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 ART PAGE 6
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Self Portrait-1790
oil on canvas, 100 cm x 81 cm
Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy
In 1789 Vigee Le Brun fled France to save her head. The first stop was Italy
where she was welcomed like a head of state. At Florence she was asked to
paint her portrait for the celebrated collection of portraits of famous artists
by their own hand at the Uffizi gallery. Vigee Le Brun started the self portrait
while in Florence but finished it in Rome.The self portrait in Florence is
of the most exquisite heads she ever painted, sunny, smiling, happy, and
youthful. The painting on the easel is of marie Antoinette done from
memory.
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Copy of Self Portrait -1790
Oil on canvas.
Ickworth,Suffolk, England
The Earl of Bristol met Vigee in Naples, Italy. Captivated
by her beauty, he commissioned her to paint
his portrait. He further requested her
to make a copy of her own portrait being completed for the Uffizi. In this
portrait the face on the canvas depicts her daughter Julie who traveled with
her and who she called "Brunette. Both paintings are at Ickworth,
Suffolk.
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Madame Grand - 1783
Oil on Canvas, 36" x 28"
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NewYork
Catherine Noele Verlee (called Worlee) was born
in Tranquebar, India, in 1762, where her father was a French official. In
1778, when she was barely 16, she married George Francis Grand. After adventures
in Calcutta and London they settled in Paris where she was painted by Vigée
Le Brun. She divorced Grand, and in 1802 married Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand,
Duc de Périgord, later Prince de Bénévent. They separated
in 1815. She died in 1835. This painting is also known as "The music lesson".
A variant of this painting )Art Page
65) exists, which
some have attributed to VLB, though the artist only listed one portrait
of Mdm Grand in 1783. View Madame Grand at the 1982 Kimbell Museum Exhibition. (VLB had erroneously listed a portrait of Mdm Grand
in 1776, but at that time the sitter was still an unmarried girl, living
in India.)
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