Martine-Gabrielle-Yoland de Polastron (1745–1793), duchesse de Polignac

This 1783 portrait of the Duchesse de Polignac at the National Trust depicts Yolande de Polastron, who was Marie Antoinette’s most intimate companion and one of the most powerful women at Versailles. The Polignac circle’s lavish lifestyle and influence made them targets of revolutionary hostility, and the Duchess fled France on the night of July 16, 1789. 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 captures the Duchess’s celebrated charm and beauty with characteristic luminous technique. The informal treatment and natural lighting reflect the new naturalistic aesthetic that Vigée Le Brun helped introduce to French court portraiture.