Elizaveta Alexeevna in red dress

This undated portrait of Elizaveta Alexeevna in a red dress was produced during Vigée Le Brun's extended stay in Russia, where she spent six years from 1795 following her departure from Revolutionary France. Elizaveta Alexeevna was the wife of the future Tsar Alexander I, and Vigée Le Brun painted her several times, becoming the go-to portraitist for the Russian imperial family and court during her Russian years. The Arkhangelskoye Estate Museum, a country house palace outside Moscow, holds this canvas as part of its collection of works associated with the Yusupov family and the Russian aristocratic milieu of the late eighteenth century. Vigée Le Brun's Russian period was enormously productive, and these portraits of the imperial family represent the most prestigious commissions of her career outside the French royal context.

The red dress provides an unusually bold chromatic foundation for the composition, and Vigée Le Brun's handling of the intense colour — modulating it through highlight and shadow to maintain warmth without heaviness — demonstrates her chromatic skill. Flesh tones are warm and luminous as always in her work, and the contrast between the red dress and the skin creates an immediate, vibrant visual effect.