Madame Vigée Le Brun, after a self-portrait

This enamel miniature by Jacques Thouron derives from Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun’s famous self-portrait in a straw hat, which is based on a painting in a private collection, of which the National Gallery has an autograph second version. It is framed in an original Louis XVI tondo frame.

Le Brun’s self portrait of 1782 was a witty homage to Rubens’s portrait of Susanna Lunden (known traditionally as Chapeau de Paille) and was so well received at the Paris salon of 1783 that it led to her being proposed for membership of the Académie Royale. The self-portrait of the artist standing outdoors in simple dress with flowers in her hat, has the quality of simplicity and informality so characteristic of her portraiture. Such qualities of vivacity and spontaneity appealed to the 4th Marquess of Hertford, who acquired two of her portraits (P449 and P457) in the 1860s, and a miniature reproduction by Henry Bone of her portrait of Emma Hamilton as a bacchante.