I i I.' I I I I I I I i FROM THE INCOME OF THE FISKE ENDOWMENT FUND THE BEQUEST OF Librarian of the University 1 868-1 883 1905 ^ ND 553.L45H47'"'™"'""'''"^ Vigee-Lebrun, 1755-1842 :her life, work 3 1924 008 748 323 \< '^, Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924008748323 VIGEE-LEBRUN 1755-1842 VIGEE-LEBRUN 1755-1842 HER LIFE, WORKS, AND FRIENDSHIPS By W. H. HELM AUTHOR OF ' JANE AUSTEN AND HER COUNTRY-HOUSE COMEDY " "ASPECTS OF BALZAC," "CHARLES DICKENS" WITH A CATALOGUE RAISONNE OF THE ARTIST'S PICTURES With a Frontispiece in Colours 40 Photogravure Plates and other illustrations BOSTON SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY 191S AUTHOR'S NOTE IN preparing this account of Madame Lebrun and the catalogue of her works, the author has been helped with information and advice by many to whom he here gives sincere thanks, especially to Messrs. Christie, Manson and Woods, Mr. Algernon Graves, F.S.A., Mr. James Greig, Mr. Daniel O'Connor, Mr. W. Romaine Paterson, Mr. W. Roberts, Lady Sackville, and Mr. T. H. Thomas. For permission to reproduce pictures or copyright plates, and in several cases for other assistance, he is much indebted to Messrs. Thomas Agnew and Sons, The Marquis of Bristol, Messrs. Duveen Brothers, M. Feral, Mr. Otto Gutekunst, Mr. Adolph Hirsch, Mr. E. M. Hodgkins, Mr. William McKay, The Dowager Countess of Portarlington, the family of the late Comtesse E. de Pourtal^s, The Earl of Radnor, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Lord Sackville, M. Charles Sedelmeyer, M. Wildenstein, and to Dr. G. C. Williamson and the executors of the late Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. Among many published sources of information, his chief authority, apart from Madame Lebrun' s own Souvenirs, has been the admirable volume by M. Pierre de Nolhac, Keeper of the Art Galleries at Versailles, to which is appended a valuable descriptive list by M. Pannier, compiled from the sale catalogues of such of the artist's works as were sold in public from 1778 up to the year (1908) in which the book was issued. In M. Jacques Doucet's noble library in Paris he was able to see many original manuscripts and other documents relating to his subject. With regard to the catalogue given at the end of the present book, the author is well aware that it must inevitably contain many errors, as it obviously leaves many pictures either entirely unidentified or insuffi- ciently described. He will be greatly obliged for any corrections or additions which may be sent to him. CONTENTS CHAPTER I EARLY YEARS The influence of courts on art — Childhood of Elisabeth Vigee — At the convent school — Her father's eccentric behaviour — His untimely death — EUsabeth's friends — Rosalie Bocquet — Lessons in the Louvre — The Paris art galleries — Good commissions for the child-painter — A grasping step-father — A terrible public disaster — Evil omen for the Dauphin and his Austrian bride ........... pp. i-S CHAPTER II THE GIRL-ARTIST propitious time for Elisabeth Vig6e — The vogue of " prettiness "—The attractions of Elisabeth's studio — Disappointed admirers — Insulting proposals — A skirmish with the law — First public display of her works — Some of her sitters — Social success — Notable acquaintances — " Pleasures " of the country — First meeting with Queen Marie Antoinette — Elisabeth's gifts to the French Academy — A visit from D'Alembert . . pp. g-i g CHAPTER III MARRIAGE M. Lebrun as lover — He marries Elisabeth Vig6e — Reason for a secret wedding — Scandalous talk — Invoking the poUce — ^Want of money — An art school that failed — Scheme for a judicial separation — The plan abandoned — Habits of M. Lebrun — Art dealing — A valuable customer — The vanity of riches — An influential friend . .... pp. 16-23 CHAPTER IV MARIE ANTOINETTE State of society amid which Vigde-Lebrun rose into fame — The frivolous crowd at Versailles — Less love and more gallantry — Outward decorum and light morality — Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette — The Queen's bad advisers — Ties of sympathy between Vig6e-Lebrun and her royal patroness . pp. 24-28 CONTENTS CHAPTER V THE queen's portraits A first sitting from the Queen — Marie Antdinette described by the artist — Were Vig6e-Lebrun's portraits good likenesses ? — What Maria Theresa said of her daughter's portrait — Grand toilettes and simple dresses — The Queen sings duets with the artist — The Prince de Bau&e- mont's picture of the Queen by Vig6e-Lebrun : how was it painted ? — The birth of Vig6e- Lebrun's child — Madame de Verdun the " friend in need " — ^The Queen's considerate conduct — Vig6e-Lebrun paints all the Royal Family except one — Scores of sitters waiting their turns pp. 29-35 CHAPTER VI ACADEMICIAN Devotion to work — The artist goes to Belgium with her husband — Combining business and pleasure — The charming Prince de Ligne — Mutual attraction — From Brussels to Paris for the opera — Express travelling in the eighteenth century — The Flemish and Dutch painters — Vigte-Lebrun's imitation of Rubens — Her " chapeau de paille " — Return to Paris — She is proposed for election to the Academy of Arts — Difficulties in the way — The Queen's influence forces the doors — Ingenious " reasons " for breaking the rules — Vig6e-Lebrun's portrait of the Queen en gauUe — Its withdrawal from exhibition — A joyful evening at the theatre — Convention versus fashion . . . . . . .pp. 36-44 CHAPTER VII SOCIAL LIFE Vigee-Lebrun in society — Her intimate friends — The Marquise de Grollier — Wit without malice — The over-polite Madame d'Angiviller — A passion for verdure indoors — Benjamin Franklin r his silence and his popularity — A Parisian who knew everjrthing — Strange way of dis- covering a lost wife — The Abbe Delille— Inconvenience of being " fond of everybody " — The " Snakes " and " Crabtrees " of Paris — Vigee-Lebrun's " evenings " — M. Doyen's opinion of geniuses — Music at home — Carat's lovely voice — The fascinations of the Comte de Vaudreuil — Afternoon rest and no dinner-parties . . , . . pp. 45-53 CHAPTER VIII BOOKS AND THEATRES Vigee-Lebrun's reading — No novels before marriage — " Clarissa Harlowe " — First experience of fiction — Going to theatres — Leading actors and actresses — Sophie Arnould — Mademoiselle Clairon in retirement — Mademoiselle Dumesnil — Madame Dugazon as " Nina " — M0I6 and Monvel — ^The ballet — " Two big dogs and a bone " — Vestris and his son . pp. 54-5* CONTENTS CHAPTER IX COUNTRY-HOUSES Country visits— At Colombes with the financier Verdun— At GeneviUiers with the courtier Vaudreuil — Private theatricals — Boredom at Raincy with the Due d'Orl^ans and his mor- ganatic wife — Big house-parties of the Marquis de Montesquieu at Maupertuis — ^The Chateau of Mortefontaine as Liberty Hall — A difiicult house to sleep in — A ridiculous beau — The " Belle-et-Bonne " of Voltaire — Montmartre — Moulin- Joli .... pp. 59-65 CHAPTER X CALONNE famous balloon-ascent — The mSnage Lebrun — Lovely women and pretty costumes — Vig6e Lebrun's portrait of Calonne — Sophie Arnould's malicious mot — Gossip about Calonne and Vigee-Lebrun — The artist described as the Aspasia of Calonne's reign — Lebrun's belated defence of his wife's reputation — Banknotes in a snuff-box — Character of Calonne — Per- sistence of the scandal — The bogus " Comte de " Rivarol a possible enemy of the artist — A coat-turning poet .......... pp. 66-73 CHAPTER XI REPLIES TO DEFAMERS Madame Vigee-Lebrun's reply to her calumniators — Her simple tastes — Why her carriage was in Calonne's courtyard at night — The Minister's periwig as evidence of her innocence — A point in her favour — Her husband's consolatory promise — The benefit of the doubt pp. 74-78 CHAPTER XII MADAME DU BARRY A visit to Madame du Barry — Louveciennes then and now — The waterworks of Marly — ^The Pavilion above the Seine — Spoils of a king's mistress — The Due de Brissac — Madame du Barry as Lady Bountiful — The envoys of Tippoo-Sahib — Dinner on the floor — Trouble about a portrait — Indian presents for Madame du Barry .... pp. 79-83 CHAPTER XIII THE COMING REVOLUTION ' Travels of young Anacharsis " — Vig6e-Lebrun's " supper after the manner of the Greeks " — Her guests on that occasion — " Pindar " as Anacreon, and Julie Lebrun as a Greek slave — Cypriote wine — The reckoning — Calonne again — Moulin- Joli in the wrong hands — Vig6e- Lebrun's portrait of Hubert Robert — His physical strength and agility — The wife of Philippe Egalit6 — Signs of the coming revolution — ^Misplaced charity — A prophecy of Vigee-Lebrun pp. 84-89 xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER XXII IN ENGLAND, 1802-5 Why Madame Lebrun came to England — Crossing the Channel — The crowd on Dover jetty — ■ The drive to London — A bad night in a Leicester Square hotel, and the cause of it — The " roc " of Portman Square — The house-troubles of Vigee-Lebrun — The streets of London in 1802 — First experience of London society — Bored by the lack of conversation — Her own soir6es in Maddox Street — The singing of Madame Billington and Madame Grassini — The Prince of Wales's compliment — Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire described — The portrait of the Prince of Wales — Alleged jealousy of English artists — Mrs. Fitzherbert's picture-frame on wheels — The London Sunday — Lady Hamilton's visit — Her famous " attitudes " dis- played in Madame Lebrun's drawing-room — The Chinnery family — Knole and the Duchess of Dorset — Twickenham — The Comte de Vaudreuil's young wife— The Orleans princes pp. 141-152 CHAPTER XXIII ENGLISH FRIENDS Lady Craven, Margravine of Anspach — Evil effects of " cookery and coaches " on the nobility — A trip to the Isle of Wight — Visits to Stowe and Donnington — No talking after dinner at Lord Moira's house — Windsor Park — Hampton Court — Bath and its amusements — Vig6e-Lebrun might have painted Jane Austen — A visit to the Herschells — Recalled to Paris — Difficulties of getting there — Madame Grassini's forethought . . pp. 153-161 CHAPTER XXIV PARIS AGAIN, 1805 The new regime — Mother and daughter — Julie and her husband — Madame Lebrun resumes her musical evenings — Catalani — Lafont — Tableaux-vivants — " Only handsome men and pretty women " take part — Innocent diversions — ^Mademoiselle Duchesnois and Mademoiselle Georges — The portrait of Caroline Mmrat — Napoleon cuts down the price — A troublesome sitter — The punctuality of "real princesses" ...... pp. 162-166 CHAPTER XXV VISIT TO SWITZERLAND, 1808 tour in Switzerland — Rousseau's Island — Madame Lebrun's trouble with foreign names — . Descriptions of Swiss scenery — " A thousand piquant anecdotes," and none recalled — Climbing the Wunschenstein — A dog which wept at the sunrise — A visit to Coppet — ^Madame de Stael at home — Amateur theatricals — Portrait of Madame de Stael as " Corinne " — The shepherds' festival ........... pp. 167-174 CONTENTS XV CHAPTER XXVI THE RESTORATION Madame Lebrun buys a house at Louveciennes — Death of her husband — His debts — The Prussians at Louveciennes — Alarming experience of Madame Lebrun — The two returns of the Bourbons — Louis XVIII is gracious to the painter of Marie Antoinette — Princesse Natalie Kourakin in Paris — Her friendship with Madame Lebrun — Death of Julie Nigris — Mother and daughter. pp. 175-178 CHAPTER XXVII AUTUMN AND WINTER A visit to Bordeaux — Chateau of M&feville — Sham rocks and other " embellishments " of the gardens — Tours — The monastery of Marmoutier — VandaUc iron-founders — The hotel at Bordeaux — Disadvantages and advantages of a top-room — The fascination of the harbour — Madame Lebrun at sixty-five — " Settles down " in country and town for the rest of her life — The rivalry of her devoted nieces — A happy and uneventful old age — She prepares her souvenirs — Death of Madame Lebrun — Her wUl — Where her ashes lie — The sentinel above her grave ........... pp. 179-184 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS . . pp. 185-225 INDEX ........... pp. 227-232 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The names in brackets (except in the case of public galleries) are those of the owners of copyright pictures or photographs who have permitted their reproduction in this book. Louise, Duchesse d'Orleans (Versailles) Frontispiece PACINO PAGE VioiE-LEBRUN AS A GiRL (M. Charles Sedelmeyer) 5 Madame d'Augeard (M. WMenstein) lo Mademoiselle Therese Budan de Russe (William McKay, Esq.) ... 14 Mademoiselle de Salverte (E. M. Hodgkins, Esq.) 18 CoMTESSE DE Beon (William McKay, Esq.) ........ 14 "Femme et l' Amour" (M. Wildenstein) 26 Marie Antoinette, Queen of France (Versailles) 30 Marie Antoinette (M. Wildenstein) ......... 32 Facsimile of a Letter from Madame Lebrun to the Prince de Bauffremont . 34 Marquise de Verdun (M. Wildenstein) 36 Madame Vigee-Lebrun (National GaUery, London) 39 " La Paix ramenant L'Abondance " (Louvre) 43 Marie Antoinette " en gaulle " (Grand-ducal Gallery, Darmstadt) ... 46 Louise, Comtesse de Provence (M. Wildenstein) 48 COMTE de VAUDREUIL 52 Madame Dugazon as " Nina " (Executors of the late Comtesse E. de Pourtales) , 57 Julie Lebrun holding a Mirror (M. Feral) 60 Melanie, Duchesse de Piennes (Adolph Hirsch, Esq.) 64 Madame Vigee-Lebrun and her Daughter (Dr. Williamson, for the Executors of the late J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.) 68 From a miniature by Janvier. Marie, Duchesse de Gramont-Caderousse (Dr. Williamson, for the Executors of the late J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.) 