March 24, 2024 • 61 mins
Explore the extraordinary life of Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun, the celebrated 18th-century artist known for her portraits of Marie Antoinette and European aristocracy. This episode delves into her rise to fame, her survival through the French Revolution, and her enduring legacy in art history. Join us as we uncover the story of a woman whose talent transcended the turbulence of her times, leaving behind a rich portfolio that continues to captivate art lovers around the world.
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Annie Sargent (00:15):
This is Join Us in France, episode 486, quatre cent quatre vingt six.
Bonjour, I'm Annie Sargent, and Join Usin France is the podcast where we take
a conversational journey through thebeauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today, I bring you a conversation withElyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks,
where we invite you to step into theworld of Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun, the
(00:41):
trailblazing female artist who defiedthe 18th century conventions to become
Marie Antoinette's favorite portraitistand a celebrated figure across Europe.
From royal courts to her innovativestyles, Vigée Lebrun's journey
is not just an art tale, it's atestament to resilience, talent and
(01:02):
the indomitable spirit of women inart, because it takes a lot to be a
woman in art, especially in her days.
Join us as we explore why Vigée Lebrun'slegacy is more relevant today than ever.
This podcast is supported by donors andlisteners who buy my tours and services,
including my itinerary consult service,my GPS self-guided tours of Paris on the
(01:24):
VoiceMap app, or take a day trip with mearound the Southwest in my electric car.
You can browse all of that at myboutique, joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
This is new.
I've decided to try ads on the show.
I've been asked for years.
I think it's worth testing.
Patrons get an ad free copy ofthe podcast as soon as it becomes
(01:47):
available through the Patreon app.
I have exciting news for allour gastronomy enthusiasts
and explorers out there.
I'm thrilled to announce the launchof my brand new VoiceMap food tour
of Les Halles, the historical heartof Parisian culinary artistry.
This immersive audio journey takesyou through the vibrant streets of
(02:10):
what was once known as the Bellyof Paris, Le Ventre de Paris, where
you'll discover hidden gems, tastelocal delicacies, the rich history
that makes this district so special.
Grab your headphones, let's go ona flavorful adventure together.
I make suggestions on whatto buy every step of the way.
(02:32):
I tell you about how to choose oysters.
I tell you how to choose cheese.
Wine, a little bit, although wineis really, really a personal choice.
Anyway, bon voyage and bon appétit to you.
It's available through the VoiceMap app.
And also podcast listeners who buythrough joinusinfrance.com/boutique, get
(02:54):
a fantastic discount on all of my tours.
For the magazine part of the podcast,after the interview today, I'll discuss
the temporary structures that will begoing up in Paris for the Olympics.
Some of these will impact yourtrip, even if you're visiting
well before or after the games.
Annie (03:23):
Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse (03:24):
Bonjour, Annie.
Annie (03:25):
We have a fantastic topic today about which I know almost nothing.
I wonder if our listeners aregoing to know more than I do, or
if they're going to be like me.
I have heard that Elisabeth VigéeLebrun, because that's who we're
talking about today, is partof the official AP art program.
(03:51):
So in the US, if you're doing APart, you have to learn about her.
And if that's why you're listeningto us today, welcome to you.
Keep listening.
We talk about all sorts ofartists and French things.
Elyse (04:04):
Well, that is amazing.
I certainly did not know that...
The things I come up with.
So, Elyse, what is soamazing about this woman?
Well, as you know, as everybody out thereknows, I certainly have an interest and a
penchant for talking about women artists.
Artists in general, butcertainly women artists.
(04:25):
And we have already had podcasts aboutRosa Bonheur, about Berthe Morisot.
So, people who are more or less inthe 19th century going into more, what
we could call the modern times, but Ireally loved the idea of talking about
this particular artist, partly for thesimple reason that I love portraits.
I think portraits are really fun.
(04:46):
And over the centuries, and centuries,and centuries of art, portraits
have been one of the staples ofwhat do you do as a subject for art?
And I was thinking about her becausewe have here in the Augustins,
two, maybe three of her paintings.
And I don't know, one day I was thinking,oh gee, it would be fun to talk about her.
So the Augustins that youjust mentioned is a museum in
(05:08):
Toulouse, where we both live.
It's a museum in Toulouse, which,unfortunately, is closed because
they had to do structural work,to repair some things on it.
But it is our big fine arts museum thatreally covers medieval art and up through
into the, let's say, the end of the 19thcentury, beginning of the 20th century.
(05:28):
So they have a few piecesby Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun.
Yes, they do.
They have, I think, if Iremember correctly, including
one of her self-portraits.
She certainly, she dida whole lot of them.
So I was thinking, oh, she's kind of afun subject because not only was she very,
very famous and successful during herlifetime, which is really extraordinary
considering that really, the big chunkof her career was in the 1700s, at a time
(05:54):
when women could be artists, but theywere kind of relegated to third category.
And you could do bowls of fruit, and youcould do pretty flowers, and you could do
pictures of nice women and babies, but youwere never considered to be at the same
level, or same level of skill as a man.
You know, that was justnot part of the deal.
And the Royal Academy, which is, you know,the France has Royal Academies: academies
(06:18):
for painting, academies for all kindsof things, which were created by, if I
remember correctly, Louis XIV, certainlydid not admit women to the Royal Academy.
I mean, no way, you know, no.
But this is a woman who has becomeassociated, even for me, before I
started doing the research, with theroyal family and I really thought
(06:40):
for a long time that she was probablyborn into nobility, you know, and...
Not at all!
This is a, the case of someone reallymaking it and going up through the
ranks of society and winding upbeing a bestie of Marie Antoinette.
Wow.
Which, for a certain amount oftime did her a lot of good and then
(07:02):
at the end of it did not do hervery much good at all, you know?
Annie (07:06):
Yeah, these were troubled times for the king.
Mm hmm.
Elyse (07:10):
Yeah, you know, and she managed to escape with her head on and live
to come back and see what happened inFrance after the Revolution was over.
So it's really kind of a great story.
Her painting, if you've seen any of thesewonderful, huge paintings of royalty,
(07:31):
especially at the time in the 1700s,the women that were aristocrats and
royals all had these ridiculous kindof wigs with, kind of climbed up to the
sky on top of their heads, you know?
Annie (07:41):
Yeah, they were all decked out.
They were all like done up, likefeathers and gorgeous fabrics and...
I mean, they were all...
in ways that we don't, I mean,I'm not, they probably didn't
dress like that every day either.
Elyse (07:57):
Well, you know what?
I don't know, but certainly forportraits, they didn't, you know?
Annie (08:02):
Yeah, for portraits, they went all out.
Like they would just,and they're very stately.
They're very like, you know, and theyprobably had to hold the pose for...
did I say that wrong?
Elyse (08:14):
No, no, no, that's right.
Hold the pose.
They had to hold it for a long timebecause they just liked your name.
Right.
I don't know.
So for those of you who are notlooking, I'm trying to do a royal...
She's trying to do royal.
She's, oh, no, no, no, no smile, no smile.
You're not supposed to smile?
No, because one of the things it's funnythat you do that because of, we'll talk
(08:35):
later on about the fact that she did it,she dared later on in her career, do a
couple of portraits where somebody issmiling and you can see the teeth and it
was forbidden to show teeth, because teethwere, if you look at paintings from the
1700s and 1800s, when you have a pictureof somebody with teeth, it looks sinister.
It looks like they're carnivorous, youknow, so it was only, it was only used for
(09:01):
showing somebody who was evil or nasty orlike lower class or something like that.
Annie (09:06):
Well, they do say when you have, when you show a full row of teeth, you're
also like baring your teeth, really.
I mean, it could be either way.
You're happy, smiley or baring your teeth.
Right.
So, yeah.
Elyse (09:17):
Anyway, so this is really the story of Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun, who had the
good fortune of living a very long life.
She died at the age of 86, in 1842.
And really her life wasabsolutely an adventure.
And she was someone who like a coupleof the other women artists we know about
(09:39):
and we've talked about, partly becauseof the attitude in general in society,
her obsession her entire life was topaint and to prove, up until the last
minute, that she was a great artist.
So she was born in 1755 in Paris.
And again, I think it's not by chancebecause this is true of a lot of the
(10:02):
other women who have been able to,who have come down through history
as being artists, at the time whenit was really dominantly, absolutely
dominantly men, her dad was a painter.
Her father was a, what they called apastelist, which meant that he made
his career, and a good career, makingbeautiful pastel paintings and drawings.
(10:22):
They were from an uppermiddle class family.
He was successful enough to have a certainamount of money, but just that, you know,
I mean, nothing, nothing more than that.
Annie (10:31):
He was proficient at his craft, but his career didn't take off.
Elyse (10:36):
No, his career didn't take off, but they were comfortable
off, you know, in terms of beinga comfortable middle class family.
And interestingly, she was sent,and apparently this was typical
of every family, middle classand up, certainly up from then.
Believe it or not, from the moment shewas born until she was six years old,
she was sent out to be with a farm womanwho nursed her, and they never saw her
(11:00):
for the first six years of her life.
Oh.
Oh.
Which is weird, but apparentlythis is really what they did.
It was like, I don't want a nurse,I don't want to do this, you know,
so her dad went and brought herback to Paris at the age of six.
And they enrolled her in whatwas considered to be a very
good girls convent school.
It wasn't to become a nun, but that waswhere the better education was, was in
(11:22):
a convent school in the center of Paris.
She was born right in the center ofParis in the 1st, 2nd, arrondissement
area, you know, right around there.
But what happened was at the ageof six, he discovered that she
already was really good at drawing.
This is even without him beingaround as an influence on her.
So it was clearly in her genes.
So he started giving herlessons, even though she was
(11:44):
going to this convent school.
And by the time she was eight, hedecided that there was no reason for
her to stay in the convent school,that he could bring her back to the
house, she had just a younger brother,and he would teach her and become her
tutor and mentor, because her talentwas so incredible at the age of eight.
She was good at drawing faces, she wasgood at color, she was really great at
(12:09):
just the idea of drawing things, andso at the age of eight, he decided that
she was going to be an artist, and itturns out that he was absolutely right.
I mean, she was really gifted fromthe beginning, and clearly she
was happy doing this with her dad.
Annie (12:23):
Yeah, I think it's, it's true of a lot of children, some kids just love
to doodle and draw, and some people likeme never get beyond like geometrical
shapes or something really simple-stupid,like I can draw the face of Garfield.
I can do a competent Garfield, that's it.
(12:45):
I learned that one.
That was my one trick pony.
But some kids will just draw anddoodle and do all sorts of things.
And I suppose if you encourage themand if you help them learn, it would,
it could bloom into something serious.
Elyse (13:00):
Oh, absolutely.
And really, this is the case of Elizabeth.
So, when she was 10, her dadactually made a prediction that she
would grow up to be a great artist.
Oh.
And unfortunately, what happenedwas that a year later, when she
was 11, her dad died very suddenly.
And her mom, this is one of those, like,mm, there must have been a little bit
(13:22):
of something going on, she remarriedwithin six months to a man who apparently
was not very nice to Elizabeth.
And what happened was, since shestarted actually working as an artist
at the age of 13, and at the age of14 started actually selling some of
her work, not very important amountsof money, but whatever it is she
(13:44):
made, her stepfather took the money.
She never got a penny from anythinguntil she actually was, until she
actually married at the age of 21.
And then what did she do?
She married, by this time she wasalready successful, and how she became
successful is also the amazing story,but she simply married a man who was
(14:05):
an art dealer, who was a restorer ofart, who was really an expert at art,
but he did basically the same thing,except that he took care of her.
That is, when she started making afortune with her paintings, and she
did indeed make a fortune, he "tookcare of", I like to put quotation
marks around it, of her money.
She got a little allowance, butsince apparently he didn't worry
(14:28):
about spending, she lived a finelife and never worried about it.
And she said, basically, she couldn'thave cared less about the money,
it was fine that he took care ofit, as long as she could paint.
That was all that mattered to her.
