Vigee Le Brun At Versailles

We first noticed Elizabeth-Louise Vigee Le Brun's work at the National Gallery, then began seeing a good deal of her work at the Louvre. She was reputed to have been Marie Antoinette's official portrait painter, and certainly was one of the great portrait painters of her time. Her time...an interesting time, as they say. As the Revolution came, she had the good sense to get the hell out of Dodge, so to speak, and to visit a variety of European capitals during those years. She returned to Paris when Napoleon crowned himself, as did most of the other emigres. The sweetness and tenderness of many of her paintings, the color, the realism, all are the things we like. Aeon magazine recently had an article on the emergence of the smile in modern painting and cited Vigee Le Brun as the first painter to show teeth in a portrait. In any case, we were astonished to see an assemblage of her paintings at Versailles, mostly in the Captain of the Guard's quarters, and a few in Marie Antoinette's rooms. They are instantly recognizable. All were in rooms one merely walked past, with no opportunity to get up close nor account for angle nor light. Still, they were a treat to see.