Elisabeth‐Louise Vigée Le Brun 1755–1842
NG 1653 
Self Portrait in a Straw Hat

Humphrey Wine, 2018

Extracted from:

Humphrey Wine, The Eighteenth Century French Paintings (London: National Gallery Company and Yale University Press, 2018).
Humphrey Wine and Virginia Napoleone, Former Owners of the Eighteenth‐Century French Paintings in the National Gallery: Appendix to ‘The National Gallery Catalogues: The Eighteenth‐Century French Paintings’ (London: National Gallery Company, 2018).

1782

Oil on canvas, 98 × 70.2 cm

Provenance

According to a letter of 14 December 1897 from S.T. Smith, in the posthumous sale of A.P. Pickering of 23 Queens Gardens, Hyde Park, London, held there by Messrs Mullett & Booker of Albion House, Hyde Park, 8 July 1897;¹ bought by S.T. Smith, Duke Street, St James’s, London, from whom acquired for £600 in 1897.²

Exhibitions

London, Foreign Office, Government Art Collection (16 November 1945–24 April 1946) ; Barnard Castle, Bowes Museum, 1951–62 (long‐term loan through the Arts Council of Great Britain, 5 February 1951–21 September 1962) ; London 1971 (202); Leeds 1989 (4); Liverpool 1994–5, p. 88 and pl. 11; London and Sydney 2005–6 (27); London 2006 (2); London 2014; Brussels and London 2015 (115; London only).

Related Works

Paintings and Pastels

• (1) The prime version by Vigée Le Brun (fig. 1),³ collection of the baronne Edmond de Rothschild, oil on panel, signed ‘L. ze. Le Brun f. / 1782’, 95.5 × 69 cm. Acquired by the comte de Vaudreuil (on whom see NG 4253) by July 1783, and by Alleyne Fitzherbert, Baron St Helens, in 1810 at the Venault de Charmilly sale, London. Inherited by his nephew, Sir Henry Fitzherbert, 3rd Bt, and then probably by his son Sir William Fitzherbert, after whose death on 12 October 1896 it was probably consigned to Christie’s, London, being most likely the painting sold there on 12 December 1896 (lot 51, £1,134, bought by Evans for Colnaghi). It was recorded by Davies 1957, p. 133, as then in the collection of Baron Maurice de Rothschild, Paris.
• (2) According to Douwes Dekker 1984, no. 77, there exists in a private collection (once in a Polish collection) a replica, signed and dated 1782, 44 × 34 in (111.8 × 86.4 cm), but without the artist’s palette. It was identified in Douwes Dekker 1983 with a portrait listed by Helm [1916], p. 228, but no portrait matching that description is listed by Helm at that page or at any other.⁴ A variant version, in which the artist appears to be wearing a felt hat and holding in her right hand a stick topped by two ivory (?) putti, was recorded in the collection of P. Potocka, Cracow, in 1967 (photograph without media or dimensions in the Witt Library, London), [page 520] but to judge from the photograph it can only be a copy or variant copy.

  

• (3) Copy by Eugénie Tripier‐Lefranc (née Le Brun), the niece of Vigée Le Brun, oil on canvas, 100 × 73 cm, Versailles, Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, inv. MV 4555. Commissioned for Versailles in 1842 for the sum of 500 francs, signed and dated ‘Mme Tripier Le Franc née Le Brun 1843’. Since the prime version was in Great Britain when Tripier‐Lefranc made her copy, it is possible that it was made after NG 1653. However, another copy by Mme Tripier‐Lefranc was sold at the estate sale of her husband and herself (Nottin and Tual, commissaires‐priseurs, Paris, 6 June 1883, lot 15), and it may have been this that served as the model for the painting in Versailles.⁵
• (4) Nolhac noted a pastel copy of a self portrait exhibited in 1891, Exposition des arts au début du siècle, Paris, then in the Péan de Saint‐Gilles collection.⁶ This is Douwes Dekker 1984, no. 6c (whereabouts unknown). It, too, may be after NG 1653.
• (5) Miniature copy by Jacques Thouron, Madame Vigée Le Brun after her Self‐Portrait in a Straw Hat, signed: ‘Thouron f^it’, enamel on metal, diam. 6.7 cm, London, Wallace Collection, inv. M311.⁷
• (6) Copy on enamel by Henry Bone exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1816 (no. 707, part), presumably after the prime version.⁸[page 521][page 522]

  