Annie (14:39):
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, being married to an art
dealer also helped, I'm sure.
But I have, one of the few thingsI read about her is that her
husband was a gambler, he gambledaway a lot of the money she made.
Elyse (14:56):
He gambled, he was a philanderer, but he was also
really good at promoting her art.
So, you know, I think she, shebasically kind of made a pact with
the devil because what she reallycared about was just doing her thing.
Annie (15:09):
Did they have any children?
Elyse (15:10):
Yes, she had two children.
She had one, unfortunately,who died very soon after birth.
And then she had her daughter, Julie,and that's part of the more tragic
aspect of her life story, is that shespent almost her entire life traveling
around with her daughter, and then shewanted her daughter to also be an artist.
She thought she would have the sametalent, but her daughter did not want to,
(15:33):
and she wound up, her daughter that ismarried somebody in Russia when she was in
exile, which is, comes later in her life.
And so they had a certainamount of conflict.
And unfortunately, Elizabethoutlived her daughter, but she
did have what they call posterity.
She had a grandchild, a granddaughter.
So there are somewhere descendants of her.
(15:54):
Huh.
So what happened was at the age of 14, shestarted being noticed for her portraits.
And she would do what most people did,whether they were men or women, she
went to the Louvre, which was available,interesting, you know, because by
this time, of course, the court wasliving in Versailles and the Louvre
(16:14):
was not a residence, a royal residenceanymore, and it was filled with art.
And she would go to the Louvreand she would study and make
copies of all of the greats.
And interestingly enough, she was veryattracted to the Northern artists, that
is the artists from Flanders and Hollandlike Rembrandt, and Rubens, and Van
(16:35):
Dyck, who was famous for his portraits.
So clearly, she went to the artiststhat she knew would be a good
source of inspiration for her.
Annie (16:45):
Yeah.
I have to interject here thatgoing to the Louvre to copy is
still something that is done.
Yes.
My friend, Jennifer Gruenke, who is one ofthe administrators of the Facebook group
for Join Us in France, she goes to theLouvre to copy pieces and she's hoping
to enroll in the Beaux Arts in Paris.
(17:09):
And she needs to get her French goodenough to be B2, so go Jennifer, go!
Elyse (17:17):
Yeah, it's actually a kind of interesting thing.
I honestly have never done it, but I'malways fascinated to see the people
who, because you have to concentratewith all these masses of people around
you, you know, just sit there andconcentrate and everybody's looking
at what you're doing and everything.
So, it's not that easyto be a copyist now.
In the old days, it was typical, youknow, this is just what people did.
Annie (17:39):
But you see, when you visit the Louvre, you will see a few of
them anyway, at any given point.
But, they're not, I mean, they'renot copying the Mona Lisa, okay?
If that's all you're going to visit,you're not going to see the copyist,
but if you go to more of the statues,the areas where they have statues or
things like that, you will see peoplecopying and drawing and all of that.
Elyse (18:01):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So Elizabeth sells her very firstpainting, which is a portrait
that I actually sent a copy of toyou because it's really kind of a
neat painting, at the age of 15.
And it's the portrait of hermom, but of course her stepfather
starts taking all the money.
But what's interesting is thatshe starts the buzz around Paris
(18:25):
is that this is an artist who iswonderful for doing portraits.
So she starts making a lot of moneybetween the ages of 15 and 21 when she
gets married and sort of emancipatesherself from one man to sort of be,
be connected to another, you know.
Annie (18:40):
That's a tragedy that hopefully will stop happening.
I'm not sure, many countries are notthere yet, but hopefully by now in
France anyway, a young woman who hastalent can take care of her own affairs
without her dad, or her husband.
Absolutely.
You know, I mean...
(19:01):
hopefully.
Elyse (19:02):
She winds up, by the age of 21, having a really, really good reputation
for being a wonderful portrait painter.
And so just, in fact, it's just a coupleof months after she gets married, she's
contacted by the Count of Provence.
Now, the Count of Provence is a title,of course, it turns out to be one of
(19:25):
the king's brothers, this is Louis XVI.
and this Count of Provence, who is prettymuch the same age she is, you know, this
is young people, you know, he has seenher work and he asks her to do a portrait
of him and they actually become friends.
Now, I mean, I don't know how, I'm usingmodern terms, you know, this is the king,
(19:46):
one of the king's brothers who winds upeventually, in the new century becoming
Louis the XVIII, you know, at that timeof the restoration of the monarchy.
I don't know what level we can saythat they become friends, but enough
friends so that he introduces her toeverybody in the court at Versailles.
And at the age of 23, she getsto meet Marie Antoinette, who is
(20:11):
exactly the same age as she is.
They were both born in 1755.
And she, Marie Antoinette, having seenher paintings, asks her to do a portrait,
and eventually, of course, she does many,many portraits of Marie Antoinette, and
they actually really become friends.
Marie Antoinette, I mean, is someonewe really should do a podcast about
(20:34):
because with all the rest of whatevergoes on in history, I mean, this
is a young person who was prettymiserable at the court in Versailles
for a long, long time, you know.
And so she surrounded herselfwith people that she liked.
Marie Antoinette designatesElisabeth Vigée Lebrun, who is
now Lebrun with her marriage, asher official favorite painter.
(20:56):
Well, you know what that means.
That means that everybody, absolutelyeverybody else at the court, and
all of the aristocrats want to havea portrait done by the same artist.
Annie (21:07):
Of course.
Yes.
Yes.
All of a sudden she's the topof the list for people wanting
to hire her to do things.
Yes.
Elyse (21:16):
Basically, from the age of 15 on until the Revolution, which is of
course 1789, at which point she is34 years old, so we're almost talking
20 years, she doesn't stop painting.
She paints hundreds and hundredsof portraits and becomes super
famous and very, very, very rich.
(21:36):
Even though it's her husbandwho's taking care of the money,
she lives a life of the rich.
They have this private homein the center of Paris.
They have a salon.
She manages to actually openup an academy of art for young
women and starts teaching.
The story is, you know, you never knowif this is just one of those stories
(21:56):
or not, that she painted until shewent into labor with her children.
I mean, she was still sittingthere with the brush in her hand
when the contractions started.
This is, this was how obsessiveshe was about being an artist.
Annie (22:10):
And I think that a lot of people who are very successful at
their craft, that's what it is, is theyare obsessed with doing this thing.
You know, Rodin neverstopped producing things.
Oh, what's her name?
The horse and cattle person?
Rosa Bonheur.
Rosa Bonheur.
(22:30):
She never stopped.
She was, you know, she just worked.
Now, I wonder, did ElisabethVigée Lebrun, did she have people
around her that she was training,that painted for her, in a sense?
Elyse (22:43):
No, no, not at all.
She really was, I mean, having on a verysmall scale, attempted to do portraits,
all I can say is, it is really hard.
Doing a really good portrait, capturingthe essence of somebody, and of course,
she was part of what is really consideredto be a style called Rococo, which is
(23:03):
very much a style of the second half ofthe 1700s, which means you use beautiful
color, there's a lot of detail, it'svery opulent inside the paintings.
A lot of times when you look at someof these paintings, especially the
ones of the princesses, you know,because she did, she did do men, by
the way, she didn't just do women.
But of course, she became famousfor doing Marie Antoinette
(23:24):
with her ridiculous hairdos.
And for all of the ladies in waiting,you and with the red on their cheeks
and everything, she apparently did alittle bit of "photoshopping", you know,
on Marie Antoinette at times, you know.
Annie (23:37):
Well, I mean, you want your patrons to look good, right?
Elyse (23:41):
Right, right.
It's very interesting because if you gothrough the catalog and look at some of
the paintings she did of the men, shealso did some of the princes and the
counts, and she apparently had a coupleof very nice looking lovers along the way.
And since her husband was of thatkind anyway, it sounds like she
didn't care one way or the other.
But they're a little bit morenatural, you know, and they don't
(24:03):
have these ridiculous dresses.
They don't have the ridiculous thingson top of their heads, you know.
Annie (24:07):
It's not as opulent because they're not kings and queens,
they are regular people, I guess.
Elyse (24:13):
Well, they were counts and ministers, but the men, you know, she was
able to really just concentrate almostmore on capturing the essence of their
faces and their expressions, because themen didn't wear ridiculous clothes like
the women were, you know, at the time.
And what's wonderful, and I've, youknow, I'm, okay, this is me, the artist
speaking, and I really get it, you know,is that of the over 900 works that are
(24:38):
left that are attributed to her, andprobably she did more than a thousand
in her lifetime, the one work sheconsidered to be her great masterpiece
is a portrait of an artist, a man.
It is one of the more simple,more realistic of her paintings.
(24:59):
You see his face, you capture theessence of what this guy looked like.
He looks like this really nice guy.
And he's got his paintbrushes in his hand.
To me, it's like, she's paintingherself in the form of a guy.
This is the painting she preferredof all the paintings she ever did,
except for two she did of herselfas self portraits with her daughter.
(25:21):
There's a lot of, I think there musthave been a lot of emotion involved in
certain paintings more than in others.
But in any event, by the time we getto the French Revolution and she is 34
years old, she is fabulously successful,fabulously wealthy, and in demand so
(25:41):
much that she never ever stops painting.
I mean, this is just, youknow, this is the workhorse,
this is the woman who does it.
However, the other part of what happenedto her, and this is the second half of her
life, is that because of the discontentin France and the rumblings, you know,
that presage the actual revolution,she's just in the same basket as Marie
(26:04):
Antoinette and all these other people.
And so there's lots of nasty rumors abouther and about the decadence of her life,
which probably was not too off the truth.
But at the same time, she workedprobably 10, 12 hours a day painting.
And so, there were comments thatreally were very insulting to her,
(26:25):
and she was, she was not outsideof the upper circles, you know, of
the nobility and the aristocrats.
Even though she was welcomed intothe Royal Academy, thanks to Marie
Antoinette and all of this, she wasnot that well liked in sense by
the general public who couldn't havecared less, I suppose, about portraits
of royal people anyway, you know.
Annie (26:46):
Yeah.
And also she was rich.
So, you know, there is a thing inFrance about not liking the rich.
Absolutely.
It's even today, like we, Americans puttheir millionaires on pedestals and will
accept anything so long as you're wealthy.
French people are the opposite.
(27:07):
We don't like our wealthy people.
We don't think we should trust them.
I mean, if you listen to the people whoare critical of our current president,
Emmanuel Macron, most of them, one ofthe first thing they will mention is
that he made a lot of money in banking.
Elyse (27:26):
That's exactly right.
Annie (27:27):
And they don't like him for that.
No.
You're not supposed to make a lotof money by yourself in banking, or
in painting, or in anything else.
You're supposed to, if you make money,you're supposed to keep it quiet.
Elyse (27:39):
And she did not.
And she did not.
Right.
So comes time for theseizure of the Bastille.
We are in the summer of 1789.
Ta ta.
And guess what?
She is actually in a town calledLouveciennes, which is a, I think
at this point, not far outsideof the outskirts of Paris.
(28:01):
She is at the home, the château ofMadame du Barry, who was the last
mistress of Louis XV, because she'sin the process of doing her portrait.
Yeah.
And she finds out that the Revolutionis in the process of happening.
This is a woman who really,politically, if she had any real
politics, she was a royalist.
(28:23):
I mean, she, I don't think she couldhave cared less about politics in
general, but she liked the royaltyand she believed in the monarchy.
And so what happens is that her husband,who interestingly enough, really obviously
took care of her in spite of all thecrazy other things that he did as well.
He basically said to her,look, you know, you probably
(28:45):
should not come back to Paris.
And so he arranged in the, she stayedoutside of the city, and in October of
1789, he arranged for her to meet up withher daughter and the daughter's nounou.
And gave her a sack full of goldcoins, and put her in a, I don't even
(29:06):
know what we'd call it these days,you know, a coach, and said, get out
of here, basically get out of here.
And this began a period of over 13 yearsof Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun being in exile.
And in that period of time,you imagine, oh my God, the
poor thing, she was in poverty.
