Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun: The Odyssey of an Artist in an Age of Revolution [Hardcover]

Gita May (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 6, 2005

The foremost woman artist of her age, Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755—1842) exerted her considerable charm to become the friend, and then official portraitist, of Marie Antoinette. Though profitable, this role made Vigée Le Brun a public and controversial figure, and in 1789 it precipitated her exile. In a Europe torn by strife and revolution, she nevertheless managed to thrive as an independent, self-supporting artist, doggedly setting up studios in Rome, Naples, Venice, Milan, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and London. Long overlooked or dismissed, Vigée Le Brun’s portraits now hang in the Louvre, in a room of their own, as well as in all leading art museums of the world.

This gripping biography tells the story of a singularly gifted and high-spirited woman during the revolutionary era and explores the development and significance of her art. The book also recounts the public and private lives of Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, connecting  her with such personalities of her age as Catherine the Great, Napoleon, and Benjamin Franklin, and setting her experiences in the context of contemporary European politics and culture. A generous selection of illustrations, including sixteen of Vigée Le Brun’s portraits presented in full color, completes this exceptional volume.

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

Vigee Le Brun became a famous portraitist while still in her twenties, and was a favorite of Marie-Antoinette. May's biography seeks to rescue her from critics who have dismissed her as an operator and a superficial talent. Born in 1755, Vigee Le Brun lived until the eighteen-forties and produced two volumes of memoirs, which form the backbone of this account. Occasionally, one feels the lack of broader perspectives, and May, a literature professor, fails to give a detailed sense of either the historical context or the aesthetic content of her subject's works. Still, she effectively conveys that, for Vigee Le Brun, matters such as politics, friendship, and love were subordinate to an absolute focus on honing her skill. Even post-Revolution exile was turned to advantage; she traversed Europe looking at masterpieces and painting such subjects as Byron and the family of Catherine the Great.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In a biography as entrancing as its impressive subject, May chronicles the life story of a French woman artist who overcame the entrenched misogyny and bloody upheavals of her time to become the portraitist of choice for Europe's most powerful rulers. Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (1755-1842) was blessed not only with talent but also with beauty, poise, and pragmatism. Already earning a good living with her luminous portraits--she was particularly adept at capturing the radiance of women and girls--Vigee Le Brun was reluctant to marry, and sure enough, her husband squandered her fortune. Vigee Le Brun was forced to flee Paris after the French Revolution, but she turned exile into a grand tour of Italy, Germany, Austria, Russia, and England as she was warmly welcomed everywhere she went and given plum commissions. Fearless, inquisitive, and clear-eyed, Vigee Le Brun climbed Mount Vesuvius, painted Catherine the Great, and hid her diamonds in her stockings, eventually returning to France in triumph. Like her irresistible subject, May is a superb portraitist, rendering with a rich palette and a light touch the exhilarating life of a remarkable artist and human being. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (October 6, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300108729
• ISBN-13: 978-0300108729
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #559,554 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting book, a nightmarish editing job, April 17, 2006

By 

Elizabeth A. Root (Laurel, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun: The Odyssey of an Artist in an Age of Revolution (Hardcover)

I must point out that I am reading this because I don't know that much about the subject; I can't really speak to its accuracy. I have always been charmed by Vigee Le Brun's work, and this is a relatively brief (237 pp.), but insightful and informative account of her life. Since Vigee Le Brun's memoirs ran to three volumes, I assume that this could have been much longer, but I thought it was a satisfying length, giving me the feeling of having a good sense of the person without being overwhelmed by detail, cant and speculation. There are a couple of other monographs, noted below, if the reader wants more detailed information.

May is quite aware that Vigee Le Brun, who became official painter to Queen Marie-Antoinette, might be considered politically incorrect, being rather conservative, lacking social awareness for the plight of the poor, and a Royalist with regard to the French revolution. I thought she handled this well, signalling her understanding that this might distress some readers and critics, while accepting her subject as she was. Unlike some writers, she keeps artistic talent, personal qualities and political thinking separate, without neglecting any of the three.

The book is gorgeously illustrated. There are sixteen color plates, plus a number of black and white reproductions scattered throughout the text. Of course, there are never enough illustrations. In reading about artists, I would like to see examples of the work of close associates, in this case Vigee Le Brun's father and mentors. Of course, I want this without having to give up any reproductions of the main subject's work. One can dream.

I was originally going to give this fewer stars because of the problems listed below. However, outside of being bewildered at a few points, I really enjoyed the book and I'm glad that I read it. I leave the reader to decide how much bad editing bothers them. I urge the Yale University Press to correct any other editions.

I believe that this is the most badly edited book I have ever read. Among less serious flaws, an allegorical painting entitled 'Peace Bring Back Abundance' is described as, "the figure of peace gently guiding and protecting peace." I believe that should be "protecting abundance." Further, it is frequently repetitive; e.g., the sad end to the life of Lady Hamilton is described twice (pp. 97 and 173.) More seriously, it is sometimes repetitive and self-contradictory. Plate 2 is a reproduction of a Vigee Le Brun portrait of a man in a yellow vest, identified as Hubert Robert. On page 16, this painting is described in detail and identified as "Joseph Vernet ... (plate 3)" and on p. 62, described again and identified as Robert. This is particularly pathetic for a university press.