• (7) Anonymous copy, nineteenth‐century, oil on canvas lined on metal panel, 40 × 33 cm, Moscow, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, inv. 2735.⁹
• (8) Probably a copy with minor variations,¹⁰ vicomte de Curiel sale, Petit, Paris, 25 November 1918 (lot 53, 34,000 francs), as autograph, 92 × 73.5 cm, possibly made after NG 1653 before it left France.
• (9) Copy by ‘TM’ (signed with monogram), oil on canvas, oval, head and shoulders only, 57.5 × 48.5 cm, Sotheby’s, London, 7 June 1989 (lot 174) and 4 October 1989 (lot 167, unsold).
• (10) French nineteenth‐century copy, pastel, oval, 71 × 56 cm, in reverse of the original composition, offered at Chambelland, Giafferi, Veyrac, Doutrebente, 3 April, 1991.¹¹
• (11) Copy by Charles Richard Bone, enamel, signed and dated 1842, 18.5 cm high, offered at Sotheby’s, London, 19 April 1992 (lot 136, sold £1,600).
• (12) Anonymous copy, oil on panel, an oval, 55.9 × 43.2 cm, Christie’s, South Kensington, 17 April 1997 (lot 285, sold £2,000).
• (13) Nineteenth‐century copy, oil on canvas, 81.3 × 64.8 cm, Christie’s, South Kensington, 12 November 1998 (lot 61, sold £5,000).¹²
• (14) Copy attributed to John Singer Sargent, oil on board, 24.1 × 17.1 cm, private collection, UK.¹³
• (15) A ‘good‐quality’¹⁴ copy was noted in a private collection in Florida, USA, in 1979.
• (16) A variant copy by an unknown painter with the sitter holding a sheet of music is in the Kurpfälzisches Museum, Heidelberg, oil on canvas, 92.5 × 69.3 cm, inv. G 2060.
• (17) A presumed copy, oil on panel, 59.7 × 40.6 cm, is said to be in a private collection.
• (18) A variant copy, bust‐length and so without the palette, oil on canvas, 40 × 31.8 cm, Christie’s Interiors, 8–9 February 2011, New York (lot 78, sold $250).

Drawings

• (1) A copy of the composition of NG 1653, modified to an oval, by Johann Gotthard von Müller, by whom signed and dated 1783, black chalk with white heightening and touches of pencil and ink on the collar (fig. 2). Presumably preparatory for von Müller’s engraving (see below).¹⁵
• (2) An oval drawing, as by Vigée Le Brun, 30 × 24 cm, described as ‘Portrait en buste de Mme Lebrun, dans sa jeunesse. Elle est vêtue d’une robe légère, est ses cheveux s’échappent d’un chapeau de paille orné de fleurs’, and as in the collection of L. Godard: Burty 1860, no. 321.¹⁶ The Album iconographique compiled by M. Hervé Grandsart (Musée d’Orsay, M’O 1998/504) includes an image said to be of a drawing by Dumont of the self portrait by Vigée Le Brun, bust length without the palette. This may be the drawing recorded in the L. Goddard collection.¹⁷
• (3) Drawing in pencil and squared in ink, Henry Bone, inscribed: ‘Mme. Le Brun 1816’, 12.5 × 9.7 cm, London, National Portrait Gallery, Scharf Library, inv. D17743 (in preparation for an enamel, Related Works, Paintings (6)).¹⁸

Engravings

• (1) Chine‐collé engraving, in reverse, by Johann Gotthard von Müller, 1785,¹⁹ 42 × 28.8 cm, known in three states.²⁰
• (2) Engraving by Guy Le Gentil, marquis de Paroy, 1787.²¹
• (3) Engraving by Adolphe‐François (?) Pannemaker after a drawing by A. Paquier, itself after the von Müller engraving but in reverse, undated, but by 1861.²²
• (4) Variant anonymous engraving showing the artist seated, holding a mahlstick in her right hand.²³
• (5) Lithograph by Jean‐Baptiste (?) Meunier of Lille, by whom signed in the plate, undated (around 1850?), in the same direction as the original, an engraved oval within a rectangular plate, of which there is an example in Paris, Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux‐Arts, inv. 6926 .
• (6) Engraving by Philibert Rouxel, about 1900, 48 × 35 cm, on paper, signed in the plate lower right: ‘PH. ROUXEL’, and a similar print, 40 × 27.5 cm, on silk paper (Péronne, musée Alfred Danicourt, respectively invs 2010.E.25 and 2010.E.24).
• (7) Chine‐collé mezzotint variant by Norman Hirst, 1924, showing the artist standing (London, British Museum, inv. 1924,0510.104).
• (8) Chine‐collé mezzotint variant by Henry Scott Bridgewater, with the painter’s signature dated 1789 [sic] reproduced in [page 523]the plate, 59 × 42.8 cm, edition of 250 published by Colnaghi by 1930 (London, British Museum, inv. 1930,0711.6) .

Technical Notes

Overall the condition is good. There is a small inverted L‐shaped tear near the bottom right corner and a horizontal loss some 2 cm long in the background left of centre, some scattered small losses at centre left and elsewhere and some flattening of the impasto. There have been some retouchings in the ageing cracks in the black shawl, in the hat and in the shadow under the table edge. NG 1653 was last cleaned and retouched in 1984–5. The fine plain‐weave canvas, the tacking edges of which have been removed but which has probably not been cut down, was double‐lined in 1898. There is a small label with a blue border on the back of the stretcher marked ‘5066’, and a white chalk mark which reads ‘CR. Bry… S…’. The ground appears to be an off‐white colour. Technical analysis indicates that the paint medium was probably walnut oil, but the use of linseed oil cannot be excluded.²⁴

Part of the proper right shoulder seems to have been painted over the black shawl. The crown of the hat was originally painted about a centimetre higher, as was the brim to the right. These changes, which are visible to the naked eye, were confirmed by examination of NG 1653 under the microscope. This indicated that the corrected outline was drawn in black, and that blue pigment was painted over what was originally the topmost part of the yellow of the hat. Under the microscope, brush‐drawn (?) outlines could be seen clearly at the bottom left and right of the hat and more faintly elsewhere along the hat’s contours, where they were covered with yellow pigment. In addition, changes to the fingers of the proper right hand were noted, as was a change to the position of the proper left hand, which was originally slightly lower. The infrared reflectogram (fig. 4) also suggests that there may have been minor changes to the position of the proper right hand, and that lines were scratched in on the ostrich feather. The infrared reflectogram indicates underdrawing (probably made in paint) in the outlines of the hand and the proper right nostril, that the lower right brim of the hat was painted over the hair, and that there are some dark lines in the area of the dress which do not exactly follow where the drapery folds are now. The IRR also shows that the sitter’s mouth was originally more closed, her teeth less visible than in the finished portrait, and that the eyelids covered more of the whites of her eyes. These changes to the features echo the differences between NG 1653 and the prime version (fig. 1), visible to the naked eye and noted below.

Discussion

According to her memoirs (published over fifty years after the events described here), Elisabeth‐Louise Vigée Le Brun²⁵ first went to Flanders with her husband the art dealer Jean‐Baptiste‐Pierre Le Brun in 1781²⁶ to view the posthumous sale of Charles‐Alexandre, prince de Lorraine.²⁷ Although there were over the period from May to October 1781 a number of sales in Brussels from the prince de Lorraine’s estate, the sale of the paintings (Jean‐Baptiste’s main interest) took place from 19 to 23 June 1781, so it can be assumed that the Le Brun couple was then in that city. After spending some time in Brussels and at the chateau of the prince de Ligne at Beloeil, they finished their trip with a visit to Amsterdam (‘Nous finîmes par visiter Amsterdam…’). Vigée Le Brun begins the next paragraph of her account: ‘We went back to Flanders to see once more the masterpieces of Rubens’.²⁸ Although Vigée Le Brun does not say so explicitly, it can be inferred that the couple made two separate trips to the Low Countries, the first finishing in Amsterdam in time for Jean‐Baptiste to return to Paris (albeit of geographical probability via Flanders) for the sale he organised there on 26 November 1781, and the second beginning at some date after 29 April 1782, when he held the last of that winter/spring’s Paris sales. The second trip in its turn finished in time for Jean‐Baptiste’s Paris sale of 25 November 1782, but more likely earlier, since the prime version of the portrait (fig. 1) was hung at the Salon de la Correspondance by 7 June 1782.²⁹ That painting is signed and dated 1782 and, as Vigée Le Brun makes explicit, was painted in Brussels. It is clear from her account that it was on the second trip to Flanders that she saw in Antwerp Rubens’s Portrait of Susanna Lunden (?) (fig. 3), then wrongly called the Chapeau de paille and plausibly believed to represent Rubens’s wife, and that it was this portrait that inspired her to paint the prime version of NG 1653.³⁰

Rubens’s painting was well known in France, at least by reputation, having most likely been that noted first by Jean‐Baptiste Descamps (1753–63, vol. 1, p. 324), then by G.P. Mensaert (1763, vol. 1, pp. 196–8), and by Jean‐François‐Marie Michel (1771, p. 360).³¹ As an adolescent in Paris, and then as a young married woman, Vigée Le Brun had also both looked at and copied paintings by Rubens (among others),³² but besides being alerted specifically to the existence of what was probably Rubens’s portrait of Susanna Lunden, she may well have been primed by these authors to know what to look for. Descamps wrote of Rubens’s portrait that ‘The head is covered by a hat which casts it in shadow, such that this head is lit only by the reflected light which surrounds it’.³³[page 524][page 525] Mensaert wrote that the portrait’s subject ‘wears a straw hat, but in such a way that the face is in the reflection of the light of the sun’,³⁴ and Michel that ‘the straw hat with a feather on her head, putting the face in light shade, and the light of the day casting all its brightness on her fine uncovered bosom … produces the most enchanting effect’.³⁵ With all writers referring to the hat and its effect of shadowing the face, it is not surprising that in her memoirs Vigée Le Brun should have written of the Rubens that ‘its great effect resides in the two different lights, straightforward daylight and the glow of the sun’.³⁶ She wrote that the painting delighted and inspired her to the point of making a self portrait in Brussels which sought the same effect. ‘I painted myself wearing a straw hat with a feather and a garland of wild flowers, and holding my palette. When the portrait was exhibited at the salon, I dare say that it greatly enhanced my reputation.’³⁷ She might have added that, like Rubens, with whom she was compared by contemporaries, she used a panel support and showed her subject in an outdoors setting.³⁸

This prime version of NG 1653 may be one of the self portraits which in her (not always chronologically accurate) Liste des Tableaux et Portraits que j’avais faits avant de quitter la France en 1789³⁹ she referred to as ‘2 Portraits de moi’ under the year 1781, the other probably being the signed but undated Self Portrait wearing a Cerise Bow (fig. 5).⁴⁰ Baillio has rightly pointed out the close relationship between the Fort Worth painting and the prime version of NG 1653: ‘the facial expression and hair style are almost identical, as are the pair of opalescent earrings and the black, lace‐trimmed scarf’.⁴¹ He considers that both self portraits were made in 1782, but in what order is unknown.⁴² However, a significant difference between the two self portraits lies in the colour of Vigée Le Brun’s hair. According to a later account by her nephew, Justin Tripier Le Franc, her natural hair colour was blond, and, although she often portrayed herself with a more auburn shade, her hair in the Fort Worth picture is near black. This might have been no more than artistic licence, but it is at least possible that it was as a result of her dyeing her hair with a mixture of henna and indigo. Henna dyes are permanent until the hair grows out, so if both self portraits were painted in the same year and were true records of her appearance, the Self portrait Portrait wearing a Cerise Bow must have followed the Self Portrait in a Straw Hat.⁴³ The prime version of NG 1653 was noted in the ownership of Vigée Le Brun’s friend the comte de Vaudreuil, in July 1783,⁴⁴ and he can be assumed to have bought it direct from the artist shortly after its completion. It was subsequently owned by Charmilly, Vaudreuil’s probable covert agent, at whose sale in London in 1810 it was bought by Alleyne FitzHerbert, Baron St Helens.⁴⁵

It was not the wide‐brimmed hat (of whatever material) or the white ostrich feather or the flowers (red hibiscus [?] blue cornflowers and white camellias [?]), a detail possibly inspired by Dutch seventeenth‐century examples such as Paulus Moreelse’s (1571–1638) depictions of shepherdesses,⁴⁶ which distinguished it.⁴⁷ Both the hat and its accoutrements might have been consistent with Rubens’s Susanna Lunden, but, notwithstanding their historical references, they were then contemporary fashion items in the pastoral mode,⁴⁸ and ones that Vigée Le Brun was adopting for other portraits, such as those of Mme du Barry (private collection, France)⁴⁹ and the princesse de Lamballe, both of 1782.⁵⁰ In these, as in Self Portrait wearing a Cerise Bow, the face was shown in full light or with shadow minimised, as were the features of sitters in (self) portraits by Vigée Le Brun’s French contemporaries.⁵¹ As was recognised at the time, the distinction of the prime version of NG 1653 was in its bold use (for a portrait) of ‘the two distinct light sources, straightforward daylight and the glow of the sun’,⁵² something consistent with the fictive outdoor setting. The contrasting effects of light were perhaps sufficiently arresting to cause von Müller’s print (Related Works, Engravings (1)) to give them too much emphasis. When Vigée Le Brun’s rival Adélaïde Labille‐Guiard exhibited at the 1789 Salon her outdoors full‐length Portrait of Louise‐Elisabeth de France, duchesse de Parme and her Son of 1788 (Versailles, Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon), which, unusually for her, adopted similar light effects and heightened colour, critics found the picture uncharacteristic, and one saw her as ‘attempting to surpass’ Vigée Le Brun.⁵³ It is possible that, when in 1784 François‐André [page 526] Vincent painted his Portrait of a Man in a Wide‐brimmed Hat (private collection),⁵⁴ he did so with some recollection of the Vigée Le Brun.

Although in her memoirs Vigée Le Brun was most likely referring to the exhibition of the prime version of NG 1653 at the 1783 Salon of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, it had, as noted above, also been exhibited at the Salon de la Correspondance the previous year. Indeed, although it was the painting’s exhibition at the 1783 Salon that was the subject of press comment, it may well have been earlier knowledge of it that prompted Marie‐Antoinette to commission the 1782 portrait of an almost identically attired Gabrielle‐Yolande de Polastron, duchesse de Polignac (fig. 6). Her features, like those of Vigée Le Brun in the prime version (fig. 1), are also in part shadowed.⁵⁵ In the portrait of Mme de Polastron, which, unlike the prime version of NG 1653, is on canvas, the sitter also wears a black shawl and leans on a piece of furniture. Her straw hat is similarly decorated with an ostrich feather,⁵⁶ black rather than white, and an ear of wheat has been added to the flowers (which include daisies). In conformity with such apparent rusticity, she wears a type of muslin gown known as a robe en chemise. This had a drawstring at the neck and sometimes (as here) a double falling collar, and was tied with a striped sash under the bosom. Vigée Le Brun exhibited a portrait of Queen Marie‐Antoinette in such a dress (albeit without the drawstring) at the 1783 Salon (Eichenzell, Museum Schloss Fasanerie), as a result of which it soon became known as a chemise à la reine.⁵⁷ In NG 1653 Vigée Le Brun’s dress is of a similar style but is mainly pink satin and only the collar is muslin. Finally, one may note that in both the self portrait and the portrait of Mme de Polastron the sitters are shown with lips slightly parted, a trait of Vigée Le Brun’s portraiture. The queen’s mouth was portrayed closed – in this respect at least it was more formal.

Some recent scholarship, greatly of its time, has constructed complex arguments to interpret the prime version of NG 1653, or NG 1653 itself, in psycho‐sexual terms,⁵⁸ or more reasonably, albeit again incorrectly, as a challenge to intrigues to exclude Vigée Le Brun from the Académie.⁵⁹ Elsewhere it has been noted that the light in the picture falls mainly on the artist’s right hand and on her chest, parts of the body which, it is said, stand respectively for ‘the energy emanating from the earth’ and ‘the source of breath, of the beating of the heart, in a word of creative inspiration’⁶⁰ – an interpretation that undervalues another of Vigée Le Brun’s qualities, namely her artistic and commercial [page 527] intelligence, the latter surely encouraged by her marriage to one of the leading art dealers in Paris. One might better suppose that the inclusion of palette and brushes in a portrait exhibited in successive years was traditional and intended to reinforce her status as painter.⁶¹ Perhaps in part it was also prompted by the publication (first announced in July 1781) of Charles‐François Letellier’s print of a profile self portrait by another female Academician, Anne Vallayer‐Coster,⁶² and perhaps in part by the anticipated exhibition at the Salon de la Correspondance of 1782 (and the Salon of the Académie in 1783) of a self portrait by Adélaïde Labille‐Guiard,⁶³ although in truth Vigée Le Brun’s talents had been recognised in France for the best part of the past decade and were then being promoted internationally.⁶⁴

