The first retrospective in the United States for one of history’s greatest female painters is just about to open at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Will you attend this historical exhibition?
Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842) is considered by many to have been one of history’s most successful women painters, especially when taking into account the turbulent times in which she worked. In a career that spanned the reign of Louis XV to that of Louis-Philippe, Vigée Le Brun witnessed first-hand the violence and chaos of the French Revolution.
A woman of high social status, Vigée Le Brun produced a wealth of self-portraiture that not only revealed that status, but served to showcase the professional she had become in the face of gender inequality in the arts — a masterful portraitist and painter. A number of Vigée Le Brun works will feature during the artist’s first ever retrospective in the United States, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 15.
Via the Met: “Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842) is one of the finest 18th-century French painters and among the most important of all women artists. An autodidact with exceptional skills as a portraitist, she achieved success in France and abroad during one of the most eventful, turbulent periods in European history. ‘Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France’ is the first retrospective and only the second exhibition devoted to this artist in modern times. The 80 works on view at the Metropolitan Museum will be paintings and a few pastels from European and American public and private collections.”
“Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France” opens on February 15 and will hang through May 15.
To learn more, visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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Vigée Le Brun in New York
