If you have ever seen a painting of Marie Antionette, you might have wondered whose hand was holding the brush that painted some of those iconic images of the so called “Madame Deficit”. The hand belonged to Elizabeth Vigee LeBrun, the trail blazing artist who painted over 30 portraits of Marie Antionette and as a royalist, skipped out of Paris for about 12 years during the crux of the French Revolution. She finally able to return to Paris in 1802 and lived to a ripe old age of 86.
Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun painted over 30 portraits of Marie Antionette.
Find out what life was like for a female artist who rose up from poverty to prominence to become Marie Antionette's artist during the lead up to the French Revolution.
If you would like to support the podcast, you and Buy Me a Coffee
Listen to the Lyric Video on YouTube for Portrait of a Queen
The History Detective Season 1 & 2 Album is now available on Spotify and all of your music streaming services.
Accompanying teaching resources for season 1 and 2 episodes can be found on my Amped Up Learning Store or on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.
Find the Transcript at the History Detective Podcast Website.
Reflection Questions:
This episode is proudly sponsored by Amped Up Learning You can find classroom ready resources, games and decor for a huge range of subjects from Prep to Year 12.
Accompanying teaching resources for this episode can be found on my Amped Up Learning Store
Contact: Twitter @HistoryDetect, Instagram @HistoryDetective9, email historydetective9@gmail.com
All original music written and performed by Kelly Chase.
Shadow of a Shark mastered at REDMOON MUSIC AUSTRALIA
Hi, this is Kelly Chase and you are listening to History Detective, a podcast where I delve into the past to uncover the mysteries of history and then I explore how that story might be reimagined through song. This is Case 11 Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun: Portrait of a Queen.
If you have ever seen a painting of Marie Antionette, you might be picturing her with graceful poise, holding a soft pink rose, wearing a glamourous, yet busty gown with her cascading curls, topped with a glorious feather filled headpiece. The girl looks good. But whose hand was holding the brush that painted that iconic image of the so called “Madame Deficit”. The hand belonged to Elizabeth Vigee LeBrun, the trail blazing artist who painted over 30 portraits of Marie Antionette and as a royalist, skipped out of Paris for about 12 years during the crux of the French Revolution, painting in Italy, Austria and Russia. That was about the time when everybody was being sent to the guillotine. She was finally able to return to Paris in 1802 and lived to a ripe old age of 86.
Just quick context refresher, Marie Antionette, the wife of Louis XVI, was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born in Austria and married Louis at 14 although they did not have children until she was 23. You may have heard of the famous phrase attributed to her- that she didn’t actually say- about cake. Or seen pictures of her incredible hair styles and glorious gowns. Prior to the Revolution, France was in a great financial crisis due to lots of foreign debt and a succession of poor harvests, and so the Austrian Queen and her lavish spending were a perfect scapegoat for the country’s money problems. One of the things she did spend court money on was getting portraits done. This was usually the domain of a male artist, but Marie Antionette took a shine to a young female artist who was born in the same year as her, Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun.
What I would like to know is, what was lifelike for a female portrait artist during the French Revolution? A young woman who rose from poverty to mix in aristocratic and artistic circles to lose many of her clients and acquaintances to the relentless blade of the guillotine.
Elizabeth was born to a father who was an artist, not a particularly successful one, but one who nurtured his daughter’s talent from a young age. He died of an illness when Elizabeth was only 12 years, and in her grief, she quit art, but it was her father’s artist friend who nurtured her talent and encouraged her to start painting again. She started painting portraits when she was a teenager as a way to try and support her widowed mother and younger brother. Although she didn’t earn enough to support the family at this age, so her mother had to remarry.
What I find interesting from her artistic education was that one of her methods was to copy the works of many of the famous art works from the time. This is one of the things that endeared her to her future husband. He was an art dealer and had a collection of beautiful and handsome paintings that Elizabeth would use to hone her painting skills.