68 From a miniature by Villers after the portrait by Vigee-Lebrun. b ^^" XVlll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Charles Alexandre de Calonne After the portrait of Vigee-Lebrun. From the European Magazine, 1789. Madame Vigee-Lebrun and Julie (Louvre) ..... YoLANDE, DucHESSE DE PoLiGNAC (Baron Edmond de Rothschild) . Exhibition of the Paris Salon (1787) at the Louvre .... Madame Vigee-Lebrun and Julie in " Greek " Dress (Louvre) Madame Grant, afterward Princesse de Talleyrand (M. Wildenstein) Madame Vigee-Lebrun (Wallace Gallery) From the miniature by Dumont. Vicomtesse de Suffren (E. M. Hodgkins, Esq.) FACme FJUSE Hubert Robert (Louvre) ......... From a photograph by Giraudon, Paris. Emma, Lady Hamilton, as a Bacchante (Messrs. Thomas Agnew & Sons) Frederick, 4th Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry (The Marquis of Bristol) Emma, Lady Hamilton, as a Sibyl ...... Catherine, Comtesse Litta (M. Wildenstein) .... William, 3RD Earl of Radnor (The Earl of Radnor) . Madame Vigee-Lebrun (Otto Gutekunst, Esq.) .... Comtesse de Fries, As " Sappho " (Messrs. Duveen Brothers) Mrs. Chinnery (M. Charles Sedehneyer) ..... George, Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV. (The Dowager Countess of Portarlington) ......... Arabella, Duchess of Dorset (Lord Sackville) .... Madame Vigee-Lebrun at Work (M. Charles Sedelmeyer) . Madame Grassini (Musee de Rouen) ...... Isabella Marini, afterwards Contessa d'Albrizzi (E. M. Hodgkins, Esq.) Madame Vestris (M. Charles Sedehneyer) Julie (Lebrun), Madame Nigris (E. M. Hodgkins, Esq.) Madame Vigee Lebrun (Uffizi Gallery, Florence) .... Portrait of a Lady (M. Wildenstein) . . , . . 70 74 78 82 86 92 96 102 106 no 114 122 126 130 138 142 144 148 152 156 162 166 172 178 182 186 VIGEE-LEBRUN 1755— 1842 CHAPTER I EARLY YEARS The influence of courts on art — Childhood of Elisabeth Vigee — At the convent school — Her father's eccentric behaviour — His untimely death — Elisabeth's friends — Rosalie Bocquet — Lessons in the Louvre — The Paris art galleries — Good commissions for the child-painter — A grasping step-father — A terrible public disaster — Evil omen for the Dauphin and his Austrian bride IN the history of royal patronage no chapter is more generally creditable than that concerned with the arts. The atmosphere of courts may have been ruinous to countless gifted beings, but not, as a rule, to artists. Indeed, but for the means formerly provided by national wealth in passing through the bottomless pockets of autocrats, we should be without a large proportion of the finest of existing treasures. Court painters have been as diverse in merit as poets-laureate : Rubens, Velasquez, Vandyck, Kneller, Lely, Vigee-Lebrun, for examples, offered styles various enough to please every taste until the advent of those originals whose " futurisms," old almost before they are new in the ener- vating atmosphere wherein such things are made, seem to have as much effect on art as have " freak " dinners on the social habits of sober people. Madame Vigee-Lebrun was not, of course, " in the same studio " with Rubens and Vandyck and Velasquez, but she is distinguished among famous court painters, not merely as the one woman in the list, but as the possessor of gifts which, apart from the historical associations that lend a peculiar attraction to many of her works, would ensure for her best pictures prominent places in any general collection of fine art. In a house near the corner where the Rue Coq-Heron joins the Rue I 2 VIGEE-LEBRUN Coquillidre, close to the Place des Victoires in Paris, Jeanne, the beautiful wife of the artist Louis Vigee, gave to him, on April i6, 1755, the daughter who was to ensure the preservation of his name. The child was called Marie Elisabeth Louise. When she reached years of discretion, she dropped the first name, and reversed the order of the other two. Many other notable people, for the sake either of euphony or convenience, have chosen to make such alterations. Of her earliest infancy we know as much as of most earliest infancies, and that is all that we need. She was no doubt submitted to the risk of permanent paralysis from the tight swaddUng which, though soon to become less common, persisted in France until our own time. According to the general practice of well-to-do families, abroad as in England, at that period, she was sent, soon after birth, to live with a wet-nurse in the country. After a few months with this foster-mother she was transferred to another " good woman " who lived at Epernon. The woman's husband worked on the land, and the home was a poor one, but the baby was so well treated that, eighty years later, Madame Lebrun attributed the generally good if never robust health she had so long possessed to the five years spent at that cottage amidst the wooded hills of one of the pleasantest regions of France. Among her oldest distinct memories was that of her last day at Epernon, when she was jolted in a panier on her nurse's donkey to the high road, where her father's cabriolet was waiting to convey her to Paris. After a few days at home, this child of five was taken to the Convent of La Trinite, in the suburb beyond the Bastille. Her life was less agreeable with the nuns than with the peasants. The discipline was far more strict, and the food much less to her taste. But her troubles were mitigated by the frequency with which her parents, seeing that she was not very happy or very well, fetched her home for two or three days at a time. It was at this period that her talent for drawing began to show itself. She scrawled charcoal sketches on the walls of the dormitory and the passages of the convent, and covered her writing-books with heads of nuns and of schoolgirls. When convicted of these crimes she was properly punished, but unhappily another child, in whose books she had found extra space for drawing, was punished also, in the erroneous belief of the Mother- superior that there were two infant artists at work. To the end of her days the guilty culprit reproached herself when she remembered the affair. FIRST STEPS IN ART 3 At the age of eleven, Elisabeth made her first communion. That event ended her school life, and she thenceforth stayed at home, to play with her tiny brother Etienne, and to develop her now recognised in- heritance of her father's artistic sense. Vigee gave his daughter the free run of his studio, where he worked, with moderate success, in pastels and in oils, painting such people as would pay him for their portraits, and pleasing himself by producing imaginative compositions more or less after the manner of Watteau. Apart from his domestic concerns his mind was chiefly taken up by two loves — for his art and for the lasses. So intensely was he preoccupied at times by the first that, his thoughts full of the picture he was painting, he was known to go out to a dinner-party with a nightcap on his head instead of a wig. As for the other obsession, it was absurdly displayed on successive New Year's Days, when he would hurry all over Paris in order that he might kiss the young girls he met in the streets, on the pretext of wishing them the Compliments of the Season ! Madame Vigee, who, amid the temptations of Paris, had retained the austere morality and piety of the simple peasants of Lorraine from whom she came, was grievously distressed by her husband's amatory antics, but she was compelled