Presumed portrait of Marie-Élisabeth Gabiou

This presumed portrait of Marie-Élisabeth Gabiou from around 1784 dates from Vigée Le Brun’s peak years at the French court. The tentative identification suggests the difficulty of attributing many of the numerous portraits Vigée Le Brun produced during this enormously productive period when she was the most sought-after portraitist in France. 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 shows Vigée Le Brun’s characteristic technique at its most refined. Soft modeling, luminous skin tones, and careful attention to fashionable costume details typify her 1780s Parisian manner.