Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun is remembered for work the next generation could not ignore.
The record lists Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun as French portrait painter (1755–1842).
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was born at Paris in 1755. Her recorded nationality is France.
Academies set the rules in this period - what counted as a serious subject, and who was allowed to train.
She worked as painter, salonnière and writer.
Her recorded movement is rococo and neoclassicism.
Among her best-known works are Marie Antoinette with a Rose, Marie Antoinette and Her Children and Baronne de Crussol. A painting outlives the argument about it, which is the only durable form of an artistic reputation.
That the work was made in France shaped it: artistic traditions, academies and the galleries that decide what is seen have never been evenly distributed.
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun died in 1842, aged 87. The work remains, hanging in collections that outlived both the artist and the market that first priced it.
Achievements
- Notable work: Marie Antoinette with a Rose
- Notable work: Marie Antoinette and Her Children
- Notable work: Baronne de Crussol
- Movement: Rococo and Neoclassicism
