Johann Gotthard von Müller’s engraving pays homage to the talent and early success of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, who had turned 30 a few months before he advertised his print for sale in August 1785. Vigée Le Brun’s confident self-portrait (1782, private collection) would be familiar to visitors to the 1783 Salon in Paris who would have seen the oil painting, along with her portraits of Queen Marie Antoinette and other members of the French royal family. Only artists who had been accepted into the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture were permitted to show works at this biennial, public exhibition, and Vigée Le Brun was one of the few female members of the Académie prior to the French Revolution. During her later travels Vigée Le Brun would continue to paint dazzling portraits—such as her oil of Princess Anna Alexandrovna Galitzin, which hangs nearby—and would become one of Europe’s most sought-after portraitists.