Getty Museum
The Vicomtesse de Vaudreuil
Creator
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le BrunFrench Artist · 1755–1842
All works by this person →Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun's father, a portrait painter, died when she was twelve, so she taught herself to paint by copying the paintings of established masters in collections around Paris. Later in life, after studying the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens, she adopted his technique of painting layers of brilliant color on wood panels to achieve animated, polished, and supremely attractive port
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- 1785
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Culture
- French
- Department
- Paintings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- 3807f719-315e-4239-8cd8-343d47420d96
From the Getty Museum record
On an oval panel, a young woman poses in front of a landscape. Smiling slightly, she looks candidly out at the viewer. The sitter, Victoire-Pauline de Riquet de Caraman, was an aristocrat, and her status improved when she married Jean-Louis, Vicomte de Vaudreuil in 1781. The artist Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun emphasized the Vicomtesse's status and refinement by carefully depicting her fashionable hat, silk dress, and gauze scarf, collar, and cuffs. Displaying her education, the Vicomtesse places her right thumb in her book to mark her place, as if she has been interrupted while reading. Vigée Le Brun adopted this obvious gesture often used in men's portraits to illustrate women's importance in French Enlightenment circles.
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