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Alexis Joseph Pérignon (French, 1806-1882), Madame Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun Painting the Portrait of Queen Marie Antoinette, 1859. Oil on canvas. New Orleans Museum of Art, Gift of Joseph Baillio.
Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun is considered to be the most important female painter of the 18th century. Her father was a pastel artist who recognized his creative daughter’s talent and began to teach her drawing. As a teen, Vigée Le Brun began a professional career painting portraits of French nobility. By her early twenties, she was invited by Marie Antoinette to the Palace of Versailles. In 1783 Vigée Le Brun became one of only four women admitted to the state sponsored Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (The Academy). Vigée Le Brun completed at least twenty-five portraits of Marie Antoinette, whom she counted as a life-long friend. Royal connections facilitated the artist’s success, but they also forced her to flee France in 1789 at the onset of the French Revolution. Vigée Le Brun continued to paint as she traveled through Europe and in 1802 she was able to return to Paris.
