Elizabeth Louise Vigée, was the daughter of a portrait painter, and received her first lessons from her father. She studied with Briard and Doyen,  and was helped to some extent by Greuze. She conducted her studies in the studio of the painter Le Brun, whome she married. Le Brun's dissipated habits made the marriage impossible, so she left him.

Madame Le Brun, as the testimony of her contemporaries and her own ast show her to have been, was on of the most attractive of the cultivated and charming personalities of the arts who served the court and aristocracy of that doomed regime and ear, late eighteen-century France. That many were involved in its fall was severe justice to be visited upon good souls whose hearts - for artists' hearts are good - were better than their minds. It was the good fortune of Madame Le Brun that she suffered littel more than inconvinience.

Back to Famous Paintings in Paris, about Paris, and my Tips

Need accommodation in Paris? Visit my apartment in front of the Louvre: