Élisabeth VIGÉE LE BRUN (1755–1842) - Lot 180

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  3. Élisabeth VIGÉE LE BRUN (1755–1842) - Lot 180
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Lot n° 180
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Élisabeth VIGÉE LE BRUN (1755–1842) - Lot 180
Élisabeth VIGÉE LE BRUN (1755–1842) Portrait of a Young Girl Pastel on canvas 61 × 50.7 cm signed and dated on the right “Vigée / 1772” (barely visible) Bibliography Neil Jeffares, “VIGÉE LE BRUN, Élisabeth-Louise,” *Dictionary of Pastellists Before 1800*, London, 2006, online edition, (https://www.pastellists.com/Articles/VigeeLeBrun.pdf), J.76.4182 (accessed October 9, 2026) We would like to thank Neil Jeffares, who confirmed the attribution of this pastel to Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun based on a photograph. In 1772, Élisabeth Vigée was a 17-year-old girl who was already in a decisive phase of her professional development. The daughter of the pastel artist Louis Vigée (1715–1767), she began learning to draw in childhood. After her father’s death, she trained primarily by copying the Flemish, Italian, and French masters in Parisian collections, while receiving guidance from painters such as Gabriel Briard (1725–1777), Gabriel-François Doyen (1726–1806), and Joseph Vernet (1714–1789). She had established her own studio in Paris by 1770 and was already earning a living from a clientele of bourgeois and aristocratic patrons. She lived with her mother, Jeanne Maissin (1728–1800), who supervised her during modeling sessions, as well as her stepfather, the jeweler Jacques-François Le Sèvre. She continued to study pastel and oil painting diligently. Two years after this portrait was completed, she was admitted to the Académie de Saint-Luc. In 1776, she married the art dealer Jean-Baptiste Pierre Le Brun, and in 1778, she became the official portraitist to Queen Marie-Antoinette. Thanks to the patronage of the royal family, she was admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in 1783. Contrary to the common belief that pastel was merely a stepping stone to oil painting, it remained a fundamental medium for her, one to which she continually returned throughout her life. She valued it for its speed of execution and the immediacy of its rendering. She used it both for highly accomplished commissioned portraits and for preparatory studies intended to quickly capture an idea before painting it in oils. Joseph Baillio, the artist’s specialist, considers her one of the greatest pastel artists of all time. Although the artist was still very young when she created this portrait, the technique of this pastel already demonstrates her mastery, particularly in the distribution of light, the freshness of the colors, and the authenticity of the expression. Other pastel portraits from the 1770s and 1780s, executed on sheets of the same dimensions, are known: that of the young Alexandre Brongniart, from 1778 (private collection, J.76.148), a “young woman in a striped dress” from 1789 (Bucharest, Museum of Fine Arts, J.76.466), and, above all, “Madame de Bonneuil, née Michelle Sentuary (1748–1829),” from 1773 (J.76.214).
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