Porträt der Anna Ivanovna Tolstoy (Baryatinskaya)

This 1796 portrait of Anna Ivanovna Tolstoy documents another member of the Russian aristocratic families who formed Vigée Le Brun’s principal clientele during her six years in Russia. The Tolstoy family, among Russia’s most distinguished noble houses, were prominent figures at the court of Catherine the Great and her successors. 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.

Vigée Le Brun renders the sitter with characteristic luminous technique. The portrait balances aristocratic formality with the natural warmth and flattering light that distinguished her work from more rigid court portraitists.