Born Paris, France, 1755 ; Died Paris, France, 1842

The renowned portraitist Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun enjoyed a successful career as a painter both in Paris and among the most prominent courts of early modern Europe. Her status as one of the first two women to be accepted to the prestigious French Royal Academy in 1783 (the other being her contemporary, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard [1749–1803]) brought her early fame. The display of Vigée Le Brun’s self-portrait in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, her admission to the Academy of Fine Arts of Saint Petersburg, as well as the nearly eight decades of painted portraits and pastel landscapes she left behind solidified her renown.

Vigée Le Brun received early training from her father, the pastelist Louis Vigée (1715–1767). His death before her 13th birthday forced the artist to construct a network of women to support her burgeoning career. Her mother as well as her teacher Marie Rosalie Hallé (n.d.) were instrumental in Vigée Le Brun establishing her own studio as a teen. By her late twenties, the artist’s prestige had grown among the Parisian nobility, winning her invitations to paint at the court of Versailles at the behest of Queen Marie Antoinette (1755–1793). Although the support of such powerful patrons was influential for her acceptance in the Salon, the prestigious public exhibition held at the Louvre, Vigée Le Brun faced real danger for her close connections to the monarchy on the eve of the French Revolution.

In 1789, Vigée Le Brun fled Paris along with her daughter. (The decision was a wise one, as both Rosalie Hallé and her daughter, Vigée Le Brun’s close friend and fellow artist, Anne-Rosalie Bocquet Filleul [1752–1794], were guillotined in 1794.) She went first to Italy, spending time in Rome, Florence, and Naples, before traveling widely over the next 16 years and becoming one of the most sought-after portraitists in Europe. Her memoirs list a dazzling array of artists, literary greats, nobility, and royalty whose engaging, often joyful likenesses she captured during stays in Vienna, Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and London. The popularity of Vigée Le Brun’s work, especially her portraits of women, can be seen in its impact across late 18th- and early 19th-century visual arts. She cultivated learned artistic circles, and her paintings of ingénues in high-waisted muslin dresses and classically draped or turbaned elite women, played a significant role in shaping pre-Revolutionary Parisian fashion and early 19th-century pan-European trends.