Julie Le Brun jouant de la guitare

This canvas depicting Julie Le Brun playing guitar was painted in 1797, during Vigée Le Brun's exile years in Italy and Germany following her departure from Revolutionary France in 1789. Julie was Vigée Le Brun's daughter, born in 1780, and the artist painted her repeatedly throughout her childhood and adolescence — creating an intimate visual record of maternal love and artistic practice intertwined. The guitar-playing subject places Julie in the tradition of genteel female accomplishments while also functioning as a genre interior in its focus on music-making as a domestic activity. The Zoubov Foundation Museum holds this canvas, connecting it to the Russian and Baltic context in which many of Vigée Le Brun's exile works eventually settled. The painting has the warmth and directness of observation from a beloved model rather than the formality of a commissioned portrait.

Vigée Le Brun's fluid, warm handling is well-suited to the domestic informality of the subject. Julie is painted with the intimacy of private observation — the setting is unpretentious, the light naturalistically warm. The guitar is rendered with appropriate material care, its wooden surface and strings given accurate physical presence.