to be satisfied with the fact that, if he gave her little marital devotion, he regarded her always with a respect that hardly fell short of adoration. While M. Vig^e showered promiscuous fondness on other people's children on the opening day, he had abundant affection left for his own during the rest of the year. Between father and daughter, in any case, there was a strong attachment —the strongest mutual love, indeed, in which Elisabeth was ever to share. The mother was disposed to spoil the boy and to be hard on the girl, partly, as Madame Lebrun afterwards thought, because she was gawky, and even rather ugly in childhood, as is frequently the case with those who become good-looking in adolescence. Her life while her father lived was in every respect adapted to encourage her instinctive leaning towards his profession. During the day she worked in his studio, or in that of the struggling artist Davesne, who taught her to prepare her palette. In the evenings several painters, as well as some writers and men of various occupations, were accustomed to come to the Vigees' rooms for conversation. Among the more important of such visitors was M. Gabriel Doyen, the painter of a then much-esteemed picture of " The Death of Virginia " (which had gained him admission into 4 VIGEE-LEBRUN the Academy), and of other compositions quite foreign to Elisabeth's own art at any period, unless her ■' Apotheosis of Marie Antoinette," painted in the decadence of her powers, may be regarded as an example of that " pictorial " school. In these closing years of her father's life, and still more notably later on, Doyen was indeed the chief friend of the girl among the " grown-ups " of her acquaintance. He was a man of over forty, almost paternally interested in the development of the clever daughter of his old comrade in art. Doyen had high principles, as might be gathered from his own story of the origin of Fragonard's " Swing " picture. It appears that just about the time when he was most earnestly encouraging the budding talent of Elisabeth Vigee, he was asked by the Baron de Saint- Julien to paint such a scene as is represented in " The Swing " (L'Escarpolette). He was rather shocked by the proposal, but after a moment to collect his wits he replied, " Ah ! Monsieur, one would have to add to your idea for a picture by making the lady's shoes fly in the air and be caught by cupids." More seriously, not being at all willing to do work so far outside his usual field, he recommended the frivolous courtier to apply to Fragonard, with the result that the famous picture now in the Wallace Gallery came into being. When Elisabeth was thirteen years old, she suffered her first serious loss. Her father died of blood-poisoning, after an operation for the removal of a fishbone which he had swallowed. The operating surgeon was the ablest man in Paris. This was Jean Cosme, whose father and grandfather had been surgeons of repute before him, but who had decided to end the succession, having become, quite early in life, a member of a religious order which allowed him to practise surgery as well as spiritual healing. However capable the operator might be in those days before Pasteur or Lister, the chances of survival after a big operation were small, and the combination of surgeon and clergyman must often have been sadly convenient. Elisabeth was strongly encouraged by Doyen to find consolation, as a child of thirteen naturally might, in applying herself assiduously to her favourite occupation. She became still more engrossed in the study of what she called " Nature," by which she implied heads of people and what is absurdly known as " still life," and not at all the " nature " of woods and streams. 1 1 Wm^'- ■ ■ -''^'^^1 ^^B 1 ^^^^^^^^1 ^HLW^Iitrf , -^-tpx \^^ ■ "-riiMB ^^^^^^^Hk^-''^WiJ ■ 'i'j ' ■r %£i^MH^^I ^^^^1 ■Kr^'jnF ■"In ^^^^^^^H ^^^^^^H ^tlr'M\ Ha^ ^^^H ^^H ^^^^B ^PB! ^hHmU jflpf' ^^^Hjr^ ^^^^1 ^^^B -f^ 'Sujfli Hr'!4^ HB^ ^HHHU^I ^^^H ^■^ Bt ,-^' )Ul IgUlg^Hp^^ ' t 1 ^K,;^"^' l^l ^^^^^^^^^1 ^^B^ I ^^^^^^» '^ ^^^Hk^ . ''' 1 9 H 1^ ^ 1 £/'. ^ '^■^■BA .' ■■satjat^^M 1 HER FELLOW-STUDENT 5 Fortunately, she had a friend, only a year older than herself, Rosalie Bocquet by name, who shared her talent and her tastes. By the time Ehsa- beth was fourteen, the two girls went very often together to the Louvre to study under the historical painter, Gabriel Briard, who gave them his criticism on their copies of his own sketches and their drawings of antique busts. The Louvre in those days was not only a museum, but a home for certain artists who, usually as members of the Academy, had been granted rooms and studios. Briard, whose art was of that grandiose, half- classical, half-symbolical style which expands itself most freely on palace ceilings, drew better than he painted. Although these two children bene- fited by his help, they could not join his school, which was only for boys and young men, the idea of "mixed" classes being in those times regarded as impossible for decently brought-up pupils, even if the " subject" were a bust of Pericles. Rosalie and Elisabeth used to spend whole days in the Louvre, taking their dinners with them in little baskets. Sometimes they would indulge in the added luxury of slices of beef d la mode supplied by the concierge, which seemed so good that, in old age, Madame Lebrun (who had known the finest cookery of the Brillat-Savarin period) still declared she had never tasted anything more delicious. The elder of the two girl-students was pretty, and so indeed, by this time, was the younger. Elisabeth's cheeks had filled out, her complexion was clearer, her figure had become well proportioned, and her movements had lost the gracelessness of early youth. The good looks of either of the girls, in Paris at any period, would have been sufficient reason for a chaperon in the evenings, and at that time the ' ' Ville Lumiere ' ' was even worse lighted than it is at present . With the exception of the great thoroughfares, few streets in that city can now be said to be illuminated, but such rare lamps as project from the walls are usually gas or electric, and far more powerful than the oil-lamps of the eighteenth century. Elisabeth went frequently to the Bocquets' in the evenings, to draw and paint with Rosalie, and Madame Vigee went with her, then, and up to the time of Elisabeth's marriage, taking great care of the daughter of whose attractions, physical and other, she had at length become even more proud than of her own beauty. Madame Vigee frequently took her daughter to see the great perma- nent collections of pictures, both public and private. In those days the Luxembourg contained the Henri Quatre series of paintings designed by 6 VIGEE-LEBRUN Rubens for Marie de Medicis, which nowadays fills a spacious gallery in the Louvre. The exhibition which gave the girl most pleasure was that at the Palais-Royal, originally brought together by the Regent Orleans. It was rich in fine examples of Italian and Flemish art, many of which, by the way, are now in English collections, having been bought for this country when the art treasures of the Bourbons were sold off at the Revo- lution. At the time when Elisabeth Vigee was, as she said, " feeding like a bee " on these glories of old art, the restorers had recently been doing irreparable damage to some of them. Horace Walpole declared that they had been " varnished so thick that you may see your face in them, and some of them transported from board to cloth bit by bit, and the seams filled up with colour." Elisabeth not only fed with her eyes on such masterpieces of Rubens, Vandyck, and Rembrandt, and the great Italians as were open to her inspection ; she copied assiduously. It is worth noting that the fanciful heads of her elderly friend Greuze (who, by this time, had devoted his talents to the reigning taste for prettiness, abandoning the elaborate moralities which had once delighted Diderot) helped her even more than the splendid paintings of Vandyck to understand those delicate half-tones which mean so much in her own work. From a close study of the dainty cream-and-rose complexions of the Greuze girls she chiefly gained her early knowledge of the production and effect of varying degrees of light on the salient parts of a face. Aided by her studies in the great galleries, her lessons from Briard, and her evenings with Rosalie Bocquet, added to the counsels of Doyen and Joseph Vernet — another of the early admirers of her powers — Elisabeth advanced rapidly in her art. Doyen was old-fashioned, while Vernet, the elder of the two, was sufficiently modern to be afraid of Academic teaching. "Whatever you do, my child," he said to her, "don't follow any particular system. Study only the works of the great Italian and Flemish masters ; but above all, study Nature as much as possible. She is the first of all masters, and if you study her carefully you will not fall into any kind of mannerism." Except for the substitution of indoor " nature " for the open-air kind that Vernet himself delighted in, and for the addition of Greuze to the masters whom she studied — very con- siderable exceptions — Elisabeth, as we have seen, followed Vernet' s advice. It was well that she had so soon developed her powers sufficiently to earn HER STEP-FATHER 7 money by their exercise, for her father had left his family very poorly off. Already she was paid quite good prices for portraits, and could help her mother by providing for the needs of her brother Etienne. She could not, however, keep up the home in the Rue de Clery, whither they had some time ago removed, and, in these circumstances, Madame Vigee, after a brief widowhood, decided to accept an offer of marriage from a prosperous jeweller, considerably younger than herself. Some one wrote the name of this man very badly, and so it has happened that he is variously called Le Sevre, Le Levre, and Le Fevre, in printed books. His step-daughter herself either forgot, in her old age, what his name really was, or found it unmentionable, calling him by such titles as " my villainous stepfather," or simply " that man." Le Fevre seems to have been the real name. Elisabeth went to live with the newly- wedded pair in the Rue Saint Honore, close to the Palais-Royal. From the first she detested her step- father, who was miserly and generally disagreeable, and who specially disgusted her by wearing her father's old clothes, not even going to the expense of having them altered to suit his very different figure. He took all the girl's earnings, to the indignation of her friends. Vernet, for instance, was intensely angry, and advised her to pay a stipulated sum for her board and lodging, and to keep the rest of her money for herself. She feared, however, that " with such a Harpagon " as Le Fevre, her mother would have paid in unhappiness foi: any such change, and so nothing was done to carry out Vernet' s wish. Madame Le F6vre was not allowed much freedom, her suspicious husband being jealous of her good looks. He usually objected to the mother and daughter going out together, unless he was with them, so that they often missed their airings to the Tuileries, the Luxembourg, or the Palais-Royal. But the young and charming step-daughter was not imprisoned under the roof-tree of the money-grubbing step-father. She received many invitations to dinner — then served at what is " tea-time " nowadays — and met many people who were useful in describing her attractions and talents elsewhere. The first time she dined " in town," as she says, was with Le Moine, the sculptor, and it was in his house, where two daughters " did the honours," that she met Le Kain, the tragedian, who frightened her by his gloomy air and his notorious ugliness. " He did not talk, but he made an enormous dinner." Gretry, the composer whose portrait she was afterwards to paint, and LatoUr, the pastellist, often dined at Le Moine' s, and there was plenty of fun and of music after dinner, and some- 8 VIGEE-LEBRUN times a little misery for the more nervous of the young girls present, who were made to sing in their turns. One of the memories of this period which Elisabeth was never likely to forget was of the great firework display in the Place Louis XV (now the Place de la Concorde) on May 31, 1770, to celebrate the marriage of The Dauphin (afterwards Louis XVI) with Marie Antoinette. She went with her mother and step-father, and, thanks to the chance which made them take the route by the Tuileries on their way home instead of returning by the Rue Royale, they were not numbered among the victims of the disaster which then occurred. The tragic event is described as follows by M. Paul Lacroix in a chapter on the " Fetes and Pleasures of Paris in the Eighteenth Century " : " After the firework display, which had been a complete success, the crowd, in going away by the Rue Royale, then in course of construction, came across another crowd which was approaching from the other end of the street by the Madeleine, on its way to see the illuminations in the Champs-Elysees. The place where these crowds met was packed with carriages. A terrific crush resulted, with fearful shrieks ; the hoardings of the unfinished houses were broken down by the pressure, and many unhappy people, precipitated into the excavations made for the new buildings, were crushed against the stones, suffocated, rolled over, and trodden underfoot. On the morrow a hundred and thirty- three bodies were found at that spot, while the total number of victims reached to more than three hundred, and that of the wounded to over a thousand." The young painter had no thought, as she went across the Place Louis XV, on that evening of disaster, that before she was forty years old not only the Prince and Princess in whose honour the display of fire- works had been given, but many of her own friends, and scores of her acquaintances would have been killed on the ground over which she was treading. Yet at the time