(29:27):
What did she do?
No, no, no, no.
This is what she did.
She went from court to court.
She started off by going to Savoy, thenshe went to Rome, and then she went to
Venice, and then she went to Naples,and then she went all around the Italian
Peninsula, and she went from court tocourt, well received in every single one.
(29:49):
And in every single court, shewas given an opulent apartment to
live in and painted portraits ofeverybody in the royal family and
every aristocrat, and continued tomake oodles and oodles of money.
So she went, she spent threeyears basically traveling around
Italy, then she went to Austria.
(30:11):
Now, this is already after MarieAntoinette has lost her head.
But she's taken in by the royalfamily of Austria, because of course,
Marie Antoinette was the last littlechild of the emperors of Austria.
And then she does something absolutelyincredible, she gets invited to go to St.
Petersburg.
And she spends six yearsliving in Russia in St.
(30:34):
Petersburg, and she said later onthat it was the place she preferred
outside of Paris more than anyother place she'd ever been to.
I can't even imagine spending six yearsin the cold in the beginning of the 1800s.
Annie (30:48):
That's true.
It would be very cold, muchcolder than Paris, for sure.
Yeah.
Elyse (30:52):
But in fact, she had a wonderful...
Annie (30:54):
Opulent.
I mean, opulent.
Yeah, opulent.
Yes.
Yes.
Elyse (30:57):
So she, there's a wonderful, I mean, I sent you a couple of paintings,
but there are paintings of the royalimperial family of Russia that she did.
I mean, they're just so amazing.
First of all, the faces in them, youknow, you can see them, but the thing
is the clothing that they wore, youknow, the opulence of all of this.
And she managed all through these years,taking her daughter with her wherever
(31:20):
she went, giving her daughter aneducation, to live this very strange, at
the same time opulent life as an exile.
And she was one of the people that, Ihad to look this up to make sure, this
is what they called the list of émigrés.
Not émigré, but émigré.
That is basically the Revolutionmade a blacklist of all those people
(31:42):
who fled France at the time of theRevolution, which included the Count
of Provence, the brother of the king.
He, himself went to England, like thePrince de Condé, and it turns out that
it wasn't just the royals who did it.
It turns out that there were lotsof upper-middle class people, and
people who were just against what washappening in the revolution, who fled.
(32:03):
And there were thousands,thousands who fled.
Annie (32:06):
I mean, when you see the revolutionaries are chopping heads, right,
I think that's why you, you get out.
Elyse (32:12):
Which of course came up, you know, two or three years later, but it turns out
that, so if you were on this list, yourcivic rights were taken away, but also if
you went back to France, you risked beingput into prison and then being executed.
So she was condemned to do this, thisitinerant life for all these years.
And then in, during this time,see, it would be interesting...
Annie (32:33):
Well, it's not so itinerant.
I mean, she went to Italy, andthen Austria, and then Russia.
Austria and Russia.
Yeah.
Elyse (32:38):
But, you know, I mean, she couldn't go back.
She couldn't go back when her mom died.
Her husband, this is really fascinating...
Annie (32:45):
Yeah, did she divorce him at any point?
Elyse (32:47):
Well, he did this thing, in 1794, which is just five years after
she left, he divorced her to save her.
There's a complicated kind of civillaw thing involved, but basically
by getting divorced, she was putinto a less dangerous category.
I'm not even sure exactly how that worked.
But he did, he did this, he wasin touch with her all the time.
(33:08):
He kept sending her also somemoney, although I have a feeling
after a while she sent himbecause she was making a fortune.
And basically he got, he was a commoner,but his work as an art expert made
him someone who was very esteemedfor his reputation in judging art.
And so he became one ofthe experts at the Louvre.
(33:30):
Which of course became a realart museum after the Revolution.
And he was responsible for herpaintings staying in the Louvre.
Because she was considered part of thenasty royals, so let's get rid of her
work, you know, she's just not an artist.
She's, you know, one of thesepeople contaminated by Marie
Antoinette and Louis XVI and all.
(33:50):
But he worked very hard to makesure that her work stayed in
the public eye, in the Louvre.
And in 1801, she finally came back toFrance because they had, a petition had
been signed by over 250 politicians, andartists, and writers, and people saying,
come on, okay, it's enough is enough.
(34:12):
She's an artist, her only sin was beingassociated, you know, this way with the
Court, and so she came back to France.
And then this is what iseven more strange in a way.
At 1801 is when Bonaparteis basicaly in town...
Annie (34:28):
And she starts painting Bonaparte?
Elyse (34:30):
And she starts painting his family, but she hated, she hated them.
And it turns out that, but one of, youknow, Bonaparte put all of his brothers
and sisters all over the Europe, you know.
They all had big positions.
They all had big positions.
Annie (34:44):
He positioned, like even cousins twice removed, he gave them all great
positions, all over strategic places inthe government and all of that, yeah.
Elyse (34:56):
I mean, he put them in Sicily, he put, you know, he put people everywhere.
So it turns out there's this picture, thatI actually saw, she was commissioned to
do a portrait of his sister, Caroline,who was married to, I don't know who, but
who was considered to be, she had suddenlybecome a princess, you know, because by
being married to this guy, somebody inNaples or Sicily, someplace down there.
(35:16):
Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun wrote andsaid, I had spent my life painting
everybody at Versailles, everybodywho was an aristocrat, I have never
met anybody so obnoxious as thiswoman who takes, who considers
herself to be above everything else.
She said, I will not, so what shedecided because she could not stand
(35:37):
the Bonaparte family, to leave again.
And what did she do this time?
She went to England because thisis where all of the people she
knew were, who were still alive,were exiled, they were in England.
Yeah.
So she went to England and lived the nextfew years in England and hung out with
the man who became Louis the XVIII andall of the other aristocrats and nobles,
(36:03):
who saved their skin by fleeing, you know?
And she continued to paint, andshe continued to make portraits,
and she didn't come backpermanently to France until 1809.
So she was actually out of the countrypretty much 20 years, and painting,
so that's why there are paintingsby her in every major museum in
(36:23):
every country in Western Europe.
Annie (36:25):
Okay, so seeing her art is not like difficult to...
No!
Yeah.
You will see it in a lot of places.
Elyse (36:33):
You will see it in Paris, the Louvre, the Louvre, at Versailles...
Annie (36:38):
I'm pretty sure I saw a couple of hers at Versailles, as a matter of fact.
Elyse (36:42):
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, they were taken down, they wereput back in, you know, that kind of thing.
But they were never destroyed.
So she came back, and of courseit's, you know, this is inevitable,
by the time she comes back to Francein 1809, her style of painting is
not so much in fashion anymore.
This is really a style that,it's inevitable, this is just,
(37:03):
you know, the art world works.
But she continues to paint.
Annie (37:05):
Yeah,
Elyse (37:06):
because her contemporaries were doing very different work.
Well, if you think about it, shewas really in her art, she was
really part of the 18th century.
The 19th century is a century of moreexperimentation, more innovation, you
know, lots of different things, but shecontinues to paint, and her paintings
(37:27):
and her portraits are still in demand.
And she decides to doa lot of pastel work.
Interestingly enough, smaller works inpastel and on paper, and she still has
a lot of money, and she has a houseoutside of Paris, and she has a house
in Paris, and she continues her life.
And when the Count of Provencebecomes Louis the XVIII, she is
(37:50):
brought back to the Court, which ofcourse is very short lived, you know.
But these are her buddies, youknow, I mean, it's strange, because
she was an absolute commoner.
In terms of her background, she hadnothing in common with them, except
that they liked her for her art and theyliked her because she basically thought,
I think the same way that they did.
(38:10):
And she said that the only thingshe couldn't stand coming back to
France was still seeing remnants ofposters saying, you know, basically:
'Off with his head', you know,for the king and stuff like that.
There were these remnants ofthe Revolution all around her.
And later on in her life she hada couple of hard things happen.
Her daughter died relativelyyoung in her thirties, and
(38:30):
she started to lose her sight.
So she, by the time she was in her midseventies, she was still doing little
drawings and things like that, butobviously the bulk of her career was over.
But she lived to be 86 years old, anddied peacefully in her home in Paris.
By that time, of course, by 1842, we're ina totally different world in terms of art.
(38:55):
What I think is interesting in termsof posterity is that she's forgotten.
And she's also not only forgotten,but she's purposely not talked about
because she's associated with theRevolution, with the monarchy, so she's
dismissed in a way, even though herworks still exist, her works are still
in the Louvre and places like that.
And nobody at the end of the 19th centuryreally thinks about her work one way or
(39:20):
the other, and it isn't until the mid20th century, and thanks to American
Women Art Historians, and this is truefor most of the women artists, all
through the century, starting with themedieval renaissance in Italy, it's
thanks to the Women Art Historians inthe United States who start searching
(39:41):
for women artists in the past, youknow, to talk about them that she's
put back into the art history books.
And she is in all of the booksthat talk about the history of
paintings, she's there, you know.
And it isn't until 2015, which isreally quite remarkable, but that I
think has more to do with the factthat her painting is considered to
(40:01):
be so old fashioned because of thesubject matter, but that's the year she
has her first big, big retrospectivein the Grand Palais in Paris.
I know her work because of my background,I know her work because I'm interested in
the history of portraits at the same time.
When you look at her paintings,they are, from a point of view of
skill, they're absolutely fabulous.
(40:23):
The work that goes into them, theskill that goes into capturing
the faces, capturing the opulentfabric on the cloth of the dresses
and everything is wonderful.
But of course, it is a style thatis not really in favor anymore.
Right, right.
Annie (40:38):
Yeah, she went from the Rococo to the Neoclassical period in her lifetime
and other people who painted at thetime, you know, you have Jacques-Louis
David, who is very famous for hisgrandiose, very large, oversized
historical paintings that you can seein the Louvre, that are just splendid.
(41:03):
I mean, they are reallyfun to sit and watch.
And those are so large that you reallyneed to sit and watch for a while.
Otherwise, you don't get thewhole story that he's telling,
you know, a lot is happening.
Elyse (41:19):
She was friends with David.
It's interesting because she wasfriends with a group of the neoclassical
artists who were the part of the 1800s.
But I think that maybe it was justthat, you know, I mean, it's hard
after a while to sort of shiftwhen you're not young anymore to
a new style of painting, you know.
Her works from a point of viewof the quality of portraits are
(41:43):
absolutely fabulous and incredible.
And they give you an idea ofwhat was important at the time.
One of the reasons I like seeing some ofthe work she did of the men is because you
can forget about the distraction of theribbons and the thousands of kilometers
of ribbon and whatever on the dresses.
And you focus more on the facesand the character of the person.
(42:07):
And it's interesting that that'sthe biggest difference between the
portraits she did of the men andthe portraits she did of the women.
Annie (42:13):
She was a woman of her time.
Elyse (42:14):
She was a woman of her time, you know.
Annie (42:16):
Yeah, the other big painter at the time was Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
Right.
So he's, you know, known for thereading lady, she's on in yellow
and she's reading sideways.
Jean-Antoine Houdon,which I don't really know.
Oh, he's a sculptor.
(42:36):
He sculpted Voltaire, andRousseau, and George Washington.
I'm not as aware of him.
Angelica Kauffman was, she's oneof the few females of the Royal
Academy in London, and she was afriend of Vigée Lebrun, and she did
historical paintings and portraitsand landscapes and things like that.
Oh, another lady Adélaïde Labille-Guiard.
Elyse (43:01):
Yeah.
She was the rival.
She was her rival.
Annie (43:04):
Oh, she was her rival.
Okay.
Elyse (43:06):
They were contemporaries and they were the two women who dared
submit work to the Royal Academy.
What the Royal Academy would do is youcould not be admitted as a member if
you were a woman, but if they consideredyour work to be of a certain quality,
they would give you the opportunity toshow your work in their space, you see.
(43:29):
Uh huh, uh huh.
The biggest difference between the twois that it was Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun
who became friends with Marie Antoinette.
And Marie Antoinette used herinfluence to have her admitted
eventually into the actual academy.
Annie (43:46):
Aha!
So Adelaide was admittedthrough other sources, I guess?
Elyse (43:52):
Later on.
Yeah.
Annie (43:53):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Interesting.
And Francisco Goya, the Spanishpainter, was also a contemporary.
I'm just listing those so that wehave an idea of what else was being
made at the time and that it's notso surprising that her paintings were
so flamboyant, lush, I don't know howto describe it, but lots to look at.
(44:15):
And, you know, I think in general, peoplelike me who are not into art that much, I
didn't grow up thinking, oh, I want to gosee art, you know, that wasn't my thing.
But, now that I do go see art, I thinkit's best if you can sit a while, or
stand a while, whatever the case maybe, and try and look at the details
(44:39):
other than the obvious face or theobvious, you know, look at the things
that surround the person or whatever.
And see what story is beingtold, because there's always
a story in a painting, really.
Absolutely.
It's not like a photo.
Photos also tell stories,but not in the same way.
And if I think about today, we takepictures of everything today, we
(45:01):
don't have portraits made, right?
Do people hire painters today tomake, I don't know, paintings of
their, portraits of their pets?
Elyse (45:11):
Mm.
I know someone who is, I mean,I've met her once, I wouldn't
say that I really know her, but Idid meet, it's an English woman,
actually, who lives in the Pyrenees.
That's what she does, believe it or not.
She actually does portraitsof animals and pets, you know.
Annie (45:26):
So you send her a photo, your favorite photo of your..?
Elyse (45:29):
I haven't got, I don't know, I honestly don't know, I
don't know if she goes to meet thehorse, or the dog, or whatever.
Well, you know, there's the wholequestion of photography versus painting.
I mean, it's a whole other subject,but I think the difference is that,
you know, one of the things about beinga painter, which is true now, I mean,
(45:49):
it is, it wasn't true at the time thatElizabeth Vigée Lebrun painted, it
wasn't true even for David, you know,who did the Coronation of Napoleon.
Their job was to try toreproduce what they saw.
And even if they added and adjustedthe colors and made people a little
bit more beautiful than they, you know,really were, their work was really
(46:10):
connected to a reproduction of theworld that they saw in front of them,
which is no longer, since the middleof the 19th century, in Western art.
I think it's really important tosay in Western art, and now, of
course, I think everywhere in theworld, that is no longer the case,
that is no longer the importance.
The importance is no longer toreproduce reality, it is to express
(46:33):
your feelings and how you see things,which can make things very unrealistic.
It depends on what style, you can haveunrealism or not realism, it's not
really a word, by concentrating oncertain colors that are not the real
colors, but you can also have eventuallypeople like Picasso who flatten out the
forms and do all kinds of weird things.
(46:54):
But this is the liberty thathas come about since the
middle of the 19th century.
She, David, even the neoclassicists,they were still part of a world
that needed to reproduce the humanform in its real proportions.
And their fantasy starts to bein the choice a little bit of
the colors and, and how they usethe brushes and stuff like that.
(47:16):
So it's another world, youknow, it's a world that doesn't
exist anymore in a sense.
Annie (47:21):
Yeah, well, but if, I don't know, if I hired someone to paint a portrait
of my dog Opie, I would not want themto give me three swashes of color
and say, this is the essence of Opie.
I would want something thatreminds me of Opie, you know.
Because, well, perhaps I'mold fashioned, I don't know.
Elyse (47:41):
That becomes a choice.
The question is, do people still gethired to do painting portraits of people?
You know what?
I don't even know.
I don't know.
I don't know either.
Annie (47:51):
I know that people get hired to do portraits of pets.
Yeah.
But I don't know about people.
Elyse (47:57):
Well, look, I mean, Obama and...
Annie (47:59):
Presidents, of course they have the official...
painting.
Elyse (48:02):
But it is still, it is still a style of painting.
It is still a, not a style, it's awrong word, it's a category of painting.
There are still artists.
I know several British artistswho are alive today who do, that's
what they do, they do portraits.
But even if you get the resemblanceof the face, the objective of the work
(48:22):
is not so much the absolute reality.
Annie (48:26):
Last time I was in Utah, I went to visit the Supreme Court of Utah,
and in the halls, they have paintingsof all the Supreme Court justices,
that are made by an official painter.
So, official people like that will gettheir portrait done to display in an
(48:47):
official building or something likethat, or offices, or something like that.
Elyse (48:52):
I mean, portrait painting still exists.
It's just that it's more, you know,I mean, among the other contemporary
painters today, there's a famous womanpainter in England who does things
like rock stars and everything, butshe doesn't do them from them posing.
She does them, she will take a photograph,and then when you look at her paintings,
you see who these people are, butit's not, but it's re interpreted with
(49:17):
color and things like that, basically.
So portrait painting will neverdisappear, I don't think so.
Just like landscape paintingwill never disappear.
There are two categories.
It's a form.
It's a form.
The thing that we don't do anymore,interestingly enough, is the old
kinds of historical paintings ofhuge battles that were considered
(49:38):
to be the noblest form of art.
Now we have too much realitywith the news, and you know.
Yeah, we don't want to see this.
We don't want to see it anymore,but a beautiful portrait
or a beautiful landscaping.
Yes, indeed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Annie (49:53):
Wow.
Thank you so much, Elyse.
I learned a lot.
That was really interesting to hear aboutthis famous and very rich woman in art.
And she was very beautiful too.
And she was very beautifultoo, which helps.
Elyse (50:05):
She had everything.
Yeah.
We should, we're going to post acouple of her pictures so that people
get to see what she looked like andwhat her paintings looked like because
she did some great silk portraits.
The catalogue counts 900 works left.
That's a lot.
Over 600 that are portraits, becauseshe did do other things, and of the
(50:25):
over 600 that are portraits, probablyabout 20 percent are self portraits.
With children.
She's interested in her own face.
Yes, because it's, listen, if youhave nobody to pose for you, just
go take a look in the mirror.
Yeah.
There's a human there.
I'll paint that.
There's a human there.
Yeah.
Merci beaucoup, Elyse.
(50:46):
De rien.
Au revoir.
Annie Sargent (50:55):
Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving
back and supporting the show.
Patrons get several exclusiverewards for doing that, including
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You can see them at patreon.com/JoinUs.
Thank you all for supporting the show.
Some of you have been doing it fora long time, you are fantastic!
And a shout out this week to newpatrons: Lisa Agent, Laurie Koelbel,
(51:20):
Susan Paces, Stan Scardino, and Kathy.
It's wonderful to have you on boardin the community of francophiles
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And thank you Vera Lappano forupgrading to yearly support.
When you do that, you get two months freefor the year, so that's a great deal for
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(51:41):
And that's worth a lot to me.
And thank you to Michaeland Nancy Armstrong for
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How do you become a patron?
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(52:05):
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(52:25):
I mean, there's a lot more.
I also want to thank Dana Bradfordfor going to yearly support.
Thank you, thank you.
I published a reward for patronsjust recently before I went to Paris,
it was casual convos with Elyse andI'm about to talk to them about all
the details of my trip to Paris.
I discovered some new placesthat were very exciting.
(52:48):
And my thanks to Patricia Perry,who hosts me when I go to Paris.
She is a wonderful friend, avery generous friend, and I'm
very, very lucky to have her.
Patron Laurie Koelbel sent me amessage where she shares why she
enjoys visiting France so much.
And let me quote her (53:05):
"Sorry to ramble on, but as you can see,
we love our trips to France.
The biggest problem I have with yourpodcast is that you have introduced
me to so many other places I wouldlove to go to, how to decide?"
I don't know.
I have the same problem.
When I hear about the places my listenershave visited that sound good, I wonder
how can I possibly get to all of them?
(53:27):
But it's a really goodproblem to have, isn't it?
Wishing for more trips tovisit beautiful places.
Who wouldn't want that?
My thanks also to Jennifer Rantala forsending in a one time donation using any
of the green buttons on JoinUsinFrance.Comthat says: 'Tip your guide'.
Jennifer wrote (53:44):
"Hello from New York City.
I love this podcast so much.
I think of you and Elyseas my French friends.
And you know what?
If we lived in the same country,we probably would be friends,
which is one of the things I lovemost about producing this podcast.
I got several reviewsof my VoiceMap tours.
Somebody wrote about my Maraistour: "Brilliant, clear, humorous,
(54:07):
informative, merci bien."
Another person went into detailsabout what they enjoyed about my
Montmartre tour, and I appreciate that.
They wrote (54:15):
"I wanted to do a tour around the Montmartre area the
Sunday morning before we left Paris.
The positive reviews of thistour encouraged us to try it.
It was definitely worth the money.
The attention to detail as you walkaround, the very clear instructions
about where to turn are highly accurate,so I rarely needed to look at the map.
(54:37):
As it was Sunday morning, some ofthe galleries that were mentioned
were closed, but it also meantthat we were walking around streets
that were comparatively empty.
The narrative was very enjoyable,mentioned things that we would
have been oblivious to if wewandered around ourselves.
My wife and I shared AirPods, notbecause we are cheap, but it meant that
(54:58):
the audio was in sync for both of us.
We would definitely give this fivestars, a very strong recommendation."
Thank you very much.
Yes, sharing AirPods is totally fine.
I recommend people do it all the time.
It doesn't work when it's reallyloud environment, but you were
there on a Sunday morning,it was quiet, that's perfect.
And one more praising VoiceMap: "I have just discovered VoiceMap (55:19):
undefined
as first time visitors to Paris.
We are so excited to use this resourceto wander purposefully with articulate
and informative dialogue to guide us.
It's super exciting.
I will definitely be looking intoall the possibilities of other
cities with VoiceMap in our travels.
(55:41):
This takes it to a whole new level andall at a really economical price point.
Well done, VoiceMap."
Yes, VoiceMap is wonderful.
It's a great tool.
I have walked VoiceMaps producedby other people in other parts
of the world and I love them all.
I mean, some, I can tell, putlots more attention to detail
(56:01):
than others, but you know what?
It's always better than walking aroundwithout a clue what you're looking at.
And I have to say, as someone whowrites tours on the VoiceMap app,
working with them is fantastic.
So, if you know your town really, reallywell, and you want to share something
that you do, I recommend you reach out tothem because it's a great way to do it.
(56:24):
I just got done doing two itinerariesplanning services, one was a Bonjour
service and the other was a VIP.
And to explain the differencebriefly, I talked to the people
for about the same amount of time.
The difference is when I'm done withthe VIP, I sit down and I send them a
very long, written list of suggestions.
(56:45):
So it's easier for them to remember.
And if you want to book anyof these services, go to
joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
All right.
Let's talk about the Olympicsites going up for the Olympics.
There are many, seven sites at theheart of Paris during the Olympics.
You have Trocadéro, Eiffel Tower,Champs de Mars, which is right behind
(57:08):
the Eiffel Tower, L'Esplanade desInvalides, so that's the big grassy
area in front of des Invalides.
Over the bridge Alexander III, Place dela Concorde et Place de l'Hôtel de Ville.
So these are all places wherethey're going to set up things.
These are the seven sites in the center.
(57:29):
There's also going to be placessomewhat different for the Paralympics.
Anyway, there's goingto be a bunch of places.
But for right now, this iswhat they are planning on.
In March, Place de la Concordeis already being worked on.
Between March and the 1st of June,they will completely remove all access
(57:50):
to cars to Place de la Concorde,and after the 29th of October, they
will start to remove this stuff.
So if you're visiting any time betweennow and October, Place de la Concorde
is, well, it's not completely off,but a lot of it is not accessible.
(58:13):
For the Trocadéro, and Eiffel Tower,and Champs de Mars, they are already
working on putting together stadiums,they will slowly be closing areas off.
Thankfully, none of that will haveany impact on my walking tour of the
Eiffel Tower, but you know, the lateryou go closer to July, the less access
(58:36):
you're going to have around this area.
And then you have the Grand Palais,the Alexander III, the banks of
the river, all of that is goingto be taken up with areas that are
reserved for people who have tickets.