She was in two minds about marrying her husband. She did not need the financial support as she was earning a handsome salary. She describes him as being “well built with a pleasant face” and as having “mixture of gentleness and liveliness”. Her friend warned her, “It would be better for you to tie a stone around your neck and jump into a river than marry Le Brun”. She did eventually agree to marry him as a way of escaping from her foul tempered stepfather. But like her stepfather she gave all of her earnings to her husband and he had a “furious passion for gambling” which eroded away at her fortune.
Elizabeth painted portraits not only of bourgeois Parisians and nobility, she also did a number of self-portraits. One of these was the “Self Portrait in a Straw Hat.” She was inspired by the artist Rueben who had a painting called “Straw Hat” where the model was not wearing a straw hat, but in her self- portrait, she is actually wearing a Straw Hat. Cheeky. She credits this work as helping her gain entry into the Royal Academy of Painting. Of course, there was opposition. Over the 150year period of its existence the Royal Academy only admitted 4 women. And they were banned from drawing nudes. However, because she had a lot of supporters who rallied around her and she was finally allowed admission and presented a painting called “Peace Bringing Back Plenty.”
I have to be honest, after reading her memoirs, which I do realised are obviously a very one-sided account and not entirely reliable, there is one thing that is clear. The girl liked to party. I am not talking fall down drunk, sloppy affairs, I am talking culturally enriched sophisticated soirées. And she especially liked to be the hostess. She brags that her parties were so popular that sometimes there weren’t enough chairs and people had to sit on the floor.
She would invite famous operatic composers who would perform snippets of their operas, violinists, singers, and Elizabeth even played the guitar and sang, a girl after my own heart. There was also court style dancing- no more than 8 people, plays were performed, games of charades and dress ups were to be had. A very cute pastime was the Gluckist and Piccinists debate. Gluck and Piccini were musicians, Gluck from Germany and Piccini from Italy and guests would debate who was the better musicians. Apparently, these quarrels occasionally manifested into an occasional duel. I love the idea that people were so into their classical music that they would be willing to get into fisticuffs. You can find the music on YouTube, but be warned, you may end up picking a side and drawn into a duel.
There were also exclusive after parties, where she curated her own list of intellectually superior guests and they would have a small meal and sit around and discuss politics, literature and whatever was the latest gossip. At one of these parties, her brother was reading from a book called “Anarchists” that described a Greek dinner, and she decided that everyone would dress up in Greek costumes, including her daughter and surprise some late arriving guests by singing in chorus a Gluck song called “God of the Paphos”. However, after this impromptu performance, rumours got out and people were saying that she furiously spent 80 000 francs on the party. Elizabeth swears that the occasion only cost 15 francs.
She could earn 12 000 francs for her noble portraits, but sadly she did not get to keep that money, it all went to her husband.
Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun is most famous for her portraits of Marie Antionette. In fact, her first portrait was dubbed as scandalous and she ended up repainting it to more acceptable societal standards. You see, although Marie clothed top to toe in the portrait, she was wearing a dress made of muslin and a straw hat. Muslin is a really plain, delicate cotton fabric, and heaven forbid that the Queen be comfortable, she was not even wearing a corset. In the second, more socially acceptable version, Antionette was wearing a corset and a glamorous blue gown and her hair was appropriately coiffed and topped with a fancy head piece. Over her time working as a portrait artist for the palace, she painted more than 30 portraits of the Queen. She became very fond of Marie Antionette and snug her praises of being a kind and generous woman who instilled good manners and values in her own children. Another of her famous portraits, which many dubbed as propaganda, was of the Queen with her children. There was an empty cradle also in the painting, as Marie’s youngest infant child had just died. This was meant to endear the public to the Queen showing her as a loving mother who experienced tragedy. The Queen was apparently unable to look at the painting without reliving the grief of a lost child and ordered it removed from the halls of Versailles. This ended up preserving the painting from the violence of the March on Versailles where peasants stormed the palace and broke into the Queens bedroom plunging knives into her bed. Don’t worry she wasn’t in it at the time. However, she did later lose her head to the guillotine, which distressed out artist Elizabeth who had left the country by that stage.