When the prime version of NG 1653 and the self portrait of Labille‐Guiard were exhibited in 1782, it was reported in the Nouvelles de la République des lettres et des arts ( NRLA ), the organ of the Correspondance, that ‘the self portraits of two women artists, which chance has brought together as pendants, have created a highly piquant spectacle, which has excited the whispers and applause of the two assemblies’.⁶⁵ The journal noted Vigée Le Brun’s ‘charming productions’ and ‘personal graces’ on the one hand, and the portrait of Labille‐Guiard for ‘perfect resemblance’ and notable ‘vigour’ on the other.⁶⁶ Exhibition of the two works at the Salon the following year prompted the author of L’Année Littéraire to comment: I’ll not speak of the portrait of Madame Guiard, painted by herself, without making a remark which seems to me to be singular. This portrait seems to me less good than all those which she has shown at the Salon & that of Madame Le Brun by contrast is better than her other works. These two ladies have portrayed themselves holding a palette, but Madame Guiard is extremely lifelike, & Madame Le Brun is so little so that one can scarcely recognise her.⁶⁷ On the matter of resemblance the same author found Pajou’s terracotta bust of Vigée Le Brun (fig. 7), also exhibited at the 1783 Salon , ‘de la plus grande vérité’.⁶⁸ Others expressed a similar sentiment in respect both of the terracotta and of the (now lost) marble version exhibited two years later.⁶⁹ Her nephew Justin Tripier Le Franc described Vigée Le Brun as having blond hair, a fine white complexion, lively and intelligent blue eyes (in truth, the colour of her eyes fluctuated between hazel and greyish blue) an almost aquiline nose slightly turned up at the end. Her mouth was delicate and small. She had beautiful teeth. Her chin was well proportioned. The oval of her head was fine, elegant and youthful. Her neck was long, supple … She was tall, well built, and bore herself majestically.⁷⁰ Tripier Le Franc wrote this, however, in 1828 when Vigée Le Brun was 73, and given his use of the past tense, it is possible that at least part of the description was suggested by the artist herself.

Leaving aside the matter of resemblance, most Salon critics who saw the prime version were enthusiastic, the same Année Littéraire remarking, for example: I’ve not seen anything as seductive and harmonious. A small straw hat creates a shadow at the top of the face which is utterly truthful in tonality; the right arm is picturesquely covered by a part of the shawl without this piece of dress producing any tone discordant with the light, because the treatment of light and shade is observed with great intelligence. Art’s difficulties are transformed into beauty, when inspiration is applied to their conquest and is governed with taste.⁷¹ For his part Baron Grimm wrote an appreciation of the painting for his (expensive and restricted subscription only) Correspondance littéraire, in which he proclaimed the painting as Vigée Le Brun’s masterpiece and, while acknowledging certain faults, continued: It’s one of the most pleasing productions to have escaped from the hands of the Graces. How truthfully that hat is painted! What happy magic there is in the effects of light penetrating the straw, making it in a certain way transparent and reducing the effects of shadow which would have been too harsh! How the drapery is at one and the same time casual but subtle! What I like is what you call no more than a vague expression! I pity all those in whom this natural state of neglect, this simplicity that is so touching, prompts no thoughts or feelings. I have even seen beauties of a higher order next to this work, but I’ve seen not one which exudes more that je ne sais quoi which appeals, which attracts, and which constantly invites a return of a constant gaze.⁷² The poet De Miramond finished his verses in praise of Vigée Le Brun with an appreciation of the self portrait:
I see you! How can I in the grip of my feelings
Not paint these flattering gifts which Nature with a
caressing hand has limitlessly bestowed upon you!
But by what vain desire do I let myself be carried away?
I, I might dare to paint you! Absurd delusion!
When you paint yourself so well;
Should one ever try?⁷³ There were other favourable comments in the Petites affiches de Paris.⁷⁴ Indeed, there were few Salon critics who did not mention the painting, mostly favourably, albeit with certain reservations. The account of Le Triumvirat des Arts, which [page 528]imagined a conversation between a poet, a musician and a painter, has the painter declare: ‘I think it would be difficult for anyone else to succeed more. It’s irritating that her hair is a little untidy.’ The musician excuses the fault: ‘She appears to have the taste of great artists; concern for her appearance does not play a great role with her.’⁷⁵ La Critique est aisée, mais l’art est difficile noted: ‘[her self portrait] is admirable for its bold effect and the realism of its treatment of light and shade. Were the background less rudimentary, and the hands more correct, this picture would have been perfect.’⁷⁶ Another also wrote of the sky – and the draperies – being rudimentary, but that the hat was true to nature: ‘… nothing is finer. The light makes the straw transparent; and there are effects which the greatest master would be honoured to have found.’⁷⁷ Another critic found the sky too blue,⁷⁸ while yet another emphasised the self portrait’s seductiveness: Nothing more fetching, although very straightforward, than her manner of dress. A semi‐déshabillé which allows one to sense the elegance of her figure, hair fluttering informally, a straw hat decorated with flowers and feathers covering the prettiest of heads, all make her whole appearance charming. One might complain of the shadow hiding half of her face’s attractive features, were this shadow not so beautiful a halftone, which perhaps only serves to give her a more piquant look.⁷⁹ The unknown author in the 13 September 1783 issue of Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de la République des lettres complained that Mme Le Brun’s wide hat brim and the cape covering the sleeves would have interfered with her painting, and that having the face in shadow did not make sense for a portraitist. He was, however, won over by the point that it was more a matter of art than of appropriateness.⁸⁰ Others variously found the self portrait to be the best of Vigée Le Brun’s portraits at the Salon,⁸¹ or the best of the self portraits shown by her and the other female Academicians, Anne Vallayer‐Coster and Adélaïde Labille‐Guiard.⁸² Referring to Müller’s print after the composition, Edmond de Goncourt wrote that ‘in the mannered elegance of her pose, in her somewhat bloodless grace, she gazes at the public with the bright and innocent eyes of a child’.⁸³ Vigée Le Brun herself later claimed that the exhibition of the prime version of NG 1653 and other works of hers prompted Claude‐Joseph Vernet, a family friend, to propose her membership of the Académie,⁸⁴ something she had sought for some years.⁸⁵

