Elizabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun (1755 - 1842)

We actually know a great deal about Elizabeth Louise Vigeé-LeBrun because late in life she wrote a very detailed autobiography. She was born April 16, 1755 in Paris, and when she was around eight years old, her father looked at a picture she had done and said, "You will be a painter, child, if ever there was one!" Her father was a portrait artist himself and let his young daughter work with his pastels. When she was only 15, she became a professional portrait painter, and at 21, she married the well-known painter Jean Baptiste Pierre LeBrun.

At the request of Queen Marie-Antoinette herself, Madame Vigée-LeBrun painted a portrait of the royal family, the first of several she would do during her lifetime. She traveled with her family to Holland where she was able to study the work of Peter Paul Rubens and other Flemish artists. In 1783 she was admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting & Sculpture, despite the veto of the Director who backed down when King Louis XVI commanded him to include her.

During the turmoil of the French Revolution, she and her daughter escaped to Rome where they stayed for several years. During that time she also traveled to Vienna where she painted portraits of the nobility there. Her husband and brother were both arrested in Paris 1793, possibly because of her close relationship with the royal family and in 1794, after the King and Queen of France had been executed, Madame Vigée-LeBrun's husband divorced her.

She moved from Vienna to St. Petersburg, Russia where she and her daughter Julie lived for six years. Julie married against her mother's wishes and moved to Moscow. In 1801, over 250 of Madame Vigée-LeBrun's fellow artists (including her ex-husband), scientists, and writers petitioned the government to permit her to return to France. After returning home, she continued her travels, first to London where she lived for two years, and then to Switzerland. Her Russian son-in-law divorced Julie, who returned to Paris to live with her mother.

Towards the end of her life, Madame Vigée-LeBrun knew much sadness, for her ex-husband died in 1813, her daughter Julie died in 1819, and her brother died in 1820. Despite everything that happened to her, she kept painting. Fortunately, her nieces became like daughters to her, and in fact one of them, Eugenia LeBrun became a painter herself. They helped her write her memoirs and cared for her until her death on March 30, 1842 at age 87.

Elizabeth Vigée-LeBrun was an incredibly successful artist, which was rare for a woman at that time, and well known in many of the great cities of Europe. Not only was her work beautiful, full of light and color, but she was also a good teacher. She wrote extensively about painting portraits with very specific details about how to pose the model, how to paint flesh and fabric, and how to treat the model. She was very careful to always be prepared before the model arrived so that she never had to keep anyone waiting.