Painting of the Day: Marie Antoinette by Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun

From the New Orleans Museum of Art

Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun (1755-1842) is undoubtedly the most famous female painter of the Eighteenth Century. Her work shows the French Rococo influence, but she also represents a neoclassical sense of balance and structure in her compositions and technique.


The daughter of Parisian painter, Louis Vigée, and a hair dresser, Élisabeth was sent to a convent school at the age of six and remained there until she was eleven. The following year, her father died from an infection following surgery to remove a fish bone from his throat. Her mother married a wealthy jeweler, Jacques-Francois Le Sèvre, and the family moved near the Palais Royal. By her early teens, she was already a professional portrait artist. Sadly, Élisabeth’s studio was shut down because she was practicing without a license. She later became a member of Académie de Saint Luc and worked with the appropriate credentials.

Élisabeth married Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, also a painter and dealer of art, in 1775. Her career and reputation flourished, and soon she found herself invited to The Palace of Versailles to paint a portrait of Marie Antoinette. The Queen was pleased. Over the next six years, Élisabeth painted over thirty portraits of the Queen and other royals and was considered the official portrait painter of Marie Antionette.

One such portrait of Marie Antionette is now housed in the New Orleans Museum of Art. Here, the Queen is older, but still beautiful in a gleaming white skirt and fine royal blue overdress. While some portrait artists try to show their subject as they really were, I suspect Le Brun, erred on the side of flattery. The result is a striking portrait which shows Marie Antoinette at her most regal.

Life became rather complicated for Le Brun and her family during the French Revolution. Her close ties to Marie Antoinette labeled her as a counter-revolutionary. Nevertheless, after fleeing France, she worked in Italy, and notably Russia, where she painted Catherine the Great. Le Brun did return to France under Napoleon I, but life was never quite the same.

When we look at her work, we can see her loving hand in every brushstroke. Her sensitivity and tender use of her media will forever keep LeBrun’s artistic spirit alive.