Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun
Princess Anna Alexandrovna Galitzin
1796
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Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun
Princess Anna Alexandrovna Galitzin
1796
Physical Qualities
Oil on canvas, Overall: 53 1/2 × 39 1/2 in. (135.9 × 100.3 cm.)
Framed: 70 × 53 1/4 × 9 in. (177.8 × 135.3 × 22.9 cm.)
Credit Line
The Mary Frick Jacobs Collection
Object Number
1938.192
Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun complemented this sitter's idealized appearance--youthful with flushed cheeks, a narrow nose, and delicate lips--with a heavy silk gown meant for home wear and an elaborate Georgian headdress. The artist supported herself and her daughter, Julie, through commissions such as this one, creating glamorous portraits that made her work popular among elites in France, Russia, and Austria. Le Brun often based her paintings on chalk sketches that she drew during an initial session with the sitter.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by bequest, 1938; Mary Frick Jacobs (1851-1936), Baltimore, by purchase 1923; from Wildenstein & Company, Paris; acquired by Nathan Wildenstein (as "Princess X"), Paris and New York, after 1917; Elizabeth Alexievna Narychkin (1838-1928) by 1905, possibly by inheritance 1872; possibly Alexey Borisovich Kurakin (1809-1872) by inheritance; possibly Elizaveta Borisovna Golitsyna (1790-1870) by inheritance; Princess Anna Alexandrovna Grouzinskaya (1753-1842) commissioned from artist, c. 1797.
Taurida Palace, St. Petersburg, "Artistic and Historical Exhibition of Russian Portraits," 1905, no. 247.
The Baltimore Museum of Art, "From El Greco to Pollock: Early and Late Works by European and American Artists," October 22-December 8, 1968, no. 46.
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, "Elisabeth Louise Vigée LeBrun," June 5-August 15, 1982, no. 48.
"Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun," Grand Palais, Galeries nationales, Paris September 23, 2015-January 11, 2016. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, February 9 – May 15, 2016. Musée des Beaux-Arts du Canada, Ottowa, June 10-September 12, 2016.
“Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800". The Baltimore Museum of Art, October 1, 2023-January 7, 2024. Circulated to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, March 30, 2024 - July 1, 2024.
The Baltimore Museum of Art, "From El Greco to Pollock: Early and Late Works by European and American Artists," October 22-December 8, 1968, no. 46.
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, "Elisabeth Louise Vigée LeBrun," June 5-August 15, 1982, no. 48.
"Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun," Grand Palais, Galeries nationales, Paris September 23, 2015-January 11, 2016. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, February 9 – May 15, 2016. Musée des Beaux-Arts du Canada, Ottowa, June 10-September 12, 2016.
“Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800". The Baltimore Museum of Art, October 1, 2023-January 7, 2024. Circulated to the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, March 30, 2024 - July 1, 2024.
Elisabeth Vigée -Lebrun, Souvenirs de Madame Louise-Elisabeth Vigée le Brun...III (Paris, 1835/37), p. 347.
Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Souvenirs de Madame Louise-Elisabeth Vigée le Brun...Vol.II, (Paris: Bibliotheque Charpentier, 1867), p. 371.
Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Lionel Strachey trans. The Memoirs of Madame Vigée Lebrun (London: Grant Richards, 1904), p. 225.
Grade Duke Nicholas Mikhailovitch Romanoff, Portraits russes de XVIIIe and XIXe siecles St. Petersburg, 1907, III, no. 17, ill. (Reprint edition in Russian and French– I.N. Vrubel ed., “Russian Portraits of the 18th and 19th Centuries. Vol. III” [Moscow: Three Centuries of History, 2000], no. 17 ill. pp. 21, 154-155.)
Pierre de Nolhac, Madame Vigée-LeBrun, peintre de la reine Marie Antoinette...," (catalogue by H. Pannier) (Paris, 1908), p. 112, ill. opp. p. 158.
William Henry Helm, Vigée-LeBrun: Her Life, Works and Friendships (London, 1915, p. 198. (Painting described as being signed and in the collection of Narychkin since at least 1913).
Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Souvenirs de Madame Louise-Elisabeth Vigée le Brun, (Paris: Libraire de il Fournier, 1837), p. 347.
Henry Barton Jacobs, The Collection of Mary Frick Jacobs (Baltimore, 1938), no. 2, ill.
Helen Comstock, “The Jacobs Collection in Baltimore.” The Connoisseur (July–Dec., 1938), no. 102, p. 145, ill.
K. R. Greenfield, "The Museum: Its First Half Century," Annual I, BMA, 1966, p. 56, ill.
Rene Gimpel, Diary of an Art Dealer (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966), pp. 229, 231.
Lada Nikolinko, “The Russian Portraits of Madame Vigee-Lebrun,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 70, (July-August 1967), pp. 93, 102-103, no. 9, ill. p. 102.
Gertrude Rosenthal, ed. From El Greco to Pollock: Early and Late Works by European and American Artists (Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1968), pp. 65, ill.
Joseph Baillio, Elisabeth Louise Vigee LeBrun (Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Museum, 1982), p. 118, no. 48, ill.
Denys Sutton, ”Madame Vigee LeBrun: A Survivor of the Ancien Regime,” Apollo, (July 1982), p. 29, fig. 10, p. 30.
Elizabeth Vigée-Le Brun, J. J. Rousseau trans. The Memoirs of Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989, p. 184 ill., p. 366.
The Baltimore Museum of Art, “Vigée-LeBrun: Princess Galitzin,” In the Spotlight pamphlet, 1993, second printing 1996, cover illustration.
“"Hot Times: Robbing from the Best,” Baltimore Messenger, (October 3, 2002), Vol. 33, no. 46.
The Baltimore Museum of Art, “A Grand Legacy,” BMA News, (Jan.-Feb. 2003), pp.6-7, ill.
Nina Trauth, Maske und Person Orientalismus im Porträt des Barok (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2009), p. 59, ill. p. 59.
Hayden Williams, Turquerie: An Eighteenth Century European Fantasy (London: Thames & Hudson, 2014), color ill. p. 98.
Geneviève Haroche-Bouzinac, Louise Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun. (Flammarion, 2011), pp. 337-338.
Baltimore Museum of Art. The Baltimore Museum of Art: Celebrating a Museum (Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 2014).
Joseph Baillio and Xavier Salmon, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationeaux, 2015), cat. no. 128, p. 284. (French edition of MET cat)
Katherine Baetjer and Joseph Baillio, Vigèe Le Brun: Women Artist in Revolutionary France exh. cat. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016), pp.192-193, ill, 252.
Patrick Wald Lasowski, Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun Souvenirs (Paris: Citadelles, 2015), cat. no. 117, color ill. (French)
Andaleeb Badiee Banta, Alexa Greist, and Theresa Kutasz Christensen. Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists in Europe, 1400-1800. Goose Lane, 2023, pp. 132, 133, 177, 205-206, 209, ill.
Markings: On stretcher: printed label, "CHENUE/EMBALLEUR/5 rue de la Terasse Paris" (cited in 1957 conservation report); sticker inscribed, "Vigee Lebrun/Princess Grouzinsky/33201791"
Artist
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun
1754–1841
French, 1755-1842
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