Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, the portrait painter - ancestor story
Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun is a large painter in the eighteenth and 19th centuries, protected from Marie-Antoinette, her paintings are a door on history.
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Daughter of an artist father
Louise-Elisabeth Vigée was born in Paris, rue Coquillère, April 16, 1755. Daughter of pastellist Louis Vigée and Jeanne Maissin, hairdresser, she is raised nurse near Epernon in Eure-et-Loire. At her 6 years old, she left the countryside and entered the Trinity Convent school. Already at the time, Elisabeth draws and continues to impress her father artist who gives her some lessons.
Unfortunately, Louis Vigée died of sepsis in 1767, Elisabeth was 12 years old. He will never know the success of his daughter who, to better accept the disappearance of his father, is largely passionate about painting and drawing. She then followed the lessons of Gabriel-François Doyen, history painter, then of Gabriel Briard who allows her to enter her workshop at the Louvre Palace. It is at the Louvre, moreover, that Elisabeth meets Vernet, one of the most popular painters at the time in Europe. He and Jean-Baptiste Greuze, will advise the young artist.
It is by copying canvases of great masters such as Rembrandt or Van Dyck that the artist improves his technique. Elisabeth also declares in her memoirs: "You could exactly compare me to the bee, as I harvested knowledge ...". At the time, women artists were not admitted in art schools, they are prevented from training in history painting and the canton with still lifes or miniatures.
Despite everything, in 1770, when she was only 15 years old, her portrait of her mother, Madame Le Sèvre, made her known. It is at this age that she became a professional painter. Two years later, two of his portraits earned him to be authorized to participate in the public sessions of the Royal Academy. A chance for the artist! The same year, she met Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, merchant and restaurant restaurateur. Very quickly, he will become his agent and her husband.
The year 1776 marked his entry into the courtyard with an order for the Count of Provence, the king's brother. She is admitted to working for the court of Louis XVI and becomes the official painter of Queen Marie-Antoinette.
Revolution and exile
Success is there for Elisabeth. His workshop and mansion is fashionable, his paintings are sold well, orders flock from all over Europe ... until the revolution that marks a turning point in the artist's career.
While she was painting the portrait of the Countess du Barry, Elisabeth hears the cannon sound in Paris. We are in the summer of 1789. While her mansion was ransacked by sans-culottes, she and her daughter left Paris for Italy, Austria or England. During her turn in Europe, she painted for high aristocracy and sends her paintings to Paris. She will also be invited to Saint Petersburg where she will stay for several years, at the Countess Saltykoff, to paint for the Russian bourgeoisie.
Elisabeth Vigée only returned to France in 1802, after being removed from the list of emigrants following a petition signed by more than 250 artists. She will not stay there long and will settle in London for a while. On her return to France in 1809, the artist moved to Louveciennes, she continued to paint and his paintings were again hung on the Louvre or in the most beautiful castles. It was at the end of her life that she will write a short biography as well as her memoirs published in 1835.
Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, now blind and without family, died in Paris on March 30, 1842 at 87, she will be buried in Louveciennes. Three -quarters of the artist's works are portraits. It has more than 650. Very popular during his lifetime, the artist will be criticized a century later by the feminist movement to before falling into oblivion.