VIGÉE LE BRUN, Élisabeth Louise
Souvenirs. From a Memoir

Painting and living have never been more than one and the same word for me.

In this memoir, the renowned 18th-century French portraitist Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun offers a candid and thoroughly enjoyable account of her life and art. She relates her encounters among the royalty and aristocracy she painted––including, most famously, her patron Marie Antoinette––and the effusive reception they extended to her across Europe. Forced to flee during the French Revolution, Vigée Le Brun traveled through Italy, Russia, Germany, and England, returning twelve years later to France under Napoleon I. These pages demonstrate her unflagging creativity during unstable times and her remarkable savvy. Her observations provide unique insight into the art world of 18th- and 19th-century Europe, a time when women were rarely allowed success.

In her introduction to this volume, the scholar Anne Higonnet conveys Vigée Le Brun’s unique position at a turning point in the art world, as well as the larger world beyond, and navigates in particular how one retroactively reconstructs a relationship to a world-changing revolution.

[publishers’ note]

Published by David Zwirner Books, 2025
Artists' Writings / Memoirs / Painting / Art History