Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun

Born in Paris in 1755, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun showed artistic talent early and built an extraordinary career in a world that gave women few chances to succeed as painters. She became famous for portraits that felt graceful, vivid, and personal, and her work won her powerful patrons at the French court.

She is closely linked with Marie Antoinette, whose portraitist she became before the French Revolution. When the revolution began, she left France and spent years traveling and working across Europe, painting members of royal and aristocratic circles in places including Italy, Austria, and Russia.

Later in life, she wrote memoirs that helped secure her reputation not only as a painter but also as a sharp observer of the people and upheavals of her time. She died in 1842, leaving behind hundreds of paintings and a remarkable record of artistic life in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe.