Olga's Gallery


Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun

(1755-1842)

Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, French artist, the daughter and student of her father, the artist Louis Vigée, was born on 16th April, 1755 in Paris. In 1776, she married the known art-dealer Jeanne Baptiste Pierre Lebrun. She made an early and brilliant career: in 1779 she officially became a court painter of the Queen Marie-Antoinette, in 1783 she was admitted to the French Academy of Arts.
“Intelligent, diplomatic, resourceful, and independent, she remains a role model to women who paint, having won wide recognition for her skills and gained admission to academies long closed to her sex.” (Paintings in the Hermitage. by Colin Eisler. 1990. Stewart, Tabori & Chang. p 516)
Vigée-Lebrun was an extremely industrious and productive painter, she left more than 30 portraits of the queen and her ladies-in-waiting, many self portraits, and a lot of portraits of the European nobility. Her portraits are elegant and rich in color, very sentimental and idealized the model. But the evident difference of the models from their pictorial depiction did not embarrass the customers. Vigée-Lebrun was fashionable with the European aristocracy. Her fame grew even more with her immigration during the French Revolution first to Italy (1789-93), then to Vienna (1793-94), and then to St. Petersburg (1795-1802), where she also spent 6 very successful years painting portraits of Russian aristocrats. In her best works the magnificent art of French portraitists of the 18th century and fine sensitiveness of the European sentimentalism are happily united.

Bibliography:

The Exceptional Woman : Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art by Mary D. Sheriff. University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Memoirs of Madame Vigee Lebrun. George Braziller, 1989.

Notes:

Hubert Robert (1733-1808), French landscape and antique ruins artist. In 1756-1761 he was a student of Academie de France in Rome, where he befriended Fragonard. Both artists later became administrators of the Louvre Museum and remained such to the end of their lives. In the 1770s Hubert Robert also became a landscape designer and as such was in great demand and fashion.

Bibliography:
Le Petit Larousse Illustré 2002.  Larousse. Paris. 2002.

Yolande Martine Gabrielle de Polastron, Countess and then Duchess de Polignac (1749-1793), was the closest friend and confidant of the Queen Marie Antoinette. In 1767 she married Count Jules de Polignac who was raised to the Duke de Polignac in 1780. She was never faithful to her husband. She received many favors for her and her family. The queen appointed her the Governess of the Queen's children. The charming, ambitious, lecherous and unscrupulous duchess contributed to the Queen's unpopularity. She left Paris when the French Revolution started. She died in Vienna on 1793. Her husband died in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1817.

Golovina, Varvara Nikolaevna (1766-1821), née Princess Golitzina, daughter of Lieutenant General, Prince Nikolay Feodorovich Golitzin (1728-1780) and his wife Praskovia Ivanovna, née Countess Shuvalova (1734-1802). She spent her childhood in a country estate of her father and was brought up and educated by her mother, who was a genuine art lover. In 1777, the princess was brought to St. Petersburg, where, after her father’s death in 1780, her widowed mother moved with the daughter to the house of her brother Count Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov (1727-1797), one of Catherine II’s favorites, an outstanding statesman and a patron of arts. (see his portrait by Levitzky, about him make a new big note!!!). Staying in her uncle’s house played the most important role in building up the young girls character and interests. In 1783, Varvara Nikolaevna was raised to the rank of maid of honor of the Grand Duchess Elisabeth Alexeevna  (1779-1826), wife of the Grand Duke Alexander Pavlovich, future emperor Alexander I.
In 1786 she married Count  Nikolai Nikolaevich Golovin (?-1820 ) by love, who had managed to make the young girl fall in love with him. Varvara’s clever mother was against the marriage; and really, Count Golovin, a squanderer and a fop, failed to make his wife happy; her anticipations of quiet and durable family unity were not realized and she gave her lovable heart to the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Alexeevna, who became her life-long idol.
During the Paul’s I reign Golovina’s envious foes set the court against her. Even Elisabeth Alexeevna believed the slander and for some time stopped her friendship with the countess. Insulted Golovina retired from the court; immigrants, mostly from France, became her new circle of friends.  Under their influence she adopted Catholicism and became a devoted and passionate believer.
During Alexander’s I reign the Empress Elisabeth Alexeevna restored their friendship. On her request Countess Golovina wrote memoirs, which are an interesting historical document of the time. She spent most of her time abroad, mostly with French aristocrats, visiting Russia only from time to time. Being an intelligent and gifted woman, herself a painter and engraver, she had also friends among artists. Thus she was a close friend of Mme Vigée-Lebrun and Hubert Robert, with whom she often worked together on landscapes. In 1816, she was awarded the order of St. Catherine and her daughters, Elisabeth and Praskovia, raised in Catholicism, became maids of honor. Countess Golovina died and was buried in Paris in 1821.

Bibliography:
Famous Russians in the 18th and 19th centuries. Lenizdat. St. Peterburg. 1996. (in Russian)
 

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