of that accident of 1770 the people naturally regarded so miserable an ending to the marriage festivities as of evil augury for the future of the newly-wedded Louis and Marie Antoinette. For once popular superstition was justified in the long event. CHAPTER II THE GIRL-ARTIST A propitious time for Elisabeth Vigee — The vogue of " prettiness " — The attractions of Elisabeth's studio — Disappointed admirers — Insulting proposals — A skirmish with the law — First public display of her works — Some of her sitters — Social success — Notable acquaintances — " Pleasures " of the country — First meeting with Queen Marie Antoinette — Elisabeth's gifts to the French Academy — A visit from D'Alembert MADEMOISELLE VIGEE came before the world in a propitious hour. Boucher (who, after gratifying the courtiers of Louis XV by his voluptuous pictures, had become so fixed in his mannerisms that his best customers were getting tired of his pink nymphs) died in 1770, just when Elisabeth Vigee was beginning to be remarked as a pre- cocious and attractive painter, and when portraiture was becoming more fashionable than the artificialities of Greuze. There was still no demand for the highest art ; and it is certain that few of the ladies of Paris would have cared to be represented on canvas by the veracious brush of a Velasquez or a Rembrandt. Prettiness, as a caustic observer of that time remarked, was the idol of Paris ; in faces, in gardens, in furniture, in dress, in paintings, in prints, verses, and tales it was the " pretty " rather than the noble which delighted. Elisabeth Vigee fitted with delicate precision into that idolatry, and improved its tone. She preferred pretty women above all other sitters ; but, lovely or plain, very few could look unpleasant on her canvas. That was unquestionably one of the main causes of her immense vogue. The women of her time knew that they could safely entrust their personal appearance to the young artist, who would almost certainly make them at least a shade better-looking than nature or their maids had done, and would dress them in a manner that showed off their charms to much better advantage than the hoops and false hair which disfigured them in their daily life. Not only did she so present the faces and figures of other women, but, quite impartially, she meted out the same indulgent justice to herself. 10 VIGEE-LEBRUN As befitted a priestess in the temple of the reigning divinity, she was a pretty woman, A careful comparison among her various portraits of herself will convince any one, not actually in love with her, that she was not quite (if very nearly) as pretty as in the charming " straw hat " picture in Trafalgar Square, or the " Grecian " picture at the Louvre. Like Rembrandt, she was much given to painting her own portrait, and the subject was certainly attractive. There is more of the Narcissus feeling about her self-representations than about those of the Dutch Master, who used his own reflection as a model as much from want of ready money, or temporary dearth of paying sitters, as for any other reason. We have no early portraits of her by other artists in which we can place much confidence. If we want to see how her appearance impressed other painters, we may study the portrait by David in the Museum at Rouen, and the miniature by Frangois Dumont in the Wallace Collection. The first of these was almost certainly painted in the Empire period, though possibly from sketches made before the Revolution. It is in the highest degree improbable that she would, after her return to France^ have given sittings to so bitter a Republican as David, and in the slightly sardonic mouth which she has in his picture there may be another illus- tration of that enmity towards his old friend which she believed him to have shown very cruelly on several occasions. At any rate David was not at all likely to flatter her. The fact that, in the Rouen portrait, in spite of some bad drawing about the neck and head, she is shown in middle age as the possessor of notable personal attractions, not only of face, but of hair, figure, arms, and hands, justifies a considerable measure of con- fidence in her representations of herself A miniature by Ritt, painted about 1796, is even more favourable. For written testimony to the veracity of one, at least, of her best- known self-portraits we may turn to the Princess Natalie Kourakin, who (when she visited Florence in 1818, just after seeing a great deal of her old friend Madame Lebrun in Paris) wrote of the Uffizi picture : " How pretty she must have been, and indeed, how much she still resembles that portrait." Elisabeth Vig^e's successful portraits of friends and acquaintances, bourgeois or artistic, had come, in a short time, to the notice of " people of quality," and when she had painted the young Marquis de Choiseul, the Comte and Comtesse de la Blache, Madame d'Aguesseau (" with her dog ")i and other persons of social influence, who were pleased with her renderings DISCOURAGED ADMIRERS n of their appearance, a career was open to her, and she became " fashion- able." If the women were drawn to her studio because they longed to have their charms rendered with the fullest appreciation on canvas, the men often sat in order to make love to the artist. " Several amateurs of my face," she tells us, " desired me to paint their own faces, in the hope of making a favourable impression on me, but I was so engrossed by my art that they could not manage to distract me. . . . Whenever I saw that they were trying to look tenderly at me, I painted them as if they were lost in thought, which makes it impossible for the sitter to look at the artist. Then, at the least movement of their gaze in my direction, I said ' I am doing your eyes ' ; that vexed them a little, and my mother, who was always in my studio on such occasions, and whom I had taken into my confidence, laughed to herself." Among these " amateurs " were, it would seem, the Comte du Barry (brother-in-law of the celebrated lady with whom Mademoiselle Vigee was to become well acquainted in later years) and the Comte de Brie. The attentions of this last gallant were worse than a nuisance ; he insulted the artist by trying to buy her affection for cash. At the time of her marriage, as we shall see later, he revenged himself for her refusal of his "protection" by inventing and spreading scandalous stories against her virtue. It must not be supposed that Elisabeth Vig6e was insensible to admiration. She well knew that she was attractive, and she took every reasonable care to look as nice as possible on all occasions. Her taste in dress was simple, and she was one of the first women of any " fashion " to see the folly of elaborately artificial hair-dressing, and of disguising the natural figure by hoops and tight-lacing. How much she valued good opinions on her personal appearance may be estimated from her own little story of an incident at the Coliseum, a sort of gaudy " Ranelagh " of plaster