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PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST
By ELISABETH LOUISE VIGEE LE BRUN

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST
By ELISABETH LOUISE VIGEE LE BRUN (1755-1842)
IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON

Madame Le Brun, in the course of a long life devoted to art, achieved an international reputation which has lasted down to the present day. She was born in Paris, her father being an obscure painter named Vigee, and at the age of twenty-one she married J. B. P. Le Brun, a picture dealer and grand-nephew of Charles Le Brun, the French historical painter.

As her portraits of herself show, she was possessed of great personal beauty, This, allied to her talent and great charm of manner, rapidly made her the fashion in Paris. She was only twenty-four when she first painted Marie Antoinette, and so successfully did she execute the commission that she formed a lasting friendship with the ill-fated Queen, and painted numerous members of the Royal Family and of the Court. After much opposition on account of her sex, she was elected to membership of the Academy.

At the outbreak of the French Revolution she went to Italy, making a triumphal tour of Europe on the way, and being honoured by various academies of painting which admitted her to membership in honour of her achievements. She visited London in 1802, and painted many portraits, including those of the Prince of Wales and Lord Byron. In 1805 she returned to Paris, where her salon was a centre of attraction to the cultured and refined men and women of the day until her death in 1842.

She was prodigiously industrious, in which respect she rivalled Sir Joshua Reynolds. Her "Souvenirs," published in 1837, were illustrated with no fewer than 662 portraits and 200 landscapes, which display the correctness of her drawing, the delicate and pleasing colouring, and the charm which make her work so delightful and so popular wherever her paintings are known.

From the book "Famous Paintings" Volume 2 printed in 1913.

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Online "Name the Painting"

Masters in Art ,Paintings by Le Brun

Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun
at Wikipedia

Famous Paintings in this Series

James Archer My Great Grandmother	Bashkirtseff The Meeting	Bouguereau Charity	John Brett From the Dorsetshire Cliffs
Arnesby Brown The River Bank	Joseph Clark Mother's Darling	John Constable The Hay-Wain	Jean Baptiste Camille Corot The Fisherman's Hut
Jean Baptiste Camille Corot A Flood	Leonardo Da Vinci Monna Lisa	Edouard Detaille The Dream	Henri Fantin-Latour Flowers
Thomas Gainsborough Queen Charlotte	Thomas Gainsborough The Market Cart	Jean Baptiste Greuze The Head of a Girl	Jean Baptiste Greuze Fidelity
James Clark Hook Home With the Tide	Alfred William Hunt Windsor Castle	Josef Israels The Shipwrecked Mariner	B.W. Leader The Stream in Summer-time
Madame Vigee Le Brun Portrait of the Artist	Alphonse Legros A Canal With a Fisherman	Anton Mauve Watering Horses	J.L.E. Meissonier The Cavalier
Sir J.E. Millais Speak! Speak!	Sir J.E. Mallais My First Sermon	George Morland The Reckoning	George Morland The Inside of a Stable
Murillo The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin	Alfred Parsons When Nature Painted All Things Gay	Ralph Peacock The Sisters	Rembrandt Syndics of the Cloth Merchants' Guild
Guido Reni "Ecce Homo"	Sir Joshua Reynolds Portrait of Mrs. Richard Hoare With Her Infant Son	Briton Riviere The Temptation in the Wilderness	Dante Gabriel Rossetti Day Dreams
John Singer Sargent Miss Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth	Lady Stanley (Dorothy Tennant) His First Offence	Jan Steen Grace Before Meat	Marcus Stone On the Road from Waterloo to Paris
Constant Troyon Watering Cattle	H.S. Tuke "All Hands to the Pumps"	Velazquez King Philip IV. of Spain	S.E. Waller Sweethearts and Wives
Thomas Webster The Smile	Index Famous Paintings Volume 1 Art Gallery	Index Famous Paintings Volume 2 Art Gallery	Index Art Appreciation Lessons