And so Les Invalides, they're going tostart in the middle of April, and then
it's going to grow in various directions.
(58:57):
I mean, if you want all the details,you can see them online, but I'm
just giving you the gist of it, soyou're not surprised that when you
visit Paris, there are some thingsthat you won't have access to.
Okay?
All right.
My thanks to podcast editors, Anneand Cristian Cotovan, who produced
the transcript for this podcast.
(59:18):
And next week on the podcast, atrip report with Howard Kantoff.
He did a self-guidedbike tour in Burgundy.
And I remember this was really interestingbecause we hadn't talked about biking
in Burgundy, an excellent episode.
Thank you so much for listening.
And I hope you join me next time sowe can look around France together.
(59:39):
Au revoir.
The Join Us in France travelpodcast is written, hosted, and
produced by Annie Sargent andCopyright 2024 by AddictedToFrance.
It is released under a CreativeCommons, attribution, non-commercial,
no derivatives license.
This is Join Us in France, episode 486, quatre cent quatre vingt six.
Bonjour, I'm Annie Sargent, and Join Usin France is the podcast where we take
a conversational journey through thebeauty, culture, and flavors of France.
Today, I bring you a conversation withElyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks,
where we invite you to step into theworld of Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun, the
(00:41):
trailblazing female artist who defiedthe 18th century conventions to become
Marie Antoinette's favorite portraitistand a celebrated figure across Europe.
From royal courts to her innovativestyles, Vigée Lebrun's journey
is not just an art tale, it's atestament to resilience, talent and
(01:02):
the indomitable spirit of women inart, because it takes a lot to be a
woman in art, especially in her days.
Join us as we explore why Vigée Lebrun'slegacy is more relevant today than ever.
This podcast is supported by donors andlisteners who buy my tours and services,
including my itinerary consult service,my GPS self-guided tours of Paris on the
(01:24):
VoiceMap app, or take a day trip with mearound the Southwest in my electric car.
You can browse all of that at myboutique, joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
This is new.
I've decided to try ads on the show.
I've been asked for years.
I think it's worth testing.
Patrons get an ad free copy ofthe podcast as soon as it becomes
(01:47):
available through the Patreon app.
I have exciting news for allour gastronomy enthusiasts
and explorers out there.
I'm thrilled to announce the launchof my brand new VoiceMap food tour
of Les Halles, the historical heartof Parisian culinary artistry.
This immersive audio journey takesyou through the vibrant streets of
(02:10):
what was once known as the Bellyof Paris, Le Ventre de Paris, where
you'll discover hidden gems, tastelocal delicacies, the rich history
that makes this district so special.
Grab your headphones, let's go ona flavorful adventure together.
I make suggestions on whatto buy every step of the way.
(02:32):
I tell you about how to choose oysters.
I tell you how to choose cheese.
Wine, a little bit, although wineis really, really a personal choice.
Anyway, bon voyage and bon appétit to you.
It's available through the VoiceMap app.
And also podcast listeners who buythrough joinusinfrance.com/boutique, get
(02:54):
a fantastic discount on all of my tours.
For the magazine part of the podcast,after the interview today, I'll discuss
the temporary structures that will begoing up in Paris for the Olympics.
Some of these will impact yourtrip, even if you're visiting
well before or after the games.
Annie (03:23):
Bonjour, Elyse.
Elyse (03:24):
Bonjour, Annie.
Annie (03:25):
We have a fantastic topic today about which I know almost nothing.
I wonder if our listeners aregoing to know more than I do, or
if they're going to be like me.
I have heard that Elisabeth VigéeLebrun, because that's who we're
talking about today, is partof the official AP art program.
(03:51):
So in the US, if you're doing APart, you have to learn about her.
And if that's why you're listeningto us today, welcome to you.
Keep listening.
We talk about all sorts ofartists and French things.
Elyse (04:04):
Well, that is amazing.
I certainly did not know that...
The things I come up with.
So, Elyse, what is soamazing about this woman?
Well, as you know, as everybody out thereknows, I certainly have an interest and a
penchant for talking about women artists.
Artists in general, butcertainly women artists.
(04:25):
And we have already had podcasts aboutRosa Bonheur, about Berthe Morisot.
So, people who are more or less inthe 19th century going into more, what
we could call the modern times, but Ireally loved the idea of talking about
this particular artist, partly for thesimple reason that I love portraits.
I think portraits are really fun.
(04:46):
And over the centuries, and centuries,and centuries of art, portraits
have been one of the staples ofwhat do you do as a subject for art?
And I was thinking about her becausewe have here in the Augustins,
two, maybe three of her paintings.
And I don't know, one day I was thinking,oh gee, it would be fun to talk about her.
So the Augustins that youjust mentioned is a museum in
(05:08):
Toulouse, where we both live.
It's a museum in Toulouse, which,unfortunately, is closed because
they had to do structural work,to repair some things on it.
But it is our big fine arts museum thatreally covers medieval art and up through
into the, let's say, the end of the 19thcentury, beginning of the 20th century.
(05:28):
So they have a few piecesby Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun.
Yes, they do.
They have, I think, if Iremember correctly, including
one of her self-portraits.
She certainly, she dida whole lot of them.
So I was thinking, oh, she's kind of afun subject because not only was she very,
very famous and successful during herlifetime, which is really extraordinary
considering that really, the big chunkof her career was in the 1700s, at a time
(05:54):
when women could be artists, but theywere kind of relegated to third category.
And you could do bowls of fruit, and youcould do pretty flowers, and you could do
pictures of nice women and babies, but youwere never considered to be at the same
level, or same level of skill as a man.
You know, that was justnot part of the deal.
And the Royal Academy, which is, you know,the France has Royal Academies: academies
(06:18):
for painting, academies for all kindsof things, which were created by, if I
remember correctly, Louis XIV, certainlydid not admit women to the Royal Academy.
I mean, no way, you know, no.
But this is a woman who has becomeassociated, even for me, before I
started doing the research, with theroyal family and I really thought
(06:40):
for a long time that she was probablyborn into nobility, you know, and...
Not at all!
This is a, the case of someone reallymaking it and going up through the
ranks of society and winding upbeing a bestie of Marie Antoinette.
Wow.
Which, for a certain amount oftime did her a lot of good and then
(07:02):
at the end of it did not do hervery much good at all, you know?
Annie (07:06):
Yeah, these were troubled times for the king.
Mm hmm.
Elyse (07:10):
Yeah, you know, and she managed to escape with her head on and live
to come back and see what happened inFrance after the Revolution was over.
So it's really kind of a great story.
Her painting, if you've seen any of thesewonderful, huge paintings of royalty,
(07:31):
especially at the time in the 1700s,the women that were aristocrats and
royals all had these ridiculous kindof wigs with, kind of climbed up to the
sky on top of their heads, you know?
Annie (07:41):
Yeah, they were all decked out.
They were all like done up, likefeathers and gorgeous fabrics and...
I mean, they were all...
in ways that we don't, I mean,I'm not, they probably didn't
dress like that every day either.
Elyse (07:57):
Well, you know what?
I don't know, but certainly forportraits, they didn't, you know?
Annie (08:02):
Yeah, for portraits, they went all out.
Like they would just,and they're very stately.
They're very like, you know, and theyprobably had to hold the pose for...
did I say that wrong?
Elyse (08:14):
No, no, no, that's right.
Hold the pose.
They had to hold it for a long timebecause they just liked your name.
Right.
I don't know.
So for those of you who are notlooking, I'm trying to do a royal...
She's trying to do royal.
She's, oh, no, no, no, no smile, no smile.
You're not supposed to smile?
No, because one of the things it's funnythat you do that because of, we'll talk
(08:35):
later on about the fact that she did it,she dared later on in her career, do a
couple of portraits where somebody issmiling and you can see the teeth and it
was forbidden to show teeth, because teethwere, if you look at paintings from the
1700s and 1800s, when you have a pictureof somebody with teeth, it looks sinister.
It looks like they're carnivorous, youknow, so it was only, it was only used for
(09:01):
showing somebody who was evil or nasty orlike lower class or something like that.
Annie (09:06):
Well, they do say when you have, when you show a full row of teeth, you're
also like baring your teeth, really.
I mean, it could be either way.
You're happy, smiley or baring your teeth.
Right.
So, yeah.
Elyse (09:17):
Anyway, so this is really the story of Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun, who had the
good fortune of living a very long life.
She died at the age of 86, in 1842.
And really her life wasabsolutely an adventure.
And she was someone who like a coupleof the other women artists we know about
(09:39):
and we've talked about, partly becauseof the attitude in general in society,
her obsession her entire life was topaint and to prove, up until the last
minute, that she was a great artist.
So she was born in 1755 in Paris.
And again, I think it's not by chancebecause this is true of a lot of the
(10:02):
other women who have been able to,who have come down through history
as being artists, at the time whenit was really dominantly, absolutely
dominantly men, her dad was a painter.
Her father was a, what they called apastelist, which meant that he made
his career, and a good career, makingbeautiful pastel paintings and drawings.
(10:22):
They were from an uppermiddle class family.
He was successful enough to have a certainamount of money, but just that, you know,
I mean, nothing, nothing more than that.
Annie (10:31):
He was proficient at his craft, but his career didn't take off.
Elyse (10:36):
No, his career didn't take off, but they were comfortable
off, you know, in terms of beinga comfortable middle class family.
And interestingly, she was sent,and apparently this was typical
of every family, middle classand up, certainly up from then.
Believe it or not, from the moment shewas born until she was six years old,
she was sent out to be with a farm womanwho nursed her, and they never saw her
(11:00):
for the first six years of her life.
Oh.
Oh.
Which is weird, but apparentlythis is really what they did.
It was like, I don't want a nurse,I don't want to do this, you know,
so her dad went and brought herback to Paris at the age of six.
And they enrolled her in whatwas considered to be a very
good girls convent school.
It wasn't to become a nun, but that waswhere the better education was, was in
(11:22):
a convent school in the center of Paris.
She was born right in the center ofParis in the 1st, 2nd, arrondissement
area, you know, right around there.
But what happened was at the ageof six, he discovered that she
already was really good at drawing.
This is even without him beingaround as an influence on her.
So it was clearly in her genes.
So he started giving herlessons, even though she was
(11:44):
going to this convent school.
And by the time she was eight, hedecided that there was no reason for
her to stay in the convent school,that he could bring her back to the
house, she had just a younger brother,and he would teach her and become her
tutor and mentor, because her talentwas so incredible at the age of eight.
She was good at drawing faces, she wasgood at color, she was really great at
(12:09):
just the idea of drawing things, andso at the age of eight, he decided that
she was going to be an artist, and itturns out that he was absolutely right.
I mean, she was really gifted fromthe beginning, and clearly she
was happy doing this with her dad.
Annie (12:23):
Yeah, I think it's, it's true of a lot of children, some kids just love
to doodle and draw, and some people likeme never get beyond like geometrical
shapes or something really simple-stupid,like I can draw the face of Garfield.
I can do a competent Garfield, that's it.
(12:45):
I learned that one.
That was my one trick pony.
But some kids will just draw anddoodle and do all sorts of things.
And I suppose if you encourage themand if you help them learn, it would,
it could bloom into something serious.
Elyse (13:00):
Oh, absolutely.
And really, this is the case of Elizabeth.
So, when she was 10, her dadactually made a prediction that she
would grow up to be a great artist.
Oh.
And unfortunately, what happenedwas that a year later, when she
was 11, her dad died very suddenly.
And her mom, this is one of those, like,mm, there must have been a little bit
(13:22):
of something going on, she remarriedwithin six months to a man who apparently
was not very nice to Elizabeth.
And what happened was, since shestarted actually working as an artist
at the age of 13, and at the age of14 started actually selling some of
her work, not very important amountsof money, but whatever it is she
(13:44):
made, her stepfather took the money.
She never got a penny from anythinguntil she actually was, until she
actually married at the age of 21.
And then what did she do?
