun, Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Madame<\/a>
Detail. Madame Grand, 1783. \u00c9lisabeth Louise Vig\u00e9e Le Brun<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There were a small number of eighteenth century women artists that became prominent\u00a0for their talent\u00a0and teaching, the stylistic innovations they created, and their influence on other artists. Nowhere can this be better seen than in the life and works of the French painter Louise \u00c9lisabeth Vig\u00e9e Le Brun. <\/b><\/p>\n

Louise \u00c9lisabeth Vig\u00e9e Le Brun<\/b>\u00a0(Marie \u00c9lisabeth Louise; 16 April 1755 \u2013 30 March 1842) was born in\u00a0Paris and\u00a0was a prominent French\u00a0painter of the time. Her flattering, elegant style is generally considered to be\u00a0both\u00a0Rococo\u00a0and Neoclassical. When she was appointed\u00a0the portrait painter to\u00a0Marie Antoinette (leaving over 30 paintings\u00a0of the Queen), Vig\u00e9e Le Brun worked purely in the Rococo style, both in her\u00a0colour choices and the style of her works.\u00a0She left an incredible\u00a0legacy of 660 portraits and 200 landscapes.<\/p>\n

\"Detail.
Detail. Bacchante, 1785. This work is a self portrait of Vig\u00e9e Le Brun.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amazingly, this exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris\u00a0is the first major retrospective devoted to the works of Vig\u00e9e Le Brun, presented over 170 years after her death. The works shown are from an artist\u00a0whose life covered one of the most turbulent times in European History,\u00a0\u00a0from the reign of Louis XV to Louis-Philippe. Paris works are on show, but this\u00a0exhibition collects together paintings and drawings\u00a0from Italy, the Hapsburg Empire, Germany and Russia produced during\u00a0her 12 years away from Paris with her daughter. This exile was enforced on her by the turmoil in France at that\u00a0time\u00a0and during\u00a0these travels,\u00a0she was entirely responsible for her own financial support.<\/p>\n

Vig\u00e9e Le Brun’s French citizenship was\u00a0revoked when she left the country during the Revolution, and her husband was forced to divorce her on grounds of desertion. However, after the terrors she did return permanently to Paris because\u00a0some of her fellow artists had petitioned for\u00a0her citizenship to be renewed. She was reunited with her husband but without the official status of marriage.\u00a0Her final return to France and later excursions to England and Switzerland are followed in the second half of the exhibition on the upper floor of the Grand Palais.<\/p>\n

She was originally from a relatively modest background, her mother was a hairdresser from\u00a0peasant stock and her father a talented portrait artist. Her father was Louis Vigee, a little-known portrait artist who worked in pastels. From the time she was small, he taught his daughter the skills of the trade. She proved to be somewhat of a prodigy.\u00a0But her father, whom she adored, died when she was 12. By the time she was 15 , Louise had her own studio and was attracting an increasingly prestigious series of sitters. The brilliant young artist was accepted as a master painter at the Academy of Saint-Luc. This was necessary as\u00a0she was making so much money at the time that she gained the attention of the law and was threatened with arrest for working without a license. \u00a0To remedy the situation she had to join this official Academy. A\u00a0remarkable woman, she was determination to overcome obstacles hindering her career.<\/p>\n

\"
La Tendresse Maternelle, 1786. \u00c9lisabeth Louise Vig\u00e9e Le Brun<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1776, she married the most important art dealer of her generation, Jean Baptiste Pierre Le Brun (1748-1813). They had one daughter, Julie, born in 1780. This marriage was a double edged sword as it not only prevented her from being accepted at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture\u00a0as strict regulations forbid any contact with the “mercantile professions”, but her husband also turned out to be a a philanderer, addicted to gambling and prostitutes, and he also relieved her of her earnings. However, this union did\u00a0have a beneficial effect on her career. Her client\u00e8le had mainly been the bourgeoisie, but in 1777, she started working for the aristocracy, descendants of royal blood and finally Queen Marie-Antoinette herself. It was not until 1783, however, and only at the intervention of the Queen\u2019s husband, Louis XVI, that Vig\u00e9e Le Brun\u00a0was able to join the Royal Academy of Painting.<\/p>\n

She\u00a0published three volumes of her\u00a0memoirs, entitled\u00a0Souvenirs<\/em>\u00a0between 1835 and 1837. \u00a0She\u00a0was a woman of much wit and charm, and these memoirs\u00a0provide a lively account of her life and times. They can be read in English here<\/a>. Le Brun lived to the age of 87\u00a0which was\u00a0remarkable for a woman of her era.\u00a0She died at her Paris residence in\u00a01842.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth\u00a0was unusual in that\u00a0she used self-portraits to assert her status, circulate her image and to show people the mother she had become, despite the constraints of being a “career woman”. Close to forty self-portraits are attributed to her. These paintings and drawings radiate her feminine grace, show her fine artistic skill and present to us her\u00a0inherent\u00a0pride she had in her calling.\u00a0Her greatest coup de force<\/em>\u00a0was at the 1787 Exhibition where she presented two related paintings of motherhood. One was a\u00a0portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette surrounded by her children. This was an attempt by the monarchy to counterbalance the\u00a0image the populous\u00a0had of\u00a0a Queen who\u00a0was really an extravagant libertine.\u00a0While some critics praised the picture, others remarked on the queen\u2019s apparent air of distraction\u00a0so\u00a0the painting ultimately failed to rescue Marie-Antoinette\u2019s public image. The second was a more personal and intimate portrait of the artist hugging her daughter, Julie. This\u00a0is one of the most popular works by this painter owned by the Louvre, and has remained an icon\u00a0of maternal tenderness since it was first exhibited, and the informal title is La Tendresse Maternelle<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPainting and living have always been
\none and the same thing for me.\u201d<\/em><\/h4>\n

The Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens had a profound impact on Vigee-Lebrun’s color, glazing techniques, compositional approach, and use of light. She made copies from\u00a0his Medici Cycle in the Luxembourg Palace while still a teenager. She\u00a0was also particularly impressed with works she viewed on a trip to Flanders with her art dealer husband.<\/p>\n

\"\u00c9lisabeth
Jeune femme, figure d\u2019expression. \u00c9lisabeth Louise Vig\u00e9e Le Brun<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is one painting that stands out in this Exhibition at the Grand Palais for me, as\u00a0it\u00a0appears more “unfinished” than the others. At least, it is in a\u00a0different style, feeling less refined\u00a0as it\u00a0clearly shows her brush marks. Painted around 1780 to 1783, Jeune femme, figure d’expression<\/em>\u00a0is a fantasy figure of a beautiful young woman who, as the title suggests, is full of expression. For artists, this painting may give us some insight into her potential working methods. It almost looks like a full chroma under painting, as we can see how she has used the direction of the brush stokes to indicate the planes of the skin, and her\u00a0distinctive warm and cool colour choices to bring the flesh to life.<\/p>\n