The answer to the question as to whether NG 1653 is an autograph replica or a copy by another hand has fluctuated, as is evident from the various opinions summarised here under General References. The dealer S.J. Smith first alerted the National Gallery to the availability of what would become NG 1653 in a letter of 18 October 1897. On 1 December that year the Trustees examined it and resolved to buy the picture for £800, subject to the Director (Sir Edward Poynter) being satisfied with the results of his enquiries respecting the work’s provenance. Meanwhile, on 9 December Alfred de Rothschild, one of the Trustees, sent the Gallery’s Curator, Charles Eastlake, a telegraph: ‘Please inform Sir Edward Poynter with my compliments that I have reason to believe that the French picture is an old copy and I also understand that Messrs Colnaghi will furnish the Director with full particulars.’ Colnaghi sent to the Gallery the version in its possession, presumably the panel now in a private collection (fig. 1) which in recent years has been described as ‘a marvel of bravura painting’;⁸⁶ Poynter compared the two in his room on 11 December.⁸⁷ Smith advised on 14 December that the estate sale at which he had bought the picture was that of A.P. Pickering,⁸⁸ and further advised the next day (perhaps disarmed by information about the Colnaghi picture) that he would reduce the price to £600.⁸⁹ At the meeting of the Gallery’s Trustees on 11 January 1898, Poynter reported: after making enquiry respecting the provenance & c. of the Portrait of Mad^e Le Brun by herself & comparing it with another of which he had heard he had purchased the former picture … at the reduced price of £600. After some remarks from Mr Alfred C. de Rothschild the Board approved.⁹⁰

What Alfred de Rothschild said remains unrecorded. He regularly attacked Poynter’s acquisitions of what he saw as overpriced works by secondary masters,⁹¹ but in this case he acted properly in alerting the Gallery to what he considered to be a superior version. In fact Poynter may well have arranged to have the picture hung before the meeting of the Trustees, because on 21 December he had written to Eastlake: ‘Will you kindly send me a line to say whether the Mme Le Brun will be hung before Xmas, because if so I will send the usual notice to the Times.’⁹² In the event the acquisition went unreported in the Times, but a writer for The Saturday Review noticed the acquisition and picked up on the question of attribution: … surely no serious student of painting could be expected to waste his time in endeavouring to elucidate the point whether [NG 1653] is a replica or a copy [after Rubens or a print]. Replica or copy, it is a skilful work of the plum box order, and an admirable example of how to paint without the least trace of style, quality, beauty, or distinction of any kind.⁹³ A few years later a different, and more positive, view was provided by Haldane Macfall: … the flesh of the pretty face is exquisite, and in spite of intense finish is broadly conceived and rich [page [529]][page 530] and glowing in colour. The clumsy drawing of the hand that holds the palette is the only defect in this, one of her masterpieces … The thing is thrilling with life; and the little feminine conceit of wearing her black wrap is quaintly delightful.⁹⁴ Subsequently, and in spite of Alfred de Rothschild’s doubts, it was regarded by the Gallery as autograph until its relegation to the status of a copy in Davies’s 1946 and 1957 catalogues. The autograph status of NG 1653 was reinstated by Sir Michael Levey following completion in 1985 of its cleaning and restoration, and that status was emphatically endorsed by Baillio two years later.⁹⁵

