Duchesse de Guiche

This 1794 portrait of the Duchesse de Guiche was painted during Vigée Le Brun’s exile, when both artist and sitter had fled the French Revolution. The Polignac family’s close association with Marie Antoinette made them among the first to emigrate, and Vigée Le Brun continued to paint her former Versailles clientele in exile across Europe. 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 exile portrait maintains the elegance of Vigée Le Brun’s pre-revolutionary manner while perhaps reflecting a more subdued mood. Her luminous technique and flattering light remain consistent regardless of the changed circumstances.