and gilt in the Champs Elys6es. When darkness set in, the com- pany at this resort used to leave the surrounding garden for the Rotunda, where an excellent concert was provided. On the conclusion of the enter- tainment, the women, as they went out through the portico, had to listen to the audible criticism of the " elegants." One evening, as Mademoiselle Vigee was coming down the steps with her mother, the Due de Chartres (the Philippe Egalit6 of the Revolution), who was lounging there with his equally disreputable friend the Marquis de Genlis (both uttering offensive sarcasms on the women who passed before them), said out loud to his 12 VIGEE-LEBRUN companion, as Elisabeth Vigee appeared : " Ah ! there is nothing to say about this one." In recalUng the incident sixty years afterwards, " This one " said : " The remark, which many people besides myself heard, gave me so keen a satisfaction that I remember it still with a certain pleasure." It was about this time that Elisabeth had her first conflict with the law. The guild or corporation system was so strongly established, among artists as well as artisans and tradesmen, that it was illegal to paint portraits for money unless one was either a member or apprenticed to a member of some recognised Academy of Art. Elisabeth had never taken this regulation seriously into account, and was unpleasantly aston- ished one day by the appearance of a bailiff charged to seize the contents of her studio. The way out of this difficulty which naturally presented itself to her was to apply for admission to the Academy of Saint Luke, in which her father had been a teacher, and of which several of her friends were members. After showing some of her pictures at the rooms in the Rue Saint Merri, where this Academy had its exhibitions, she was admitted, as a " Master-painter," on October 25, 1774. It is a curious fact that of the pictures attributed to her in the catalogue of the Academy of Saint Luke not one appears in her own list of her works. Eight were specified particularly, including portraits of M. Dumesnil, rector of the Academy (this served as her diploma picture), M. Fournier, counsellor of the same Academy, and several other persons, men or women, and also imaginative representations of women repre- senting " Painting," " Poetry," and " Music." Most of these works were done in oil, but there was an oval picture in pastel, of an unnamed lady. It is worth noting that at this exhibition Elisabeth Vigee for the first time found herself in rivalry with the artist (six years her senior) who was destined to be her chief competitor — Madame Adelaide Labille-Guiard. It was the first public exhibition of works by either of these gifted young people. The work of Elisabeth's friend and fellow-student, Rosalie Bocquet, was also represented on this occasion. Mademoiselle Vig^e's pictures, thus shown to the public, had a con- siderable success with the amateurs of budding talent, and commissions came in more rapidly, so that the invocation of the Law of Corporations against her had really hastened her arrival as a successful portrait-painter. In her twenty-first year, according to her own list, she painted no less than thirty-three original portraits. Some of these were pastels, and some. NOTABLE ACQUAINTANCES 13 perhaps, mere sketches, but in any case it is clear that she already worked very hard, and that she had plenty of willing sitters. Among them were Madame Denis (Voltaire's niece), the Prince de Rohan-Rochefort, Mademoiselle JuUe Carreau (afterwards the wife of Talma the tragedian) , and Count Schouvaloff, formerly Grand Chamberlain at the Russian Court. Of this last sitter the artist tells us that he " united good-hearted politeness with perfect manners, and, being more- over a capital fellow, he was cordially welcomed in the best society." The Count was a friend of Voltaire, and gave him much assistance towards his " History of Peter the Great." At the house of the Prince and Princess de Rohan-Rochefort, where she was sometimes invited to dine or to sup, Mademoiselle Vig6e became acquainted with many notable persons — none, perhaps, more worthy of esteem than the Due de Choiseul. After twenty years of hard work in the reorganisation of the army and the navy, and the watchful care of his country's interests, this patriotic public servant had been turned out of power partly because of the influence of the Jesuits, whose exptilsion he had helped to secure, and partly because he refused to pay court to Madame du Barry, the successor of the Pompadour in the very mundane affections of Louis XV. The most entertaining of the company was Armand, Due de Lauzun. In her whole life the girl was not destined to meet any one who seemed to her more lively and witty. At that time he was under thirty, and was a fine flower of a period when scamps flourished in a rich and well-rotted soil. " He charmed us all," she says, at those suppers where the contest was as to who should be the most entertaining talker. " I only listened, and although too young to appreciate entirely the charm of that conversation, it gave me a distaste for many others." If the Due de Lauzun was about the brightest, and the Due de Choiseul the most creditable member of the circle in which Elisabeth found herself when she was patronised by the Princess de Rohan-Rochefort, no one to be seen and heard at those dinners was more disreputable than " Prince Louis" de Rohan. This man, the epitome of all that was bad in the old regime, was in 1774 (at forty years old) removed from his post as ambassador at Vienna largely on account of his disgraceful way of life. Ten years later he was to achieve immortality by his credulous folly and wickedness in that business of a necklace which had so disastrous an influence on the position of Marie Antoinette. 14 VIGEE-LEBRUN The sculptor Suzanne and his wife, very kindly people, were the means of giving Elisabeth Vigee her first taste of the real pleasures of the country since she had left Epemon as an infant, and also, indirectly, of bringing her for the first time under the direct notice of the Queen, whose patronage was to be the most important influence on her life. Most of her week-ends were spent at Chaillot, where M. Le Fevre had taken what his step-daughter calls "a small hovel." He called it "the country" ; "but imagine," she asks, " a tiny garden without a tree, and with no other shade than a small arbour round which he had planted haricot beans and nasturtiums which never grew up. And even then we only had a quarter of this charming garden ; it was divided into four parts by little fences, and the other three were let to shop-assistants who came every Sunday to amuse themselves by shooting at the birds. The perpetual noise of their guns drove me nearly wild, and not only that, but I was in constant dread lest I should be killed by these clumsy youths, who couldn't aim straight." From some of the worst hours of these week-ends at the " hovel" Elisabeth was