Portrait de Madame du Cluzel

This 1779 portrait of Madame du Cluzel at the Musée de Chartres was painted at the height of Vigée Le Brun’s Parisian success, the year before she was appointed official portraitist to Marie Antoinette. At twenty-four, she had already established the luminous, flattering style that would make her the most fashionable portrait painter in France. 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.

Vigée Le Brun’s delicate brushwork creates the characteristic soft-focus effect she favored for female portraits. The careful treatment of fabrics and accessories demonstrates her skill in rendering luxury materials.