Portrait de Julie Lebrun

This 1787 portrait of Julie Lebrun depicts the artist’s beloved daughter, who was her most frequent and most tender subject. Born in 1780, Julie appears in numerous paintings throughout her childhood and youth, and these works are among Vigée Le Brun’s most emotionally resonant, revealing a mother’s devotion that transcends the formal portrait tradition. 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 child portrait is rendered with exceptional tenderness in the soft modeling and warm tones. Vigée Le Brun captures the delicacy of childhood features with gentle brushwork and luminous skin tones.