Elisabeth-Loiuse Vigeele Brun – Trailblazer

At the end of the eighteenth century and during the first three decades of the nineteenth Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun was one of the foremost portrait painters.

She was mostly self taught and when she was nineteen years old, she became a member of the Académie de Saint-Luc.

On 31st May 1783 became one of just 4 women elected to France’s prestigious Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. She was Queen Marie Antoinette’s favourite portraitist, creating royal portraits astonishing in their informality.

Following the French Revolution in 1789 that relationship became a liability and she fled with her 9 year old daughter, going to Italy, Austria, Russia, Germany, England and Switzerland.