There is no reason to doubt Levey’s and Baillio’s conclusions, especially given Vigée Le Brun’s practice of making autograph replicas. For example, in respect of her work during the 1780s there exist three autograph versions of her Self Portrait wearing a Cerise Bow, also of 1782;⁹⁶ an original and three replicas of the portrait of the duchesse de Polignac in a straw hat, of which the original is at the château de Versailles, signed and dated 1782, and of which what is presumably chronologically the second, like NG 1653, neither signed nor dated, was acquired by the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford in 2002;⁹⁷ and on deposit at the Musée des Beaux‐Arts, Marseilles, there is what is considered by Jean‐Philippe Bareil as probably an autograph replica of a signed and dated portrait of the duchesse d’Orléans in the château d’Amboise.⁹⁸ In addition, Vigée Le Brun noted five replicas of her 1784 portrait of the comte de Vaudreuil.⁹⁹

Some differences between the prime version of NG 1653 and NG 1653 itself have already been noted (the support, the signature and date, and, marginally, the size). Visual inspection of the prime version has further revealed that NG 1653 differs from it in a number of other respects.¹⁰⁰ So far as the features are concerned, the eyebrows in NG 1653 are heavier; the shape of the eyelids is given more emphasis; the lower lip is fuller and the mouth more smiling. Alterations to NG 1653 apparent in the infrared reflectogram indicate Vigée Le Brun’s subtle but deliberate policy of altering her expression from that in the prime version. Taken together, the effect of these differences is that NG 1653 portrays Vigée Le Brun as more assertive and self‐assured. In addition, where the colour of her dress in NG 1653 is a dusty rose, in the prime version it is a shade of lilac. There are some small differences to the profile of the black shawl at the elbow and along the forearm, and the part of the striped sash that hangs down from the sitter’s waist in NG 1653 scarcely appears in the prime version, although this may be the result of retouchings to an area of wear in the latter picture (the condition of which is otherwise excellent). Finally, in the prime version the blue of the sky is virtually unbroken – in contrast to that in NG 1653, in which the blue appears to have been broken up with wispy white clouds. This last difference results not from Vigée Le Brun having overpainted the blue with white brushstrokes, but from her having painted the blue of the sky thinly over the off‐white ground.¹⁰¹ It is at least possible that she made this choice in response to the comments by Salon critics that the sky in the prime version was rudimentary or too blue, so suggesting that NG 1653 was made following the opening of the 1783 Salon. However, since changes were made to the top of the hat and to the proper right hand in NG 1653 that were similar to those made to the prime version, it is more likely that both pictures were executed virtually simultaneously in 1782.¹⁰²

General References

Descriptive and Historical Catalogue 1898, p. 586 (as by Vigée Le Brun); Poynter 1899–1900, vol. 2 (1899), p. 282 and ill. p. 283 (as autograph); Geffroy 1904, p. 145 (where also ill., as autograph); Foster 1905, vol. 3, pl. XXX and pp. 77 and 85 (as by Vigée Le Brun); Macfall [1909?], pp. 44–5 and pl. IV (as by Vigée Le Brun); Hautecoeur [1914], ill. p. 53 (as by Vigée Le Brun); Helm [1916], p. 206 (as a replica of the painting then in the baron Maurice de Rothschild collection, Paris); Blum [1919], p. 103 (as a replica of the painting in the Maurice de Rothschild collection);¹⁰³ National Gallery Trafalgar Square Catalogue 1929, p. 188 (as by Vigée Le Brun); noted as autograph and as hanging in Room XXI (now Room 4) of the Gallery in Cox [1930]; Davies 1946, p. 62 (as ‘After Madame Vigée Le Brun’);¹⁰⁴ Davies 1957, pp. 133–4 (as ‘After Madame Vigée Le Brun’);¹⁰⁵ Brookner 1959, p. 272 (autograph status assumed); Douwes Dekker 1983, no. 6a, ill. p. 32, fig. 4 (as about 1783, authenticity not determined); Douwes Dekker 1984, no. 77 (authenticity not determined); Wilson 1985, pp. 118 (an autograph replica); Blanc 2006, p. 76 note 130 (incorrectly as the painting exhibited at the 1783 Salon, and ill. p. 79); Haroche‐Bouzinac 2011, p. 552 note 23 (an autograph replica).

Notes