press release - Grand Palais

press release
Elisabeth Louise
Vigée Le Brun
1755-1842
23 September 2015 - 11 January 2016
Grand Palais
Galeries Nationales
entrée Clemenceau
This exhibition is co-produced by the Réunion des Musées
Nationaux-Grand Palais, The Metropolitan Museum of
Art and the National Gallery of Canada.
It will be presented in New York from 8 February to 15
May 2016 and in Ottawa from June 10 to September 12,
2016.
This first retrospective devoted to the works of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun presents an artist whose life
stretched from the reign of Louis XV to that of Louis-Philippe (one of the most eventful and turbulent periods
in European and above all French history in modern times). Self-portraits by Vigée Le Brun abound: paintings,
pastels and drawings that elegantly associate womanly refinement and self-respect. With the Ancien Régime
and its arts establishment coming to an end, she surpassed most of her rival in the field of portraiture.
Vigée Le Brun used self-portraits to assert her status, advertise her image and demonstrate her maternal
pride despite the constraints of a career. In this respect, her most masterful performance was shown at the
1787 Salon where she presented two paintings that cannot be dissociated. First, a portrait of Queen MarieAntoinette surrounded by her children, an attempt to counter the public’s impression of her as an extravagant
libertine; secondly, the portrait of a female artist pressing her daughter Julie to her bosom in an effusive
Raphael-like manner. The latter is one of the finest and most popular of the many works by the artist in the
Louvre and has remained emblematic of maternal affection since its first public exhibition. The culture of the
Enlightenment and the influence of Rousseau induced the artist to assume this role, which she did gladly and
with resounding success. As a counterpoint, she painted the Portrait of Hubert Robert. These paintings have
become absolute icons embodying joie de vivre and creative genius, complementing and responding to each
other in kind.
What is even more remarkable was her determination to overcome obstacles standing in the way of her
career. Born in Paris in 1755, she came from a relatively modest background, her mother a hairdresser and
her father a talented portrait artist. The latter died when she was barely an adolescent. Drawing inspiration
from his example, the brilliant young artist was accepted as a master painter in the old artists’ guild, the
Académie de Saint-Luc. In 1776, she married the most prominent art dealer of her generation, Jean Baptiste
Pierre Le Brun (1748-1813), but his profession prevented her from being accepted in the prestigious Royal
Academy of Painting and Sculpture because its regulations formally forbade any contact with the art trade.
That being said, the marriage had a beneficial effect on Vigée Le Brun’s career. As the price of Flemish
paintings soared, she became better acquainted with them, she learnt how to master the magic of colour
and the secrets of the technical mastery of Rubens and Van Dyck. Until her marriage he clientèle had mainly
come from the upper middle class and the aristocracy, but by 1777, she was working for the members of the
royal family, and the following year for Queen Marie-Antoinette, her exact contemporary. However, it was not
until 1783, after intense polemical debate within the Académie, that the opponents to her admission to the
Royal Academy were thwarted by the direct intervention of king Louis XVI.
Since the Académie Royale was founded in 1648, during the Regency of Anne of Austria, only a very limited
number of female artists had been elected to the establishment. As they were not allowed to draw nude
males in life classes, they were excluded from practicing the most presitigous genre, history painting, which
required a perfect of anatomy and the assimilation of codes of gesture, emotion and bodily movement.
Therefore, Vigée Le Brun concentrated on portraiture, despite some very accomplished incursions into the
Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Portrait de l’artiste avec sa fille, dit «La Tendresse maternelle» (detail), 1786, oil on oak panel, 105 x 84 cm,
Paris, musée du Louvre, département des Peintures, don de Mme Tripier le Franc, suivant le voeu de sa tante Mme Vigée le Brun, 1843, © Photo
RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Franck Raux
fields of history and genre painting. Her desire to break away from the constraints imposed upon female
artists enabled her to develop very personal techniques and aesthetic criteria. She mastered the science of
colour and improvised a whole range of poses and costumes that brought great variety to her portraiture.
This exhibition organizers succeed in emphasizing the artist’s extraordinary professional ambitions and
discret the vacuous condescension of her first biographers and some more recent writers who have vitiated
our understanding of the various challenges that Vigée Le Brun had to face during her long and nomadic
career. During the Revolution, Emigration, Consulate and Empire she lived and worked in Italy, Austria,
Russia, Prussia, England and Switzerland. She engaged in a dialogue with the old masters and competed
on an equal footing with her contemporaries, often to her own advantage. In the eyes of Academicians,
portraiture was a secondary genre, but after the upheavals in France the ‘social self’ had begun to take
ascendency over the ‘inner self’.
The art of Vigée Le Brun cannot be limited to the ovious seductiveness of her art or any qualities attaching
to the “fair sex”: her portraits of men, such as her Portrait of Hubert Robert, have tremendous strength of
character. Contrary to the strictly feminist approach to art history, which sometimes treats Vigée Le Brun as
a victim of her condition as a woman, wife and mother, this exhibition highlights the reasons for her enduring
success in a series of theme-oriented spaces: the autodidactic charter of her training, her forceful entry
into the male-dominated bastion of the Académie Royale; the challenges posed by the demands of the
Court; the strategies she devised to succeed in the Salon during the 1780s when she was at the top of her
game. Moreover it provides historical context by delineating the stages of her long exile, the nature of her
social achievements while living abroad and the steps taken to regain her citizenship. A chronological, but
also theme-based approach has in the main been adopted. However there are a few tangential sequences
relating to family, friends and the artistic, theatrical and musical communities in which she lived and worked,
the symbolization of political power, her use of topoi taken from such inspirational masters as Raphael, Titian,
Domenichino, Rubens, Van Dyck and even her contemporary Greuze. Finally in her incursions into allegorical
and mythological painting both in her history paintings and in her portraiture.
Vigée Le Brun was without doubt an “exceptional woman” (Mary Sheriff) who advanced with incredible resolve
and tenacity. She used the tools of her art not only as allurements but also as armement.
France’s first tribute to Vigée Le Brun brings together over 150 works executed in different techniques and in
various media, some of which are exhibited for the first time. They come from prestigious institutions, among
them the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, the Louvre Museum, the National
Gallery and The Royal Collection Trust in London, the Château de Versailles, the State Hermitage Museum in
Saint Petersburg, the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National
Gallery of Art in Washington, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and from many private collections.
.......................................
curators: Joseph Baillio, Art Historian, Xavier Salmon, Director of the Graphic Arts Department at the Louvre Museum
scenography: Loretta Gaïtis
.......................................
open: every day from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. (except
Tuesdays). Late-night opening until 10 p.m. on
Wednesdays.
closed at 6 pm on December, 24th and 31th
closed on December, 25th
prices: €13, €9 concession (16-25-year-olds,
jobseekers, large families). Free for all visitors
under 16, income support beneficiaries and state
pensioners.
access: metro line 1 and 13 «Champs-ElyséesClemenceau» or line 9 «Franklin D. Roosevelt»
informations and booking on:
www.grandpalais.fr
publications by the Réunion des musées nationaux - Grand Palais, Paris
2015:
• exhibition catalogue, 24,5 x 29 cm,
432 p., 380 ill., €49
• exhibition album, 21 x 26,5 cm,
48 p., 40 ill., €10
• Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun l’Expo,
15 x 20 cm, 416 p., 200 ill., €18,50
• the film of the exhibition, by Arnaud
Xainte, 52 mn, €20
• exhibition e-Album (Appstore and Google
Play)
#vigeelebrun
With the exceptional support of the Museum of the châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon
This exhibition benefits from the support of
press contact:
Réunion des musées nationaux
- Grand Palais
254-256 rue de Bercy
75 577 Paris cedex 12
Florence Le Moing
[email protected]
01 40 13 47 62
Pauline Volpe
[email protected]
01 40 13 47 61