The director of the Academy, Jean Baptiste Marie Pierre, had been strongly opposed to admitting this newcomer. In 1783, thanks largely to the queen’s influence, Vigée Le Brun was admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture on the strength of her reception piece, the allegorical painting of Peace restoring Abundance. She became a member of the Académie de Saint-Luc in 1774, and four years later was appointed official artist to Marie Antoinette, who would become her patron and confidante. This technical prowess – combined with her brother’s success as a writer, the expertise of her husband and their network of influential contacts – helped her to rapidly develop an exclusive clientele and a burgeoning reputation. Among them was the art dealer Jean Baptiste Pierre Le Brun, whom she married in 1776.Īfter years spent honing her craft in the workshops of Blaise Bocquet, Pierre Davesne and Gabriel Briard, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun gradually developed a highly sophisticated and distinctly personal technique which made her the equal of the most skilled portrait artists of the day. Naturally enough, the young artist’s first subjects were her friends and family. Fortunately he had had time enough to recognise his daughter’s artistic talent and to teach her the basics of art, especially with pastels, his own speciality. This precocious gift prompted her father to declare, prophetically: “If anybody was born to be a painter, my child, it’s you.” The young Elisabeth was very attached to her father, who died when she was just twelve years old. From an early age the young artist painted on every available surface, from her school books to the walls of her school. Baptised at the church of Saint-Eustache in Paris, at the age of six Élisabeth entered the Trinity Convent School on Rue de Charonne, in the Saint-Antoine district of the capital. Élisabeth Louise Vigée was the daughter of Louis Vigée, a pastel artist and member of the Académie de Saint-Luc, and his wife Jeanne Maissin, of countryman origin.
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