The notes are nicely done and, one of my pet causes, the running titles is used to identify the sections of notes, making them easier to match up. There are some explanatory notes included with the bibilographic information. There is a fairly good index, although only one of the above noted accounts of Lady Hamilton's death is listed in her entry under "death". The other is included under "in London"; she actually died in Calais. There is not a bibliography as such, but May points to other monographs on the artist such as Mary Sheriff's "highly theoretical and ideological interpretation" The Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art; and Angelica Goodden's "more straightforward narrative" Sweetness of Life: A Biography of Elizabeth Louise Le Brunife. I very much appreciate that she explains the difference in approach between the two. (Introduction, note 7, p. 205)

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Breaking the canvas ceiling, January 11, 2007

By 

Rebecca Huston "telynor" (On the Banks of the Hudson) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun: The Odyssey of an Artist in an Age of Revolution (Hardcover)

One of the nice things about being interested in art and history, is that you find out the most amazing things -- if I had read this as the plot of a novel, I would have harrumphed and muttered Balderdash! But once I started reading this slim biography, I was hooked about this story of a woman who not just held her own in the French court before the Revolution and Terror, but managed to survive and thrive in a world where women were certainly a second class.

Author Gita May takes on the intriguing and adventuresome story of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun and fleshes it out into a portrait of a woman that took on the establishment, and yet was very much a traditionalist. Born into an artistic family, Elisabeth Vigee showed a precoious talent for drawing and portraits, something that delighted her father, an artist of middling stature who encouraged his daughter's education in art. Her mother, however, was disappointed in Elisabeth, and clearly favoured her son instead. While most young women of her class were busy planning for marriage, Elisabeth poured her passions and desires into art, and while she could not attend the formal sessions that the professional artists gave, she was still able to get private lessons. Still it was expected that she would marry, and Elisabeth Vigee soon married an art dealer, Le Brun, in what everyone thought would be a suitable match.

Her earliest portraits were of her own family and friends, and soon she was building a clientele of minor nobility. While today, portrait art is respectable, in the eighteenth century, portrait work wasn't held in that high of a regard, being not as worthy as say, history or landscape painting. But there was certainly a market for portraits, and Vigee Le Brun soon found that her talent was appealing to buyers. Soon she was having commissions to fill, and painting some of the more famous in the land -- a talent that soon had her walking in the halls of Versailles.

Her ability to capture liveliness and expression in her sitter was just the sort of thing to appeal to the circle of courtiers that surrounded Marie Antoinette. Soon Elisabeth was named official portraitist to the Queen, and she was spending her days working in her studio, and at night she had established a salon, where the titled and those of leisure could gather for intellectual conversation. All appeared well until Paris erupted in revolution, and the King and Queen of France were forced to live in Paris.

And now, is where the story gets interesting. Elisabeth watched her earnings and savings dry up. Her nerves were frayed, and she feared for the lives of herself and her daughter, Julie, for she had never been shy about admitting her ferverent royalist leanings. Before she could be arrested, she and Julie fled Paris, and France. Officially, she was going to Italy to 'study art,' but the reality was that she was an exile. To make matters worse, her husband had frittered away her earnings on other women and gambling. Could she succeed in a world where revolution was taking hold and being a woman at that?

Gita May uses Le Brun's own memoirs to tell the story, padding out the narrative with letters and biographies of the various people that she met while traveling around Europe. Her royal connections and sympathy for Marie Antoinette made it possible for her to have plenty of commissions, and she was able to carve out a reasonable living for herself, supporting herself while traveling to Italy, Vienna, Germany and even as far as St. Petersburg, Russia. In Russia, she found immense success, and acceptance from the Francophile courts of Catherine II and Paul I.

But what struck me about the book, despite the fact that it's rather short, are the portraits that Le Brun created. They are full of life, especially those of the women and children that she portrayed. There are several of Mare Antoinette herself, from the full-blown pomp of the formal attire of wide skirts and powdered hair, to the imfamous en gaulle portrait where the queen was shown in a simple muslin gown, a painting that was dismissed as showing the queen being far less than royal, and the one where the queen transforms herself from a frivolous girl into the regal mother of France's next generation of princesses and kings. Some have derided Le Brun as being overly flattering to her subjects, and far too sentimental, but I think that is exactly the charm of her work. Instead, she shows the sitters as they are, full of movement and life, and her studies of children are exquisite.

The text does tend to be a dud in places, and May tends to be repetitive in a very wearying way. But throughout there are black and white reproductions of various paintings and self-portraits, along with a few of the various places that Le Brun visited. There are also two full-colour sections of this book as well, and it has the self-portraits that Le Brun created, which are among the best of her work. While the narrative is on the weak side, it is still a very readable book, with plenty of notes and bibliography to read, and makes a decent study of Le Brun's work.

For those who are interested in Revolutionary France, eighteenth century painting and the lives of women in the past, this makes for an interesting study into that world. I wouldn't however, recommend it for the casual reader as the story gets bogged down in spots, and it's more of a travelogue and listing of the works that Le Brun made. Too, paintings are mentioned without listing where they can be seen, or without reproducing them, which makes it hard for the reader to figure out just what May is getting at here.

Recommended, but with reservations.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent introduction to this distinguished painter., March 9, 2008

By 

Sigrid Olsen (Salem, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun: The Odyssey of an Artist in an Age of Revolution (Hardcover)

I agree with some of the criticisms of previous reviewers; still this was an excellent overview of Vigee Le Brun's life. I enjoyed reading about her differences with David, and was especially intrigued by her decade long stay in Russia. I do wish that May would have fleshed some of her story out more in some instances. For example, when she says on page 41 that the Dauphin died under mysterious circumstances, this is much less a mystery. He was terribly abused, and mention of this would have made our understanding of the famous painting that much more tragic. I also would have liked to have a better understanding of how she ran a salon and painted portraits at the same time. On the other hand, May includes many interesting details about her escape into Italy, penniless with a young daughter in tow. I also enjoyed reading about her amusing effort to paint Germaine de Stael in an attractive manner.