Porträt der Mademoiselle Rosalie Duthé

This 1776 portrait of Mademoiselle Rosalie Duthé depicts one of the most celebrated courtesans of pre-revolutionary Paris, known for her beauty and her liaisons with the Duke of Orléans and the Count of Artois. Vigée Le Brun’s portrait of Duthé demonstrates the artist’s willingness to paint across social boundaries in early career. 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 portrait emphasizes the sitter’s celebrated beauty through careful attention to complexion and features. Vigée Le Brun’s luminous rendering of skin and soft treatment of hair were already accomplished at age twenty-one.