Art Chowder September | October Issue No. 29 | Page 36

Another big difference between then and now is clothing. Le
Brun’s subjects are beautifully dressed; the artist was a master
of costume. Now it’s extremely hard to find anyone dressing
with a sense of decorum. Back then all clothing was made by
hand. Today good money is paid for young girls to proudly go
about in purposely torn pants that peasants would have patched.
We know next to nothing about the stunningly dressed Baronne
de Crussol, but here we also see another facet of the artist’s
most arresting portraits. They seem alive, breathing, thinking,
speaking. The turn of the head engages the viewer, but what
may be a signature device is the slightly open mouth, with teeth.
These are hard to paint, which may partly account for why the
fiercely independent Le Brun (but remember, she was an ardent
royalist) broke with the norm in her time. How often have teeth
appeared in other great portraits?
Mme. Le Brun’s work, her inborn love of painting, was her
mainstay throughout her joys and sorrows, as were her friends,
taking walks, and the theatre. A second lifelong passion was
music. She could read music and could sing, typically in private
settings, but also made contributions to onstage performances.
Her portrait of Giovanni Paisiello, arguably among the finest of
all time, was painted in Naples. In her Souvenirs, Mme. Le Brun
describes how, while the famous Italian opera composer sat for
the portrait, he was working on a piece of music “which allowed
me to capture the features of the great musician at the moment
of inspiration.”
Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Bacchante
c. 1785
Oil on oak panel
Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris
The first I ever heard of Vigée Le Brun was when I saw this painting,
or rather a copy of it, in San Francisco back in the early seventies. The
original appeared at the Salon of 1785, when it belonged to the Comte de
Vaudreuil, a wealthy plantation owner and member of court who had a
number of her works in his extensive art collection.
Atop the keyboard are music manuscripts, all by the composer.
The uppermost reads, “Rondo de Nina / A mei ben quando
verrai / musica / Del Sigr Giovanni Paisiello,” an aria from his
immensely popular comic opera Nina, o sia La pazza per amore
(Nina, or madwoman for love). Draping from below the two
bound manuscripts are two pages from his Te Deum, just then
in progress. The Te Deum is a Latin sacred work sometimes
attributed to St. Ambrose, which many famous composers have
set to their own music. His heavenward gaze and lips poised in
song mark this as the piece he was working on.
When the picture was finished Le Brun had it shipped to Paris,
to appear in the Salon of 1791, where it was met with high
praise. Her Souvenirs record that none other than Jacques-Louis
David stood before her painting for a long time, which was
hung next to one of his, before turning to several of his students
and others, “One would think that my portrait was painted by a
woman and Paisiello by a man.”
Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Joseph Hyacinthe François de Paule de Rigaud, comte de Vaudreuil
1784
Oil on canvas
52 x 39 1/4”
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
The inscription at the bottom left reads, “Comte De Vaudreuil / Gd.
Fauconnier De France / Chevalier Des Ordres Du Roi / Lieutt. / General Et
Pair De France / Ne 1740, Mort 1817”
36 ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE