Portrait of a Young Boy
Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun1817/1817
National Museum of Women in the Arts
Washington, D.C., United States
One of the foremost portrait painters in Europe during her lifetime, Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun enjoyed international patronage by European royals and aristocrats. Favored by Marie Antoinette, Vigée-Lebrun was admitted to the Royal Academy in Paris in 1783, becoming one of only four women academicians at the time.
Despite fleeing France during the French Revolution, Vigée-Lebrun was well received amongst the nobility across the continent and was elected to art academies in 10 cities. She was a prolific painter, producing over 600 works in her lifetime of almost 90 years, including this work, “Portrait of a Young Boy,” completed when Vigée-Lebrun was 62.
Portraying a young boy holding a gun, Vigée-Lebrun has insightfully captured the child’s precocious nature. With his arms folded protectively around the weapon, the young boy perhaps envisions himself a soldier.
- Title: Portrait of a Young Boy
- Creator: Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun
- Creator Lifespan: 1755/1842
- Creator Gender: Female
- Creator Death Place: Paris, France
- Creator Birth Place: Paris, France
- Date: 1817/1817
- artist profile: Renowned French artist Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun was Marie Antoinette's favorite painter for a decade. She also enjoyed the patronage of European aristocrats, actors, and writers and was elected to art academies in 10 cities. At the age of 15, Vigée-LeBrun was earning enough money from her portrait painting to support herself, her widowed mother, and her younger brother. Trained by her father, the portraitist Louis Vigée, she joined Paris’s Academy of Saint Luke at 19. Two years later, she married Jean-Baptiste-Pierre LeBrun, a painter and art dealer who helped her gain valuable access to the art world. Vigée-LeBrun’s talent helped her please even the most demanding sitters. She soon came to the attention of the French queen, who in 1783 appointed her a member of Paris’s powerful Royal Academy. As one of only four female academicians, Vigée-LeBrun enjoyed a high artistic, social, and political profile. However, with the onset of the French Revolution, her connections to the royal court forced her to flee the country with her nine-year-old daughter. During the next 12 years the artist was commissioned to create portraits of the most celebrated residents of Rome, Vienna, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Berlin. After brief, highly successful stays in England and Switzerland, Vigée-LeBrun returned to France for good in 1809. She divided the last 33 years of her life between her Paris residence, where she held glittering salons, and her country house at Louveciennes. Scholars estimate that Vigée-LeBrun produced more than 600 paintings. Her memoirs, originally published in 1835–37, have been translated and reprinted numerous times.
- Style: Neoclassicism
- Physical Dimensions: w18.25 x h21.75 in (Without frame)
- Type: Painting
- Rights: Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay; Photography by Lee Stalsworth
- Medium: Oil on canvas
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