Marquis de Choiseul

The portrait attributed as the Marquis de Choiseul demonstrates the breadth of Vigée Le Brun's clientele among the French aristocracy. The Choiseul family, one of the great noble houses of France, produced several prominent political and military figures during the reigns of Louis XV and XVI, the most famous being the Duc de Choiseul who served as chief minister from 1758 to 1770. Vigée Le Brun's connections to the French aristocracy developed rapidly through the 1770s, aided by her talent, her charm, and her successful marriage to the art dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, who provided access to the social world of Parisian collectors and connoisseurs. By the time this portrait was made she was well on her way to becoming the most fashionable portrait painter in Paris. She was the foremost woman artist of the 18th century, producing over nine hundred paintings across a career that survived the French Revolution, exile in Italy, Austria, Russia, and England, and her eventual triumphant return to France under Napoleon. Her portraits of the French nobility before the Revolution form a collective visual record of the Ancien Régime at its most brilliant, documents of a world that the Revolution would sweep away with extraordinary violence.

The male portrait follows established conventions for aristocratic male subjects. Vigée Le Brun’s handling shows her usual refinement in rendering costume and features with warm, flattering light.