Antoinette-Elisabeth-Marie d'Aguesseau, Countess of Ségur

This 1785 portrait of Antoinette-Élisabeth-Marie d’Aguesseau, Countess of Ségur, at Versailles depicts a member of the distinguished French legal dynasty. The Aguesseau family had held the office of Chancellor of France, and this portrait records the refined culture of the ancien régime noblesse de robe on the eve of the Revolution. 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 mature Parisian manner with luminous skin tones and careful rendering of aristocratic costume. The composition balances formal dignity with the natural warmth that characterizes her best work.