She married, by this time she wasalready successful, and how she became
successful is also the amazing story,but she simply married a man who was
(14:05):
an art dealer, who was a restorer ofart, who was really an expert at art,
but he did basically the same thing,except that he took care of her.
That is, when she started making afortune with her paintings, and she
did indeed make a fortune, he "tookcare of", I like to put quotation
marks around it, of her money.
She got a little allowance, butsince apparently he didn't worry
(14:28):
about spending, she lived a finelife and never worried about it.
And she said, basically, she couldn'thave cared less about the money,
it was fine that he took care ofit, as long as she could paint.
That was all that mattered to her.
Annie (14:39):
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, being married to an art
dealer also helped, I'm sure.
But I have, one of the few thingsI read about her is that her
husband was a gambler, he gambledaway a lot of the money she made.
Elyse (14:56):
He gambled, he was a philanderer, but he was also
really good at promoting her art.
So, you know, I think she, shebasically kind of made a pact with
the devil because what she reallycared about was just doing her thing.
Annie (15:09):
Did they have any children?
Elyse (15:10):
Yes, she had two children.
She had one, unfortunately,who died very soon after birth.
And then she had her daughter, Julie,and that's part of the more tragic
aspect of her life story, is that shespent almost her entire life traveling
around with her daughter, and then shewanted her daughter to also be an artist.
She thought she would have the sametalent, but her daughter did not want to,
(15:33):
and she wound up, her daughter that ismarried somebody in Russia when she was in
exile, which is, comes later in her life.
And so they had a certainamount of conflict.
And unfortunately, Elizabethoutlived her daughter, but she
did have what they call posterity.
She had a grandchild, a granddaughter.
So there are somewhere descendants of her.
(15:54):
Huh.
So what happened was at the age of 14, shestarted being noticed for her portraits.
And she would do what most people did,whether they were men or women, she
went to the Louvre, which was available,interesting, you know, because by
this time, of course, the court wasliving in Versailles and the Louvre
(16:14):
was not a residence, a royal residenceanymore, and it was filled with art.
And she would go to the Louvreand she would study and make
copies of all of the greats.
And interestingly enough, she was veryattracted to the Northern artists, that
is the artists from Flanders and Hollandlike Rembrandt, and Rubens, and Van
(16:35):
Dyck, who was famous for his portraits.
So clearly, she went to the artiststhat she knew would be a good
source of inspiration for her.
Annie (16:45):
Yeah.
I have to interject here thatgoing to the Louvre to copy is
still something that is done.
Yes.
My friend, Jennifer Gruenke, who is one ofthe administrators of the Facebook group
for Join Us in France, she goes to theLouvre to copy pieces and she's hoping
to enroll in the Beaux Arts in Paris.
(17:09):
And she needs to get her French goodenough to be B2, so go Jennifer, go!
Elyse (17:17):
Yeah, it's actually a kind of interesting thing.
I honestly have never done it, but I'malways fascinated to see the people
who, because you have to concentratewith all these masses of people around
you, you know, just sit there andconcentrate and everybody's looking
at what you're doing and everything.
So, it's not that easyto be a copyist now.
In the old days, it was typical, youknow, this is just what people did.
Annie (17:39):
But you see, when you visit the Louvre, you will see a few of
them anyway, at any given point.
But, they're not, I mean, they'renot copying the Mona Lisa, okay?
If that's all you're going to visit,you're not going to see the copyist,
but if you go to more of the statues,the areas where they have statues or
things like that, you will see peoplecopying and drawing and all of that.
Elyse (18:01):
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So Elizabeth sells her very firstpainting, which is a portrait
that I actually sent a copy of toyou because it's really kind of a
neat painting, at the age of 15.
And it's the portrait of hermom, but of course her stepfather
starts taking all the money.
But what's interesting is thatshe starts the buzz around Paris
(18:25):
is that this is an artist who iswonderful for doing portraits.
So she starts making a lot of moneybetween the ages of 15 and 21 when she
gets married and sort of emancipatesherself from one man to sort of be,
be connected to another, you know.
Annie (18:40):
That's a tragedy that hopefully will stop happening.
I'm not sure, many countries are notthere yet, but hopefully by now in
France anyway, a young woman who hastalent can take care of her own affairs
without her dad, or her husband.
Absolutely.
You know, I mean...
(19:01):
hopefully.
Elyse (19:02):
She winds up, by the age of 21, having a really, really good reputation
for being a wonderful portrait painter.
And so just, in fact, it's just a coupleof months after she gets married, she's
contacted by the Count of Provence.
Now, the Count of Provence is a title,of course, it turns out to be one of
(19:25):
the king's brothers, this is Louis XVI.
and this Count of Provence, who is prettymuch the same age she is, you know, this
is young people, you know, he has seenher work and he asks her to do a portrait
of him and they actually become friends.
Now, I mean, I don't know how, I'm usingmodern terms, you know, this is the king,
(19:46):
one of the king's brothers who winds upeventually, in the new century becoming
Louis the XVIII, you know, at that timeof the restoration of the monarchy.
I don't know what level we can saythat they become friends, but enough
friends so that he introduces her toeverybody in the court at Versailles.
And at the age of 23, she getsto meet Marie Antoinette, who is
(20:11):
exactly the same age as she is.
They were both born in 1755.
And she, Marie Antoinette, having seenher paintings, asks her to do a portrait,
and eventually, of course, she does many,many portraits of Marie Antoinette, and
they actually really become friends.
Marie Antoinette, I mean, is someonewe really should do a podcast about
(20:34):
because with all the rest of whatevergoes on in history, I mean, this
is a young person who was prettymiserable at the court in Versailles
for a long, long time, you know.
And so she surrounded herselfwith people that she liked.
Marie Antoinette designatesElisabeth Vigée Lebrun, who is
now Lebrun with her marriage, asher official favorite painter.
(20:56):
Well, you know what that means.
That means that everybody, absolutelyeverybody else at the court, and
all of the aristocrats want to havea portrait done by the same artist.
Annie (21:07):
Of course.
Yes.
Yes.
All of a sudden she's the topof the list for people wanting
to hire her to do things.
Yes.
Elyse (21:16):
Basically, from the age of 15 on until the Revolution, which is of
course 1789, at which point she is34 years old, so we're almost talking
20 years, she doesn't stop painting.
She paints hundreds and hundredsof portraits and becomes super
famous and very, very, very rich.
(21:36):
Even though it's her husbandwho's taking care of the money,
she lives a life of the rich.
They have this private homein the center of Paris.
They have a salon.
She manages to actually openup an academy of art for young
women and starts teaching.
The story is, you know, you never knowif this is just one of those stories
(21:56):
or not, that she painted until shewent into labor with her children.
I mean, she was still sittingthere with the brush in her hand
when the contractions started.
This is, this was how obsessiveshe was about being an artist.
Annie (22:10):
And I think that a lot of people who are very successful at
their craft, that's what it is, is theyare obsessed with doing this thing.
You know, Rodin neverstopped producing things.
Oh, what's her name?
The horse and cattle person?
Rosa Bonheur.
Rosa Bonheur.
(22:30):
She never stopped.
She was, you know, she just worked.
Now, I wonder, did ElisabethVigée Lebrun, did she have people
around her that she was training,that painted for her, in a sense?
Elyse (22:43):
No, no, not at all.
She really was, I mean, having on a verysmall scale, attempted to do portraits,
all I can say is, it is really hard.
Doing a really good portrait, capturingthe essence of somebody, and of course,
she was part of what is really consideredto be a style called Rococo, which is
(23:03):
very much a style of the second half ofthe 1700s, which means you use beautiful
color, there's a lot of detail, it'svery opulent inside the paintings.
A lot of times when you look at someof these paintings, especially the
ones of the princesses, you know,because she did, she did do men, by
the way, she didn't just do women.
But of course, she became famousfor doing Marie Antoinette
(23:24):
with her ridiculous hairdos.
And for all of the ladies in waiting,you and with the red on their cheeks
and everything, she apparently did alittle bit of "photoshopping", you know,
on Marie Antoinette at times, you know.
Annie (23:37):
Well, I mean, you want your patrons to look good, right?
Elyse (23:41):
Right, right.
It's very interesting because if you gothrough the catalog and look at some of
the paintings she did of the men, shealso did some of the princes and the
counts, and she apparently had a coupleof very nice looking lovers along the way.
And since her husband was of thatkind anyway, it sounds like she
didn't care one way or the other.
But they're a little bit morenatural, you know, and they don't
(24:03):
have these ridiculous dresses.
They don't have the ridiculous thingson top of their heads, you know.
Annie (24:07):
It's not as opulent because they're not kings and queens,
they are regular people, I guess.
Elyse (24:13):
Well, they were counts and ministers, but the men, you know, she was
able to really just concentrate almostmore on capturing the essence of their
faces and their expressions, because themen didn't wear ridiculous clothes like
the women were, you know, at the time.
And what's wonderful, and I've, youknow, I'm, okay, this is me, the artist
speaking, and I really get it, you know,is that of the over 900 works that are
(24:38):
left that are attributed to her, andprobably she did more than a thousand
in her lifetime, the one work sheconsidered to be her great masterpiece
is a portrait of an artist, a man.
It is one of the more simple,more realistic of her paintings.
(24:59):
You see his face, you capture theessence of what this guy looked like.
He looks like this really nice guy.
And he's got his paintbrushes in his hand.
To me, it's like, she's paintingherself in the form of a guy.
This is the painting she preferredof all the paintings she ever did,
except for two she did of herselfas self portraits with her daughter.
(25:21):
There's a lot of, I think there musthave been a lot of emotion involved in
certain paintings more than in others.
But in any event, by the time we getto the French Revolution and she is 34
years old, she is fabulously successful,fabulously wealthy, and in demand so
(25:41):
much that she never ever stops painting.
I mean, this is just, youknow, this is the workhorse,
this is the woman who does it.
However, the other part of what happenedto her, and this is the second half of her
life, is that because of the discontentin France and the rumblings, you know,
that presage the actual revolution,she's just in the same basket as Marie
(26:04):
Antoinette and all these other people.
And so there's lots of nasty rumors abouther and about the decadence of her life,
which probably was not too off the truth.
But at the same time, she workedprobably 10, 12 hours a day painting.
And so, there were comments thatreally were very insulting to her,
(26:25):
and she was, she was not outsideof the upper circles, you know, of
the nobility and the aristocrats.
Even though she was welcomed intothe Royal Academy, thanks to Marie
Antoinette and all of this, she wasnot that well liked in sense by
the general public who couldn't havecared less, I suppose, about portraits
of royal people anyway, you know.
Annie (26:46):
Yeah.
And also she was rich.
So, you know, there is a thing inFrance about not liking the rich.
Absolutely.
It's even today, like we, Americans puttheir millionaires on pedestals and will
accept anything so long as you're wealthy.
French people are the opposite.
(27:07):
We don't like our wealthy people.
We don't think we should trust them.
I mean, if you listen to the people whoare critical of our current president,
Emmanuel Macron, most of them, one ofthe first thing they will mention is
that he made a lot of money in banking.
Elyse (27:26):
That's exactly right.
Annie (27:27):
And they don't like him for that.
No.
You're not supposed to make a lotof money by yourself in banking, or
in painting, or in anything else.
You're supposed to, if you make money,you're supposed to keep it quiet.
Elyse (27:39):
And she did not.
And she did not.
Right.
So comes time for theseizure of the Bastille.
We are in the summer of 1789.
Ta ta.
And guess what?
She is actually in a town calledLouveciennes, which is a, I think
at this point, not far outsideof the outskirts of Paris.
(28:01):
She is at the home, the château ofMadame du Barry, who was the last
mistress of Louis XV, because she'sin the process of doing her portrait.
Yeah.
And she finds out that the Revolutionis in the process of happening.
This is a woman who really,politically, if she had any real
politics, she was a royalist.
(28:23):
I mean, she, I don't think she couldhave cared less about politics in
general, but she liked the royaltyand she believed in the monarchy.
