Portrait of a lady making a bouquet.

This 1790 portrait of a lady making a bouquet was painted during the first year of Vigée Le Brun’s exile from revolutionary France. The intimate domestic subject of flower arranging connects to the 18th-century association of women with nature and demonstrates Vigée Le Brun’s skill in combining portraiture with still-life elements. 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 flowers provide color accents that complement the sitter’s complexion. Vigée Le Brun renders both the figure and the botanical elements with characteristic luminosity and delicate brushwork.