Julie Le Brun as a Bather

Julie Le Brun as a Bather from 1792 depicts the artist’s daughter in a classicizing bathing scene, painted during their Italian exile. The subject allowed Vigée Le Brun to combine her maternal devotion with the neoclassical aesthetic that influenced her Italian-period work, creating an idealized image of youthful purity. 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 semi-nude figure is rendered with exceptional delicacy and restraint appropriate to the youthful subject. Vigée Le Brun’s luminous flesh tones and the classical bathing motif create an image of idealized innocence.