Our artistic party loving portrait painter, was very distressed by the violent and chaotic events of the French Revolution. She lost many of her previous clients and friends to the relentless blade of the guillotine. She was so afraid, that she left Paris and lived in various parts of Europe for many years. She also got a divorce from her husband and so she was able to support herself and her daughter with her earnings from then on. In her diary she tells of how she would hear shooting in the background as she was painting portraits and how revolutionaries threw sulphur into her cellar. She also relates a story of how one of her acquaintances, although spared from the guillotine was force to drink a glass of the blood that was flowing in the stream that was in front of the prison he was being held, regardless he ended up going to the guillotine a few years later. As she was escaping the country she was almost stopped by a drunk and angry mob and her friend advised her to take a public coach rather than her personal carriage and so she was able to leave.
But let’s not just take her word for the extent of the violence in Paris in this period. Let’s see what some corroborating witnesses have to say. Warning, it is just about to get icky, so skip this section if you are squeamish. A former deputy of the National Convention describes the horrors he saw, “Neither age nor sex were spared. Women, children and old men were ruthlessly hacked to pieces in the name of humanity,” “They threw blazing sulphur in through the ventilators…They killed, they slaughtered, they sated themselves on murder. Bodies already pierced a thousand times were slashed and mutilated, their brains dashed out against the walls.”
The English political thinker from the time explains, “they were imprisoning their king, murdering their fellow citizens, and bathing in tears and plunging in poverty and distress thousands of worthy men and worthy families… [The revolutionary government were] authorizing treasons, robberies, rapes, assassinations, slaughters, and burnings throughout their harassed land”.
A 2016 historian blames the revolutionary journalist Marat, who “had deliberately whipped up a campaign of bloodlust and frenzied hatred” and that the “massacres left a stain on the Revolution that could not be wiped out.”
Elizabeth did eventually come back to Paris after the Revolution and during Napoleon’s reign, and during her lifetime she is said to have produced more than 800 works of art. And she lived to the ripe old age of 86.
I would love to hear any suggestions for future episodes, so please get in contact. You can follow me on Twitter @HistoryDetect, Instagram @HistoryDetective9 or head on over to www.historydetective.com where you will find a transcript, links to all of the source I mention and you can join my mailing list.
Now I would like to play you a song that I wrote which was inspired by the life of Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun, it is called Portrait of a Queen. I have popped a lyric video on YouTube if you are into lyrical analysis.
This Kelly Chase, on the Case.
It takes a woman to know what a woman wants
To show her how she wants to be seen
They can judge and they can stare
I’ll paint another ribbon in your hair
We’ll show them
What they’ll never see
We’ll show them
What they’ll never be
We’ll show them
Gentility
You can stare down the barrel of my paint brush
I’m afraid it won’t be enough
They will hate, and make up lies
But you will be immortalised
We’ll show them
What they’ll never see
We’ll show them
What they’ll never be
We’ll show them
Civility
I’m sorry I can’t stay I don’t want to lose my head
I got a baby to keep safe and a long road up ahead
One day I’ll be back when I’m old and grey
But you be forever young cos I made you that way.
We’ll show them
What they’ll never see
We’ll show them
What they’ll never be
We’ll show them
NobilityIf you are a teacher or student, you will find reflection questions in the show notes. A link to my website with the transcript, the song lyrics and a list of references are linked in the show notes. However, if you want a readymade lesson to go with the podcast, you can head on over to my Amped Up learning store where you will find resources for this and every episode of history detective. Also you can find Shadow of a Shark the song from Case 6 of season one, on all of your music streaming services. Thanks to Cara at Redmoon Music Australia for your magical mastering skills. The entire season one album will be released in mid 2021.
Next time on History Detective, we will investigate the role of the Northern Territory special reconnaissance unit during World War II.
If you liked what you heard and know someone who might enjoy History Detective too, please share it and don’t forget to subscribe. And because I am a teacher, you know I love gold stars, I would love it if you could rate and write a review.