Happy birthday to Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, who was born on this day in 1755. One of the most prominent (and popular) French portrait painters of the late 1700s, she created over 800 paintings in her lifetime. Marie Antoinette was one of Vigée-Lebrun’s many patrons, and with her support the artist became one of fourteen women admitted to the Royal Academy prior to the French Revolution. Madame Le Brun caused a great scandal at her first Salon, when she exhibited “Marie-Antoinette in a Chemise Dress,” portraying the queen in a simple, informal white muslin garment. Deemed too inappropriate for the public eye, the artist was asked to remove it from the exhibition. Vigée-Lebrun continued to make waves when her painting “Self-Portrait with Her Daughter, Julie” was exhibited at the Salon of 1787, which portrayed the artist smiling open-mouthed, breaking traditional painting conventions.
This particular portrait is of Madame Du Barry, a longtime mistress of King Louis XV. Vigée-Lebrun painted Du Barry three times. It is likely that Du Barry gave this picture to her English lover, Henry Seymour.