Queen Marie-Antoinette Approximately-With Elizabeth Vigee-LeBrun In Mind   

By Zack James

 

“You know I knew about Madame Vigee-LeBrun from many years ago when I read a review of a biography of her in the New York Review Of Books and heard that she was the official portrait artist for the ill-fated Queen Marie Antoinette who went to the guillotine with her husband Louis XVI and got lost in history except that ill-advised “let them eat cake” mumbo-jumbo which whether truly attributable to her or not put her on cheap street. Here the Madam she is again in good odor. Carole told me that she is right now having a big retrospective of her work, mostly portraits for which she is most famous, at the Metropolitan in New York,” Sam Lowell was saying to his companion Melinda Loring as they walked quickly through Washington’s National Museum of Women in the Arts where the museum was staging a small retrospective of 18^th century Salon art which naturally would include Vigee-LeBrun.  

Sam and Melinda, at Sam’s prompting, had decided to take a short trip to Washington from their home in Massachusetts to see some museums, see some national monument sites, have a couple of nice dinners since Melinda had not been to Washington in a long time. Sam, although over the past few years he had been there many times, was always hurried with some conference or another when in town and so only got a chance to glance at the works of art in the National Gallery or the National Portrait Gallery so this was a treat for the pair.

Sam had assumed that the lure of a major retrospective of the photography holdings of the National Gallery would entice the rather-stay-at-home Melinda to take the trip since photography was one of her favorite avocations but unfortunately that exhibit had ended in early March. Not being impressed, or rather having seen plenty of modern art and Impressionism at various museums around Boston she was “antsy” (her term) to get away from that august museum once they found out the important exhibit had been dismantled.  Looking for another place of interest to go Melinda, an inveterate pourer-over of guide books and local maps noticed the Women in the Arts Museum in one of those brochures and so on that intermittent rainy overcast day they headed up to New York Avenue although they were on the late side since most of the museums in the city closed at 5 PM for some unknown reason. When they got there after paying their admissions (most museums in D.C. are free) they headed to the Salon/Vigee-Lebrun exhibition since Sam was under the spell of both Carol’s description of the Met exhibit and of a recent edition of the New York Review Of Books which had reviewed that exhibit at the Met.        

“It’s funny how many of the old-time women artists were the daughters or some relative of male artists as if the only way that women could be encouraged to draw and paint was through that familial relationship,” Melinda said to Sam as she finished reading an inscription about how Madame Vigee-LeBrun had got her start through her father and a couple of his friends and with a marriage of convenience to LeBrun who encouraged and advised her who all saw her talent early on. (That family observation would hold true for a number of other women artists as well-Thomas Moran’s daughter, Eva, and John Sloan’s daughter, Marie, as well as others.) It must have been hard then as it is now still from what I read and what Jane Austin told me for women to get ahead in the art world as artists,” she continued.

“Look how strong though Madame’s hand is, how attentive she is to detail and light just like Rueben and Van Dyck. Funny though how a poor artist’s daughter was able to rise in the world in those days through her artwork even if she got short shrift for being tied to the Marie Antoinette patron label. Although she was shrew enough to blow town before the knife came down on her to use your odd-ball expression. I wonder too from all I have heard about the vanity of the vacuous Queen and her foibles whether these are good and accurate likenesses or just the 18^th century version of art brushed. (See above.) What do you think?” asked Melinda as same as reading some other inscription.  

Sam answered, “I think like with Singer Sargent and that whole line of serious portrait painters that she did what she had to do to make a buck, to please the customer, and to save her neck but the look of her work shows so much exquisite detail that like Sargent she was not likely to ‘mail it in.’ That isn’t to say that the sitter like the Queen or like the fabled Madame X liked the end result but there you have it.”

“Well Vigee-LeBrun must have had something going for her, some invisible hand because she lived to be a ripe old age, painted half the old regime royalty of Europe and made a name for herself, Melinda bantered back. “Here is the funny thing going through this museum totally dedicated to women in the arts, the too few women in the arts until very recently, they follow certain trends in the art world just like the men, you know from painting Madonnas and Child like the male Renaissance painters to Pop-Art of Warhol and the gang. Maybe not the same attention (or money) but the same styles. I wonder if that will be as true in the future once more women take up the brush.” Sam and Melinda agreed they would think about that some more. And think too about how this little gem of a museum made their trip.