Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (French, 1755-1842)
Marie Gabrielle de Gramont, duchesse de Caderousse, 1784
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City
Madame la Comtesse was the daughter of the Marquis de Sinety and was betrothed to her husband, who was the eldest son of the Marquis de Vachères, in 1779 in a ceremony that took place at Versailles and was witnessed by several members of the royal family. Marie Gabrielle was formally presented at court after her wedding that summer and swiftly became one of Marie Antoinette’s closest friends. She escaped the revolution and became Duchesse de Caderousse when her husband inherited the title in June 1800.
Although women of the Comtesse’s class usually wore their hair powdered, Vigée Le Brun persuaded her to be painted with her hair in its natural state, which caused a furore when she went to the theatre straight after one of her sittings. ‘I could not stand powdered hair,’ the artist later recalled in her memoirs. ‘I persuaded the beautiful Duchesse de Grammont-Caderousse not to use any for her portrait. Her hair was ebony black… arranged in irregular curls. After the sitting, which finished at the time of the midday meal, the Duchesse left her hair as it was and went to the theatre as she was. Such a lovely woman had to set the fashion, which gradually caught on and became widespread.’
-Madame Guillotine
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was a remarkable woman and a talented painter who lived in a turbulent time.
- élisabeth was painting portraits professionally by her early teens, and became a member of the Académie de Saint-Luc at the age of 19.
- She married an art dealer, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, who helped her exhibit her work and gain access to the nobility, but also cheated on her and exploited her financially.
- She was a favourite of Marie Antoinette, and painted more than 30 portraits of the queen and her family, often in informal and intimate settings. She also painted a great number of self-portraits, in the style of various artists whose work she admired.
- She fled France during the Revolution, and travelled across Europe and Russia, painting portraits of royal patrons and influential figures. She was elected to art academies in 10 cities, and was praised by Catherine the Great of Russia.
- She returned to Paris in 1801, but did not like the social life under Napoleon. She moved to London, where she painted portraits of the court and Lord Byron. She also visited Switzerland, where she painted a portrait of Madame de Staël.
- She wrote her memoirs, which provide a lively account of her life and times. She died in Paris in 1842, at the age of 86.
Portrait of Anna Pitt as Hebe by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Anne Grenville, Baroness Grenville (née Pitt, September 1772 – June 1864) was an English noblewoman and author, and a member of the Pitt family, which at the time dominated British politics.
From left to right: Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Germaine de Staël, Madame Marie-Jeanne 'Manon' Roland de la Platière, Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday d'Armont, Olympe de Gouges
In 2022 opera on the women of the French revolution premiered! It is called GIRONDINES! It's an English language opera that premiered with Wilmington Concert Opera and will be having its West Coast premier with Mission Opera!
Album image for the original concert cast album
According to an February 2023 article by Broadway World: "The Original Wilmington Concert Opera Cast Album is now available! It features Kirsten C. Kunkle as Charlotte Corday, Ashley Becker as Olympe de Gouges, Marisa Robinson as Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze Lavoisier, Alyssa Maria Lehman as Manon Roland, Raffaella Lo Castro as Germaine de Staël, Tracy Sturgis as Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Thuy Nguyen on Violin, Melissa Brun on Cello, and Sarah Van Sciver on Piano."
I have not yet listened but as someone into frev and opera I am very excited. It also looks like the original concert production may be available to watch on YouTube!
Promo image for the October production
So far it looks like these have been small scale productions, but everything starts somewhere! I need to listen to the music but I wish good things to come
Excerpt about Caroline, from the book Le cahier rouge des femmes de Napoléon, by Arthur Chevallier
As for Caroline, she was rudimentary, unrivaled in her wickedness and authoritarianism. Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun remembers being forced to draw her portrait:
“Finally all the troubles that Madame Murat made me feel so angry that one day, as she was in my studio, I said to Mr. Denon, loud enough for her to hear: ‘I painted real princesses who never lied to me and never kept me waiting.’ The fact is that Madame Murat was perfectly unaware that exactitude is the politeness of kings, as Louis XIV said so well, who, in truth, was not a parvenu.”
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Portrait de Sophie de Tott (1785),
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French: [elizabɛt lwiz viʒe lə bʁœ̃]; 16 April 1755 – 30 March 1842),[1] also known as Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun or simply as Madame Le Brun, was a French painter who mostly specialized in portrait painting, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Via Wikipedia
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (French, 1755-1842)
Comtesse de la Châtre (Marie Charlotte Louise Perrette Aglaé Bontemps, 1762–1848), 1789
Marie Antoinette, who regularly sat for Vigée Le Brun, popularized the kind of simple, white muslin dress so beautifully painted in this portrait of the comtesse de la Châtre, daughter of Louis XV’s premier valet de chambre.