Everything she painted has a heightened elegance to it–it’s very much like arranged flowers. In fact, I’d say that “beauty” more or less characterizes all of Vigée Le Brun’s work. The white dress worn by the Comtesse de La Châtre in her portrait, for instance, has delicate matte-white dots spread across the white satin fabric below. There is an exquisite delicacy to the way Vigée Le Brun handled fabrics, especially sheer fabrics like muslin fichus or wraps in ladies’ hair. I’ve seen images of the paintings, via the Internet, but they simply don’t do justice to the originals. The paintings are also visually stunning. It’s hard to say–one suspects that a large part of it was simply her skill as an artist. Two hours there) suggested that this was because Vigée Le Brun herself was engaging and personable, and she drew out her subjects’ personality. Portrait of Marie Antoinette, 1783 by Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun. The commentary I listened to during my walk-through of the exhibit (I spent There are expressions on their faces, and they all look like they’re about to do or say something. What they all have in common, at least in Vigée Le Brun’s portraits, is a vibrancy and movement that you don’t see in many portraits.

There are also less familiar figures, some of them important men’s mistresses, some of them princes and princesses from across Europe, some of them noted intellectuals. The exhibit at The Met includes 80 paintings, some of them of familiar figures to those of us familiar with late-18th-century France: Madame du Barry, the Duchesse de Polginac, Calonne, and Mesdames Adelaide and Victoire. She began painting as a young woman, was sought after among the elite of French society, escaped the French Revolution just before it exploded, moved from capital to capital painting prominent people, and continued to paint late into her life (she died at 86). Queen “en chemise” that caused a minor scandal in 1783, there was the painting of the queen with her children which didn’t entirely succeed in softening the queen’s reputation.īut Vigée Le Brun painted many more people than just Marie-Antoinette. Marie Antoinette en Chemise, 1783 by Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun.

Marie antoinette portrait painter