Portrait of Princess Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (1795-1796)

This portrait of Princess Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was painted during Vigée Le Brun’s Russian exile period (1795–1801), when she found enthusiastic patronage at the court of Catherine the Great and her successors. Vigée Le Brun’s portraits of European royalty and nobility during her emigration years sustained her financially and artistically. Vigée Le Brun was the most technically accomplished and socially successful woman painter of the eighteenth century, achieving membership of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1783 and a clientele that extended from the French royal family to the courts of Russia, Austria, and Italy during her decade of exile following the Revolution. Her portrait manner combined the neoclassical formal values of her training with a quality of feminine intimacy and emotional warmth that made her portraits of women and children especially celebrated. Her ability to make her sitters appear simultaneously dignified and approachable was the technical foundation of her social success.

The princess is rendered with Vigée Le Brun’s characteristic grace and flattery. Soft modeling of the face and luminous skin tones demonstrate the artist’s mastery of the portrait style that made her Europe’s most sought-after female painter.