Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun

1755-1842

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun painted her way through the late eighteenth century to become the most celebrated female artist of her age. Born in Paris in 1755, she learned from her portraitist father and quickly became a professional painter while still in her teens, gaining entry to the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1774. Her breakthrough came through her patronage by Marie Antoinette, for whom she painted dozens of portraits after being summoned to Versailles. Elected to the Royal Academy in 1783—a rare honor for a woman—she built a continental reputation, touring Flanders and the Netherlands, where Flemish masters inspired new techniques in her work. When the Revolution erupted, she fled France, spending years in Italy, Austria, and Russia, where she continued to paint aristocratic sitters and was elected to academies in Rome and Saint Petersburg. She returned to France after 1802 and spent her final decades in Paris, maintaining her prolific output until her death in 1842. She left behind over 660 portraits and 200 landscapes, and published memoirs that remain vital records of artistic life in the ancien régime.