Dromo's Den

[Up] [Dromo's Den]

Marie Anne Louise Elizabeth Vigée-Le Brun Biography

Marie Anne Louise Elizabeth Vigée-Le Brun Image

VIGÉE-LEBRUN, Marie Anne Louise Elisabeth (1755–1842). A French portrait painter. She was born in Paris, and received her first instruction from her father. She was more influenced by Greuze, however, and at an early age had established herself as a portrait painter of note. In 1775 she was elected member of the Academy of St. Luke, at Rome. In 1776 she contracted an unfortunate marriage with the painter and art critic Jean B. P. Lebrun, a spendthrift and a man much older than herself. In 1783 she was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. She became a great favorite of society, and was appointed painter in ordinary to Marie Antoinette, of whom she painted about 30 portraits. At the time of the Revolution (1789) she fled to Italy, where she remained three years, then visited Vienna, Prague, Dresden, and St. Petersburg. She was everywhere received with high honor, admitted to membership in the principal academies, and abundantly employed. In 1802–05 she lived in England. Later she visited Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland, making her home alternately in Paris and Louveciennes. She died in Paris, at the age of 87.

Madame Lebrun's figures are well posed, and although the composition is sometimes conventional her presentation is always charming. Her technique is careful in finish, her drawing good, and the color pleasing. Among the best of her portraits are two of the artist and her daughter (Louvre); self-portraits in the Uffizi, Florence, the National Academy, London, and St. Luke's Academy, Rome; Jean Paesiello; the painter Hubert Robert; Joseph Vernet (Louvre); Madame Molé-Raymond; Lord Byron; Marie Antoinette and her three children (Versailles Museum); Marquise de Laborde, Morgan collection, Metropolitan Museum, New York. Consult Madame Lebrun's Souvenirs de ma vie (Paris, 1869; Eng. trans., New York, 1903); J. J. Foster, in French Art from Watteau to Prud'hon (London, 1906); the biography by Pierre de Nolhac (Paris, 1908).

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXIII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 148.