And so what happens is that her husband,who interestingly enough, really obviously
took care of her in spite of all thecrazy other things that he did as well.
He basically said to her,look, you know, you probably
(28:45):
should not come back to Paris.
And so he arranged in the, she stayedoutside of the city, and in October of
1789, he arranged for her to meet up withher daughter and the daughter's nounou.
And gave her a sack full of goldcoins, and put her in a, I don't even
(29:06):
know what we'd call it these days,you know, a coach, and said, get out
of here, basically get out of here.
And this began a period of over 13 yearsof Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun being in exile.
And in that period of time,you imagine, oh my God, the
poor thing, she was in poverty.
(29:27):
What did she do?
No, no, no, no.
This is what she did.
She went from court to court.
She started off by going to Savoy, thenshe went to Rome, and then she went to
Venice, and then she went to Naples,and then she went all around the Italian
Peninsula, and she went from court tocourt, well received in every single one.
(29:49):
And in every single court, shewas given an opulent apartment to
live in and painted portraits ofeverybody in the royal family and
every aristocrat, and continued tomake oodles and oodles of money.
So she went, she spent threeyears basically traveling around
Italy, then she went to Austria.
(30:11):
Now, this is already after MarieAntoinette has lost her head.
But she's taken in by the royalfamily of Austria, because of course,
Marie Antoinette was the last littlechild of the emperors of Austria.
And then she does something absolutelyincredible, she gets invited to go to St.
Petersburg.
And she spends six yearsliving in Russia in St.
(30:34):
Petersburg, and she said later onthat it was the place she preferred
outside of Paris more than anyother place she'd ever been to.
I can't even imagine spending six yearsin the cold in the beginning of the 1800s.
Annie (30:48):
That's true.
It would be very cold, muchcolder than Paris, for sure.
Yeah.
Elyse (30:52):
But in fact, she had a wonderful...
Annie (30:54):
Opulent.
I mean, opulent.
Yeah, opulent.
Yes.
Yes.
Elyse (30:57):
So she, there's a wonderful, I mean, I sent you a couple of paintings,
but there are paintings of the royalimperial family of Russia that she did.
I mean, they're just so amazing.
First of all, the faces in them, youknow, you can see them, but the thing
is the clothing that they wore, youknow, the opulence of all of this.
And she managed all through these years,taking her daughter with her wherever
(31:20):
she went, giving her daughter aneducation, to live this very strange, at
the same time opulent life as an exile.
And she was one of the people that, Ihad to look this up to make sure, this
is what they called the list of émigrés.
Not émigré, but émigré.
That is basically the Revolutionmade a blacklist of all those people
(31:42):
who fled France at the time of theRevolution, which included the Count
of Provence, the brother of the king.
He, himself went to England, like thePrince de Condé, and it turns out that
it wasn't just the royals who did it.
It turns out that there were lotsof upper-middle class people, and
people who were just against what washappening in the revolution, who fled.
(32:03):
And there were thousands,thousands who fled.
Annie (32:06):
I mean, when you see the revolutionaries are chopping heads, right,
I think that's why you, you get out.
Elyse (32:12):
Which of course came up, you know, two or three years later, but it turns out
that, so if you were on this list, yourcivic rights were taken away, but also if
you went back to France, you risked beingput into prison and then being executed.
So she was condemned to do this, thisitinerant life for all these years.
And then in, during this time,see, it would be interesting...
Annie (32:33):
Well, it's not so itinerant.
I mean, she went to Italy, andthen Austria, and then Russia.
Austria and Russia.
Yeah.
Elyse (32:38):
But, you know, I mean, she couldn't go back.
She couldn't go back when her mom died.
Her husband, this is really fascinating...
Annie (32:45):
Yeah, did she divorce him at any point?
Elyse (32:47):
Well, he did this thing, in 1794, which is just five years after
she left, he divorced her to save her.
There's a complicated kind of civillaw thing involved, but basically
by getting divorced, she was putinto a less dangerous category.
I'm not even sure exactly how that worked.
But he did, he did this, he wasin touch with her all the time.
(33:08):
He kept sending her also somemoney, although I have a feeling
after a while she sent himbecause she was making a fortune.
And basically he got, he was a commoner,but his work as an art expert made
him someone who was very esteemedfor his reputation in judging art.
And so he became one ofthe experts at the Louvre.
(33:30):
Which of course became a realart museum after the Revolution.
And he was responsible for herpaintings staying in the Louvre.
Because she was considered part of thenasty royals, so let's get rid of her
work, you know, she's just not an artist.
She's, you know, one of thesepeople contaminated by Marie
Antoinette and Louis XVI and all.
(33:50):
But he worked very hard to makesure that her work stayed in
the public eye, in the Louvre.
And in 1801, she finally came back toFrance because they had, a petition had
been signed by over 250 politicians, andartists, and writers, and people saying,
come on, okay, it's enough is enough.
(34:12):
She's an artist, her only sin was beingassociated, you know, this way with the
Court, and so she came back to France.
And then this is what iseven more strange in a way.
At 1801 is when Bonaparteis basicaly in town...
Annie (34:28):
And she starts painting Bonaparte?
Elyse (34:30):
And she starts painting his family, but she hated, she hated them.
And it turns out that, but one of, youknow, Bonaparte put all of his brothers
and sisters all over the Europe, you know.
They all had big positions.
They all had big positions.
Annie (34:44):
He positioned, like even cousins twice removed, he gave them all great
positions, all over strategic places inthe government and all of that, yeah.
Elyse (34:56):
I mean, he put them in Sicily, he put, you know, he put people everywhere.
So it turns out there's this picture, thatI actually saw, she was commissioned to
do a portrait of his sister, Caroline,who was married to, I don't know who, but
who was considered to be, she had suddenlybecome a princess, you know, because by
being married to this guy, somebody inNaples or Sicily, someplace down there.
(35:16):
Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun wrote andsaid, I had spent my life painting
everybody at Versailles, everybodywho was an aristocrat, I have never
met anybody so obnoxious as thiswoman who takes, who considers
herself to be above everything else.
She said, I will not, so what shedecided because she could not stand
(35:37):
the Bonaparte family, to leave again.
And what did she do this time?
She went to England because thisis where all of the people she
knew were, who were still alive,were exiled, they were in England.
Yeah.
So she went to England and lived the nextfew years in England and hung out with
the man who became Louis the XVIII andall of the other aristocrats and nobles,
(36:03):
who saved their skin by fleeing, you know?
And she continued to paint, andshe continued to make portraits,
and she didn't come backpermanently to France until 1809.
So she was actually out of the countrypretty much 20 years, and painting,
so that's why there are paintingsby her in every major museum in
(36:23):
every country in Western Europe.
Annie (36:25):
Okay, so seeing her art is not like difficult to...
No!
Yeah.
You will see it in a lot of places.
Elyse (36:33):
You will see it in Paris, the Louvre, the Louvre, at Versailles...
Annie (36:38):
I'm pretty sure I saw a couple of hers at Versailles, as a matter of fact.
Elyse (36:42):
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, they were taken down, they wereput back in, you know, that kind of thing.
But they were never destroyed.
So she came back, and of courseit's, you know, this is inevitable,
by the time she comes back to Francein 1809, her style of painting is
not so much in fashion anymore.
This is really a style that,it's inevitable, this is just,
(37:03):
you know, the art world works.
But she continues to paint.
Annie (37:05):
Yeah,
Elyse (37:06):
because her contemporaries were doing very different work.
Well, if you think about it, shewas really in her art, she was
really part of the 18th century.
The 19th century is a century of moreexperimentation, more innovation, you
know, lots of different things, but shecontinues to paint, and her paintings
(37:27):
and her portraits are still in demand.
And she decides to doa lot of pastel work.
Interestingly enough, smaller works inpastel and on paper, and she still has
a lot of money, and she has a houseoutside of Paris, and she has a house
in Paris, and she continues her life.
And when the Count of Provencebecomes Louis the XVIII, she is
(37:50):
brought back to the Court, which ofcourse is very short lived, you know.
But these are her buddies, youknow, I mean, it's strange, because
she was an absolute commoner.
In terms of her background, she hadnothing in common with them, except
that they liked her for her art and theyliked her because she basically thought,
I think the same way that they did.
(38:10):
And she said that the only thingshe couldn't stand coming back to
France was still seeing remnants ofposters saying, you know, basically:
'Off with his head', you know,for the king and stuff like that.
There were these remnants ofthe Revolution all around her.
And later on in her life she hada couple of hard things happen.
Her daughter died relativelyyoung in her thirties, and
(38:30):
she started to lose her sight.
So she, by the time she was in her midseventies, she was still doing little
drawings and things like that, butobviously the bulk of her career was over.
But she lived to be 86 years old, anddied peacefully in her home in Paris.
By that time, of course, by 1842, we're ina totally different world in terms of art.
(38:55):
What I think is interesting in termsof posterity is that she's forgotten.
And she's also not only forgotten,but she's purposely not talked about
because she's associated with theRevolution, with the monarchy, so she's
dismissed in a way, even though herworks still exist, her works are still
in the Louvre and places like that.
And nobody at the end of the 19th centuryreally thinks about her work one way or
(39:20):
the other, and it isn't until the mid20th century, and thanks to American
Women Art Historians, and this is truefor most of the women artists, all
through the century, starting with themedieval renaissance in Italy, it's
thanks to the Women Art Historians inthe United States who start searching
(39:41):
for women artists in the past, youknow, to talk about them that she's
put back into the art history books.
And she is in all of the booksthat talk about the history of
paintings, she's there, you know.
And it isn't until 2015, which isreally quite remarkable, but that I
think has more to do with the factthat her painting is considered to
(40:01):
be so old fashioned because of thesubject matter, but that's the year she
has her first big, big retrospectivein the Grand Palais in Paris.
I know her work because of my background,I know her work because I'm interested in
the history of portraits at the same time.
When you look at her paintings,they are, from a point of view of
skill, they're absolutely fabulous.
(40:23):
The work that goes into them, theskill that goes into capturing
the faces, capturing the opulentfabric on the cloth of the dresses
and everything is wonderful.
But of course, it is a style thatis not really in favor anymore.
Right, right.
Annie (40:38):
Yeah, she went from the Rococo to the Neoclassical period in her lifetime
and other people who painted at thetime, you know, you have Jacques-Louis
David, who is very famous for hisgrandiose, very large, oversized
historical paintings that you can seein the Louvre, that are just splendid.
(41:03):
I mean, they are reallyfun to sit and watch.
And those are so large that you reallyneed to sit and watch for a while.
Otherwise, you don't get thewhole story that he's telling,
you know, a lot is happening.
Elyse (41:19):
She was friends with David.
It's interesting because she wasfriends with a group of the neoclassical
artists who were the part of the 1800s.
But I think that maybe it was justthat, you know, I mean, it's hard
after a while to sort of shiftwhen you're not young anymore to
a new style of painting, you know.
Her works from a point of viewof the quality of portraits are
(41:43):
absolutely fabulous and incredible.
And they give you an idea ofwhat was important at the time.
One of the reasons I like seeing some ofthe work she did of the men is because you
can forget about the distraction of theribbons and the thousands of kilometers
of ribbon and whatever on the dresses.
And you focus more on the facesand the character of the person.
(42:07):
And it's interesting that that'sthe biggest difference between the
portraits she did of the men andthe portraits she did of the women.
Annie (42:13):
She was a woman of her time.
Elyse (42:14):
She was a woman of her time, you know.
Annie (42:16):
Yeah, the other big painter at the time was Jean-Honoré Fragonard.
Right.
So he's, you know, known for thereading lady, she's on in yellow
and she's reading sideways.
Jean-Antoine Houdon,which I don't really know.
Oh, he's a sculptor.
(42:36):
He sculpted Voltaire, andRousseau, and George Washington.
I'm not as aware of him.
Angelica Kauffman was, she's oneof the few females of the Royal
Academy in London, and she was afriend of Vigée Lebrun, and she did
historical paintings and portraitsand landscapes and things like that.
