Haldane MacFall

“ Her portrait of herself created such a sensation that her election became assured. She had to paint the usual formal tableau de reception, and chose Allegory, painting her "La Paix ramenant l'Abondance," which, though a somewhat stilted affair such as Academies demand, is full of charm—and is still to be seen at the Louvre.
But these years in Vienna must have gnawed at Vigée Le Brun's heart like a fearful disease. In her France her much-loved Marie Antoinette was going through terrible days. ”

“ Vigée Le Brun never stated character with more consummate skill than here; never set down action with more vivid brush, catching movement flying.
It was an age of small oratory. Every man who could string a neat sentence together, scribbled or harangued. It was boorish and an unfashionable thing not to be an author, a poetaster, a little orator, a critic, a dabbler in the arts. At coffee-houses or clubs, wheresoever men foregathered, some fellow would mount a table and harangue his friends. ”

“ Vigée Le Brun painted another portrait of herself and her little girl-child; and she painted both, fortunately for her fame, when her skill was at its increase. They stand out, with all their limitations, pure and exquisite as the Madonna and Child of Italy's finest achievement; for they were painted by a woman of genius with the passionate love of a child that is the wondrous heritage of woman; none the less religious in that it apes no show of religion. We see the age of free thought stating the innate religion of free thought ”

“ The conflict began with the fierce quarrel as to whether the king could be tried.
It was with sorrow at her heart that the exiled artist left Italy and journeyed into Austria. Having spent three years in Italy, roaming from town to town, and being received with honour wherever she went, she turned her footsteps to Vienna, where she remained from 1792 to 1795, her thirty-seventh to her fortieth years, again to be idolised, and painting hard the while. "To paint and to live are the same word to me," she was wont to say. ”

“ The painting of the flesh of the pretty face is exquisite, and in spite of intense finish is broadly conceived and rich and glowing in colour. The clumsy drawing of the hand that holds the palette is the only defect in this, one of her masterpieces. The picture has the added interest of revealing to us how Vigée Le Brun set her palette. The thing is thrilling with life; and the little feminine conceit of wearing her black wrap is quaintly delightful.
Thenceforth her art has an added sense of style, a fuller statement of atmosphere ”

“ The girl showed in no way any slightest sign of their influence. Ardent and enthusiastic in her pursuit of art, she haunted the galleries and private collections, but above all she went to Nature. Naturalness is by consequence a marked attribute of one who painted in this artificial age—in portraiture she largely escaped the conventional style, both its limitations and, be it also confessed, something of that great beauty of style and that superb decorative splendour that mark the handsome achievement of Nattier and Drouais and their fellows. ”

“ Vigée Le Brun was to paint her royal mistress close on thirty times during the next ten years, until the prison doors shut upon the Royal house of France; and there grew up between the two women a subtle and charming friendship that was to make the talented woman a dogged and convinced royalist to her dying day—indeed, the temperament of women needs small incense towards the worshipping of idols. ”

“ She was a woman, and a painter of women—a painter of women from the woman's point of view that desires the world only to think of woman in her pose as woman, reticent, careful to screen the impulsive, most of all the vexatious, the violent, and the irregular moods of femininity's temperament from the eyes of the passer-by; always eager to show woman dressed for the part, and well dressed. ”

“ In Vigée Le Brun's portrait of herself and her child we see in full career the Greek ideals that were come upon France—a France weary of light trifling with life, and of mere butterfly flitting from flower to flower. ”

“ However, these things troubled our precocious Elizabeth but little as yet. The girl grew rapidly in craftsmanship and in personal beauty. Indeed, she developed towards womanhood as early and as swiftly as in skill of artistry, being remarkable for her prettiness, her freshness and delicacy of colouring, and her elegance of figure—early displaying the airy wit that, with these abundant gifts of her fairy godmother, were so valuable an aid to the reputation which she was achieving by her artistry at a time when most children are in the schoolroom. ”

“ And by the whimsy of things, there was also born in far-away Vienna, in this same year of 1755, in the palace of the Emperors of Austria, a little princess whom they christened Marie Antoinette; who was to marry the little seven-month old princeling that lay sucking his thumb in the Royal palace near by, and thereby to become future Queen of France.
Like François Boucher, the great painter to the king, Elizabeth Vigée came to the pretty business with the advantage of being an artist's child; like him, she received her first lessons at an early age from her father ”

“ Boucher has been blamed for being conventional; is often sneered at as the arch-make-believe. But when he painted women he painted them as men really see them with their masks off, and with all their allure of femininity. This sneer of convention is a two-edged sword.
In the year that they found Boucher dead, seated at his easel before an unfinished canvas of Venus, this girl of fifteen discovered herself celebrated; saw her studio invaded by the flower of the world of fashion; the women of the nobility at the French Court visiting her ”

“ Nor must it be forgotten that the realism claimed by the later years, and the naturalism claimed for this girl's art, were already to be seen in full career in the master-work of La Tour in portraiture, and in the still-life of Chardin. This girl's genius never reached to the force of La Tour, nor the superb handling or colour-sense or vigour of Chardin, but she painted with rare skill the eminent women of her day and, with near as remarkable a skill, more than one man ”

“ The success of the revolted colonies made the Revolution in France a certainty. The fall of Neckar and the setting up of the reckless and incompetent Calonne over the destinies of France brought the shout of the Democracy to the gardens of the king. Vigée Le Brun's picture of the dandified man certainly does not show him a leader of great enterprises. ”

“ Now it so chanced that at Vigée Le Brun's there was a gathering at which Le Brun—"Pindar" Le Brun the poet—spouting a discourse, described a Greek supper. The idea at once sprang up that they should have one straightway; they got up the cook and started to set the thing going, the poet guiding the making of the sauces. Amidst the general merriment Vigée Le Brun suggested that they should dress for the fantastic affair in Greek costume, and arrange the tables and seats after the antique fashion. ”

“ A few days afterwards there was talk of it at Court; and the king was solemnly assured by "one who knew," that it had cost 20,000 francs.
This unfortunate Greek supper dogged her steps in the wanderings over the face of Europe that were to be her long exile. At Rome she was to discover that it had cost her 40,000 francs; at Vienna it was to rise to 60,000; and when she reached St. Petersburg she was to find that, gathering volume on the long journey, it had increased to 80,000 francs, when she scotched the lie and killed it ”

“ He was condemned to death,—Orleans, "Philip Egalité," voting with the majority amidst a murmur of universal horror even amongst the men who condemned the king. Louis' head fell to the guillotine on the 10th of January 1793. War with Europe followed; and the deadly struggle between the Girondists and Jacobins for supreme power. The 27th of May saw the appointment of the terrible Secret Committee of Public Safety. By June the Girondists had fallen. Charlotte Corday's stabbing Marat in his bath left the way clear to Robespierre's ambition. ”

“ Beaujou, the financier, paid 8000 francs (say 300 guineas) ; Prince Lubomirski 20,000 francs (£800) —not that the poor maker of these works gained thereby, for her precious picture-dealer husband had it according to his habit, and she had difficulty and a scene even to get two louis from the price when she asked the rogue for it. ”