STUDENT READING:
SELF-PORTRAIT WITH A STRAW HAT

Self-portrait with a Straw Hat may have served as an advertisement for Vigee-Lebrun’s expertise in painting since she made her living through portraiture. The artist is depicted from hat to hips, fashionably dressed in feather-trimmed finery. Though her body is slightly turned, her head faces the viewer, confident in her artistic abilities and proud of her talent. Vigee-Lebrun stands posed seemingly ready to begin painting, gracefully holding the tools of her trade--her palette and brushes--in her left hand. Her right hand seems about to reach out to the viewer, encouraging a closer look.

Vigee-Lebrun has pictured herself as a lovely young woman with luminescent, porcelain skin, rosy cheeks, and a slightly parted, plump little mouth. Her elegant clothing reflects the status of her clientele--royalty and aristocrats. She wears a white-trimmed, pink dress fetchingly wrapped with a black net shawl. Her flower and feather adorned hat shades her delicate complexion from the light that illuminates her pale skin. Other adornments include fashionably coifed hair and pendant earrings. Though Vigee-Lebrun appears to be outdoors, positioned before a bright-blue sky with pink-edged white and gray clouds, the self-portrait was most likely painted in the studio. This self-portrait is characteristic of Vigee-Lebrun’s style that included informal poses, animated facial expressions, and skillful depiction of fabric folds and textures.

In Europe during Vigee-Lebrun’s time, art academies controlled the careers of artists through the approval acknowledged by acceptance for membership in the academy. The academies provided systematic teaching, exhibitions, and discussions. It was impossible to be a successful artist without membership. The Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, founded in 1648, limited female membership to only four, explaining one reason why Vigee-Lebrun encountered difficulties when she was pursuing acceptance in 1783. Her acceptance and professional success were instrumental in her later acceptance into academies in other countries while she was in exile from Paris. In a time dominated by male artists, she achieved professional recognition, social status, and financial success through her own self-nurtured talent and ambitious efforts.

In the traditions of her time, Vigee-Lebrun learned her techniques by studying the work of master artists such as Rubens, Raphael, and Rembrandt. She was especially influenced by Rubens after a visit to Holland to see his work. On her return she painted this self-portrait as an homage to Rubens. She adopted his working methods, beginning with a ground of brown-tinted gesso and then adding a light sketch. The painting was built up in layers and completed with numerous colored glazes that produced the effect of luminosity. In this painting Vigee-Lebrun also demonstrates her remarkable ability to realistically render difficult objects such as the black net shawl, the feather on her hat, and the textures and folds of her garments.

Nancy Walkup and Pam Stephens, Self-Portraits, Crystal Productions.

Student Reading

POETIC INTERPRETATIONS
OF VIGEE-LEBRUN’S SELF-PORTRAIT

Dear Lebrun, Glory has its perturbations,
Envy is always there laying in wait for talent.
Everything that pleases, everything of excellent achievement
Must endure the outrages of this monster.
Who more than you have ever deserved them?

A virile brush animates your portraits.
No, you are no longer woman, as opinion proclaims:
Envy is right, and its persistent cries
And serpents unleashed against you
Better than our voices declare you great man.

Lebrun-Pindare, p. 180
The Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art

Her portrait. . . . carefully depicts the rich stuffs of her dress, the neat pleats of trimming, the textures of her soft hair and feathers. She holds the brush and palette with an elegant and unworkmanly gesture, the paint colors neatly arranged to echo the decorative arrangement of flowers on her hat. She offers herself as a beautiful object to be looked at, enjoyed and admired, but conveys nothing of the activity, the work, the mindfulness of the art she purports to pursue. As an image of an eighteenth-century artist it is wholly unconvincing.

Parker and Pollock, p. 200
The Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art

Quotations from Vigee-Lebrun

“To paint and to live have ever only been a single, identical word for me.”

“…Love for painting declared itself in my earliest youth…I decorated with marginal drawings of heads, some full-face, others in profile; on the walls of the dormitory I drew faces and landscapes with colored chalks.”

Click here to download Transparencies and Student Handouts