Oh, another lady Adélaïde Labille-Guiard.
Elyse (43:01):
Yeah.
She was the rival.
She was her rival.
Annie (43:04):
Oh, she was her rival.
Okay.
Elyse (43:06):
They were contemporaries and they were the two women who dared
submit work to the Royal Academy.
What the Royal Academy would do is youcould not be admitted as a member if
you were a woman, but if they consideredyour work to be of a certain quality,
they would give you the opportunity toshow your work in their space, you see.
(43:29):
Uh huh, uh huh.
The biggest difference between the twois that it was Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun
who became friends with Marie Antoinette.
And Marie Antoinette used herinfluence to have her admitted
eventually into the actual academy.
Annie (43:46):
Aha!
So Adelaide was admittedthrough other sources, I guess?
Elyse (43:52):
Later on.
Yeah.
Annie (43:53):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Interesting.
And Francisco Goya, the Spanishpainter, was also a contemporary.
I'm just listing those so that wehave an idea of what else was being
made at the time and that it's notso surprising that her paintings were
so flamboyant, lush, I don't know howto describe it, but lots to look at.
(44:15):
And, you know, I think in general, peoplelike me who are not into art that much, I
didn't grow up thinking, oh, I want to gosee art, you know, that wasn't my thing.
But, now that I do go see art, I thinkit's best if you can sit a while, or
stand a while, whatever the case maybe, and try and look at the details
(44:39):
other than the obvious face or theobvious, you know, look at the things
that surround the person or whatever.
And see what story is beingtold, because there's always
a story in a painting, really.
Absolutely.
It's not like a photo.
Photos also tell stories,but not in the same way.
And if I think about today, we takepictures of everything today, we
(45:01):
don't have portraits made, right?
Do people hire painters today tomake, I don't know, paintings of
their, portraits of their pets?
Elyse (45:11):
Mm.
I know someone who is, I mean,I've met her once, I wouldn't
say that I really know her, but Idid meet, it's an English woman,
actually, who lives in the Pyrenees.
That's what she does, believe it or not.
She actually does portraitsof animals and pets, you know.
Annie (45:26):
So you send her a photo, your favorite photo of your..?
Elyse (45:29):
I haven't got, I don't know, I honestly don't know, I
don't know if she goes to meet thehorse, or the dog, or whatever.
Well, you know, there's the wholequestion of photography versus painting.
I mean, it's a whole other subject,but I think the difference is that,
you know, one of the things about beinga painter, which is true now, I mean,
(45:49):
it is, it wasn't true at the time thatElizabeth Vigée Lebrun painted, it
wasn't true even for David, you know,who did the Coronation of Napoleon.
Their job was to try toreproduce what they saw.
And even if they added and adjustedthe colors and made people a little
bit more beautiful than they, you know,really were, their work was really
(46:10):
connected to a reproduction of theworld that they saw in front of them,
which is no longer, since the middleof the 19th century, in Western art.
I think it's really important tosay in Western art, and now, of
course, I think everywhere in theworld, that is no longer the case,
that is no longer the importance.
The importance is no longer toreproduce reality, it is to express
(46:33):
your feelings and how you see things,which can make things very unrealistic.
It depends on what style, you can haveunrealism or not realism, it's not
really a word, by concentrating oncertain colors that are not the real
colors, but you can also have eventuallypeople like Picasso who flatten out the
forms and do all kinds of weird things.
(46:54):
But this is the liberty thathas come about since the
middle of the 19th century.
She, David, even the neoclassicists,they were still part of a world
that needed to reproduce the humanform in its real proportions.
And their fantasy starts to bein the choice a little bit of
the colors and, and how they usethe brushes and stuff like that.
(47:16):
So it's another world, youknow, it's a world that doesn't
exist anymore in a sense.
Annie (47:21):
Yeah, well, but if, I don't know, if I hired someone to paint a portrait
of my dog Opie, I would not want themto give me three swashes of color
and say, this is the essence of Opie.
I would want something thatreminds me of Opie, you know.
Because, well, perhaps I'mold fashioned, I don't know.
Elyse (47:41):
That becomes a choice.
The question is, do people still gethired to do painting portraits of people?
You know what?
I don't even know.
I don't know.
I don't know either.
Annie (47:51):
I know that people get hired to do portraits of pets.
Yeah.
But I don't know about people.
Elyse (47:57):
Well, look, I mean, Obama and...
Annie (47:59):
Presidents, of course they have the official...
painting.
Elyse (48:02):
But it is still, it is still a style of painting.
It is still a, not a style, it's awrong word, it's a category of painting.
There are still artists.
I know several British artistswho are alive today who do, that's
what they do, they do portraits.
But even if you get the resemblanceof the face, the objective of the work
(48:22):
is not so much the absolute reality.
Annie (48:26):
Last time I was in Utah, I went to visit the Supreme Court of Utah,
and in the halls, they have paintingsof all the Supreme Court justices,
that are made by an official painter.
So, official people like that will gettheir portrait done to display in an
(48:47):
official building or something likethat, or offices, or something like that.
Elyse (48:52):
I mean, portrait painting still exists.
It's just that it's more, you know,I mean, among the other contemporary
painters today, there's a famous womanpainter in England who does things
like rock stars and everything, butshe doesn't do them from them posing.
She does them, she will take a photograph,and then when you look at her paintings,
you see who these people are, butit's not, but it's re interpreted with
(49:17):
color and things like that, basically.
So portrait painting will neverdisappear, I don't think so.
Just like landscape paintingwill never disappear.
There are two categories.
It's a form.
It's a form.
The thing that we don't do anymore,interestingly enough, is the old
kinds of historical paintings ofhuge battles that were considered
(49:38):
to be the noblest form of art.
Now we have too much realitywith the news, and you know.
Yeah, we don't want to see this.
We don't want to see it anymore,but a beautiful portrait
or a beautiful landscaping.
Yes, indeed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Annie (49:53):
Wow.
Thank you so much, Elyse.
I learned a lot.
That was really interesting to hear aboutthis famous and very rich woman in art.
And she was very beautiful too.
And she was very beautifultoo, which helps.
Elyse (50:05):
She had everything.
Yeah.
We should, we're going to post acouple of her pictures so that people
get to see what she looked like andwhat her paintings looked like because
she did some great silk portraits.
The catalogue counts 900 works left.
That's a lot.
Over 600 that are portraits, becauseshe did do other things, and of the
(50:25):
over 600 that are portraits, probablyabout 20 percent are self portraits.
With children.
She's interested in her own face.
Yes, because it's, listen, if youhave nobody to pose for you, just
go take a look in the mirror.
Yeah.
There's a human there.
I'll paint that.
There's a human there.
Yeah.
Merci beaucoup, Elyse.
(50:46):
De rien.
Au revoir.
Annie Sargent (50:55):
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And let me quote her (53:05):
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The biggest problem I have with yourpodcast is that you have introduced
me to so many other places I wouldlove to go to, how to decide?"
I don't know.
I have the same problem.
When I hear about the places my listenershave visited that sound good, I wonder
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(53:27):
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Jennifer wrote (53:44):
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I love this podcast so much.
I think of you and Elyseas my French friends.
And you know what?
If we lived in the same country,we probably would be friends,
which is one of the things I lovemost about producing this podcast.
I got several reviewsof my VoiceMap tours.
Somebody wrote about my Maraistour: "Brilliant, clear, humorous,
(54:07):
informative, merci bien."
Another person went into detailsabout what they enjoyed about my
Montmartre tour, and I appreciate that.
They wrote (54:15):
"I wanted to do a tour around the Montmartre area the
Sunday morning before we left Paris.
The positive reviews of thistour encouraged us to try it.
It was definitely worth the money.
The attention to detail as you walkaround, the very clear instructions
about where to turn are highly accurate,so I rarely needed to look at the map.
(54:37):
As it was Sunday morning, some ofthe galleries that were mentioned
were closed, but it also meantthat we were walking around streets
that were comparatively empty.
The narrative was very enjoyable,mentioned things that we would
have been oblivious to if wewandered around ourselves.
My wife and I shared AirPods, notbecause we are cheap, but it meant that
(54:58):
the audio was in sync for both of us.
We would definitely give this fivestars, a very strong recommendation."
Thank you very much.
Yes, sharing AirPods is totally fine.
I recommend people do it all the time.
It doesn't work when it's reallyloud environment, but you were
there on a Sunday morning,it was quiet, that's perfect.
And one more praising VoiceMap: "I have just discovered VoiceMap (55:19):
undefined
as first time visitors to Paris.
We are so excited to use this resourceto wander purposefully with articulate
and informative dialogue to guide us.
It's super exciting.
I will definitely be looking intoall the possibilities of other
cities with VoiceMap in our travels.
(55:41):
This takes it to a whole new level andall at a really economical price point.
Well done, VoiceMap."
Yes, VoiceMap is wonderful.
It's a great tool.
I have walked VoiceMaps producedby other people in other parts
of the world and I love them all.
I mean, some, I can tell, putlots more attention to detail
(56:01):
than others, but you know what?
It's always better than walking aroundwithout a clue what you're looking at.
And I have to say, as someone whowrites tours on the VoiceMap app,
working with them is fantastic.
So, if you know your town really, reallywell, and you want to share something
that you do, I recommend you reach out tothem because it's a great way to do it.
(56:24):
I just got done doing two itinerariesplanning services, one was a Bonjour
service and the other was a VIP.
And to explain the differencebriefly, I talked to the people
for about the same amount of time.
The difference is when I'm done withthe VIP, I sit down and I send them a
very long, written list of suggestions.
(56:45):
So it's easier for them to remember.
And if you want to book anyof these services, go to
joinusinfrance.com/boutique.
All right.
Let's talk about the Olympicsites going up for the Olympics.
There are many, seven sites at theheart of Paris during the Olympics.
You have Trocadéro, Eiffel Tower,Champs de Mars, which is right behind
(57:08):
the Eiffel Tower, L'Esplanade desInvalides, so that's the big grassy
area in front of des Invalides.
Over the bridge Alexander III, Place dela Concorde et Place de l'Hôtel de Ville.
So these are all places wherethey're going to set up things.
These are the seven sites in the center.
(57:29):
There's also going to be placessomewhat different for the Paralympics.
Anyway, there's goingto be a bunch of places.
But for right now, this iswhat they are planning on.
In March, Place de la Concordeis already being worked on.
Between March and the 1st of June,they will completely remove all access
(57:50):
to cars to Place de la Concorde,and after the 29th of October, they
will start to remove this stuff.
So if you're visiting any time betweennow and October, Place de la Concorde
is, well, it's not completely off,but a lot of it is not accessible.
(58:13):
For the Trocadéro, and Eiffel Tower,and Champs de Mars, they are already
working on putting together stadiums,they will slowly be closing areas off.
Thankfully, none of that will haveany impact on my walking tour of the
Eiffel Tower, but you know, the lateryou go closer to July, the less access
(58:36):
you're going to have around this area.
And then you have the Grand Palais,the Alexander III, the banks of
the river, all of that is goingto be taken up with areas that are
reserved for people who have tickets.
And so Les Invalides, they're going tostart in the middle of April, and then
it's going to grow in various directions.
(58:57):
I mean, if you want all the details,you can see them online, but I'm
just giving you the gist of it, soyou're not surprised that when you
visit Paris, there are some thingsthat you won't have access to.
Okay?
All right.
My thanks to podcast editors, Anneand Cristian Cotovan, who produced
the transcript for this podcast.
(59:18):
And next week on the podcast, atrip report with Howard Kantoff.
He did a self-guidedbike tour in Burgundy.
And I remember this was really interestingbecause we hadn't talked about biking
in Burgundy, an excellent episode.
Thank you so much for listening.
And I hope you join me next time sowe can look around France together.
(59:39):
Au revoir.
The Join Us in France travelpodcast is written, hosted, and
produced by Annie Sargent andCopyright 2024 by AddictedToFrance.
It is released under a CreativeCommons, attribution, non-commercial,
no derivatives license.
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