Self Portrait in a straw hat c1787

Seeing as I seem to be drawn to the French 1790s styles I decided to go the whole hog and  look at one of the best known French portraitists of the period. This was meant to be a record of making an illustration but again the research has taken over......
 Louise Elisabeth Vigee LeBrun was a popular society artist, born  in Paris, 1755, (married Lebrun 1776, died 30 March 1842), daughter to a  portraitist.  She  had begun painting portraits professionally in her teens and  was well enough known to be invited to Versailles to paint Marie Antoinette in 1778. This was so well received that over the next 6 years she made many portraits of the Queen and her family.
She was living and working Paris during the beginning of the Revolution, but fled to Italy with her daughter.
 She was listed as a counter revolutionary and could not return, so travelled to the courts in Austria and Russia, supporting herself and daughter by her painting. When permitted she returned to France  and continued to work, although never as popular as earlier. For details of her life, picture galleries and memoirs, try http://www.batguano.com/vigee.html

Marie Antoinette, 1783

 

The style of her work is rococo, theatrical, flamboyant, light. There is often an invisible breeze lifting ribbons, moving lace and the whole is full of curving lines and implied movement. Compare with the hard eyed studies from Ingres or David, her work has a charm and intimacy. David was the artist of the revolutionaries, being involved in all sorts of ways, even designing  new egalitarian dress for the new era ( never caught on). Vigee LeBrun is always associated with the old regime, especially Marie Antoinette, not wise in 1790s France.  She painted the infamous portrait of Marie Antoinette in her chemise de la Reine that caused such an uproar when exhibited in Paris. ( considered an insult to moral decency, a mockery by a wasteful figurehead - the queen in her underwear!) The Fashion Historian's blog on this is well worth a read - http://www.thefashionhistorian.com/2012/03/chemise-la-reine.html

Looking at the catalogue of her paintings from this time the transition of ideas from the formalised regime to the newer, less rigid ideas of society are apparent. Poses and attitudes relax, clothing changes - look at the two portraits of Marie Antoinette- so do the settings. In 1779 the background is  full of heavy grandeur, of luxury, in 1783 it is roses, still full of symbolism, but without the weight, she is presented as a single individual not as a representative of the ruling class.
 

Vigee LeBrun's memoirs are full of anecdotes of her wealthy clientele, and  names  and events familiar to anyone who has studied the era or even watched the "Scarlet Pimpernel".

 

Of her  impressions of the Queen -

"It was in the year 1779 that I painted the Queen for the first time; she was then in the heyday of her youth and beauty. Marie Antoinette was tall and admirably built, being somewhat stout, but not excessively so. Her arms were superb, her hands small and perfectly formed, and her feet charming....To any one who has not seen the Queen it is difficult to get an idea of all the graces and all the nobility combined in her person. Her features were not regular; she had inherited that long and narrow oval peculiar to the Austrian nation. Her eyes were not large; in colour they were almost blue, and they were at the same time merry and kind. Her nose was slender and pretty, and her mouth not too large, though her lips were rather thick. But the most remarkable thing about her face was the splendour of her complexion. I never have seen one so brilliant, and brilliant is the word, for her skin was so transparent that it bore no umber in the painting. Neither could I render the real effect of it as I wished. I had no colours to paint such freshness, such delicate tints, which were hers alone, and which I had never seen in any other woman." 

 

No wonder she was asked to do many formal and informal portraits of the Queen and the royal family.

Of the Revolution, only 10 years later -the account of the Terror is without sentiment but conveys the growing tensions and fears, some direct some more insidious. I regret not being able to read them in the original

 

 

self portrait 1791

"At the same time I refused to paint Mlle. de Laborde (afterward Duchess de Noailles)....but it was no longer a question of success or money – it was only a question of saving one's head. I had my carriage loaded, and my passport ready, so that I might leave next day with my daughter and her governess, when a crowd of national guardsmen burst into my room with their muskets. Most of them were drunk and shabby, and had terrible faces. A few of them came up to me and told me in the coarsest language that I must not go, but that I must remain. I answered that since everybody had been called upon to enjoy his liberty, I intended to make use of mine. They would barely listen to me, and kept on repeating, "You will not go, citizeness; you will not go!" Finally they went away. I was plunged into a state of cruel anxiety when I saw two of them return. But they did not frighten me, although they belonged to the gang, so quickly did I recognise that they wished me no harm. "Madame," said one of them, "we are your neighbours, and we have come to advise you to leave, and as soon as possible. You cannot live here; you are changed so much that we feel sorry for you. But do not go in your carriage: go in the stage-coach; it is much safer." I thanked them with all my heart, and followed their good advice..."

 

 The Memoirs of Madame Vigée LeBrun
Translated by Lionel Strachey 1903

 

There is so much in these memoirs, the description of Mme Du Barry  and  her execution, of the horrors, but also of the societies in several major cities in Europe. Her account of  Napoleonic Paris is scanty, with  rather sniffy anecdotes about painting the Emperor's sister and visiting her painting of the royal family painting at Versailles -  the return of the Bourbons seemed to be much more to her taste.

Her work is very skilful but also very mannered, there seems to be a set list of poses, backgrounds and expressions, but Vigee LeBrun was a breaker of rules in her time, opening the mouth in a smile caused an uproar, yet this doesn't come across today. The research has helped to clarify and give insight, but the over riding impression I have is of her, she comes across as a bold and dynamic personality.



sketch to blocking face and tone on jacket

adding colour and building the background

My research was for a purpose - I set out to copy something of the style and pose to illustrate Gwen's new 1790 French jacket.
The self portrait above was painted  soon after the flight from Paris in 1791. She is sat at an easel poised mid painting, possibly this is the one where "No sooner had I arrived at Rome than I did a portrait of myself for the Florence gallery. I painted myself palette in hand before a canvas on which I was tracing a figure of the Queen in white crayon. "  (It does look more like a paintbrush though). She did not miss a trick, reminding a new clientele of her status as well as perhaps a tribute to Marie Antoinette whose execution she had heard of during her own escape. Vigee LeBrun is partly turned towards us, with a half smile, looking directly at the viewer. The clothing is sombre and formal but there is still that quality of movement, of  something about to be said.  These images show the evolution of my study based on the self portrait. Just to make life awkward it is in pastel...

 

 The major difficulties were trying to keep the lightness in the skin tone and working the details. I am clumsy when blending and tend to rubout the good bit while leaving the problem part behind.

balancing and adding tone and detail. close up - really should work larger.

 

Finished article - although there are still areas I would like to improve -  really must work larger or buy thinner pastels and create more pointed blending tools - rag and cottonbuds just won't do!