to be relieved by the Suzannes, who, after dining there one Sunday, were moved by pity for her, and took her out for long excursions when the peculiar habits of the sculptor allowed. Two days out of three, he would shut himself up in his room and refuse to see any one, even his wife, or to take any meals. Mademoiselle Vigee naturally regarded this as a " singular malady." It is likely that it was some kind of neurasthenia. On the other hand, the evidence is consistent with the idea that he was an early adherent to the starvation cure for indigestion, and that he was bored by the " chatter and blast," as Emerson calls it, of ordinary conversation. Anyhow, the two days of seclusion were followed by a day when he was full of life and fun. The difficulty was to make his good days coincide with Sunday excursions to such pleasant places as Sceaux, to the south of Paris, and Marly to the west. It was on one of her visits to Marly that Elisabeth, strolling in the park within sight of her mother, came upon the Queen and her attendant ladies " all dressed in white, and so young, so pretty, that they seemed like a vision " to the girl, who was moving out of the way when Marie Antoinette called her back, and told her to walk wherever she liked. In 1775 Mademoiselle Vigee gained the goodwill of the French Academy by sending to that august body portraits of Cardinal de Fleury and of La Bruy^re, done from old prints, having ascertained that these former members were not represented in the series of portraits belonging A GIFT TO THE ACADEMY 15 to the Academy. This gift was especially pleasing to the Perpetual Secretary, d'Alembert, who had written the lives of all the Academicians who had died between 1700 and 1772. She received from this highly distinguished savant a letter which would have given pleasure to anybody, and which must have been a source of intense delight to a girl of twenty. Not only, he wrote, had the portraits filled gaps which the Academicians had long deplored, but they would always remind them of their debt to her. " Moreover, Mademoiselle, they will, in their eyes, be a lasting monu- ment of your exceptional talents, which were known by common report, and which were enhanced in your case by intelligence, grace, and the most charming modesty." On behalf of the Academy he begged her to accept a permanent invitation to all its public meetings, and on his own behalf he added that he was glad of the opportunity of assuring her of the high esteem in which he had long held her on account of her talents and her personality, an esteem in which he was supported by everybody of good taste and judgment. D'Alembert soon followed up his official letter with a personal call. He was then fifty-eight years old, rather frigid, but extremely polite. He remained a long while in Mademoiselle Vigee's studio, saying many flattering things. When he had gone, a lady of high rank, who happened to be present, asked Mademoiselle if she had painted the portraits of La Bruyere and Cardinal Fleury, of which M. D'Alembert had been speaking, from life ? As one of the subjects of these pictures had been dead for eighty years, and the other for thirty, we may almost pardon Elisabeth Vigee the laugh with which she replied, " I am a Uttle too young for that." CHAPTER III MARRIAGE M. Lebrun as lover — He marries Elisabeth Vigee — Reason for a secret wedding — Scandalous talk — Invoking the police — Want of money — An art school that failed — Scheme for a judicial separation — The plan abandoned — Habits of M. Lebrun — Art dealing — A valuable customer — The vanity of riches — An influential friend HOWEVER " sage," as her countrymen say, Mademoiselle Vigee may have been towards unprincipled men who were attracted by her charms without desiring to marry her, she failed lamentably in sagacity when she came to choose a husband. M. Le Fevre had taken his wife and step-daughter to live once more in the Rue de Clery, in a house opposite to that which they had inhabited at the time when he offered himself to Madame Vigee as a husband. In the same house — " fiats " were almost as common in Paris then as they are now, in proportion to the population — lived a dissolute young man about seven years older than Elisabeth, Jean Baptiste Pierre Lebrun by name, the son of a dealer in antiques, and himself a dealer in " old masters " and other pictures, as well as an artist of some slight pretensions. Being an astute and lightly-principled person, Lebrun, after thinking the matter over, arrived at the conclusion that " there was money " in a marriage with so promising and already so successful a portrait-painter as his neigh- bour's step-daughter. No doubt her charms of person and manner counted for something, even if he regarded her more favourably as a source of wealth than of sweetly conjugal happiness. Jean Baptiste was not ill-looking, he had a good figure, he was lively, attentive, and entertaining in an airy sort of way. Moreover, he was clever enough to write favourable little criticisms on Elisabeth's work, to get them printed, and, of course, brought to her notice. Then, when he thought the ground had been sufficiently prepared, he made her an offer of his hand, his affection and his ostensible riches. Those who are familiar with the scene in Arms and the Man in which the " hero " outbids his 16 PRIVATELY MARRIED xy Servian rival for the hand of the " heroine," will have no difficulty in under- standing how a dealer in expensive pictures and ornaments could make a false impression of solid wealth on so simple a soul as Madame Le Fevre, and so inexperienced a person in matters of money and property as her daughter of twenty-one. His rooms, which, handsomely furnished and richly decorated, satisfied the mother, were hung with pictures which were a delight to the eyes of the daughter whom he desired for his wife. Both women seem to have ignored the fact that his " flat " was really a shop, and his " riches " his stock-in-trade, much of which was not his own. Bluntschli, the Swiss hotel-keeper's son, in Mr. Shaw's play, over- powered the Petkoff family by his assertion that, while Saranoff could only claim twenty horses, three carriages, and so on in proportion, he himself possessed two hundred horses, seventy carriages, nine thousand six hundred sheets and blankets, and two thousand four hundred eider-down quilts. Lebrun, showing his scores of fine pictures, and his beautiful inlaid tables, was even more easily able, by ocular demonstration, to impress the only two women who needed to be influenced. Le Fdvre must have known something of the truth, if not all of it, but he seems to have been glad enough to get his step-daughter married and out of his way, in spite of the fact that she was more than able to pay for her keep in his too economical establishment. But for the fact that Lebrun was already more than half engaged to another girl, he probably would not have succeeded in drawing Elisabeth Vigee into his trap. It fell out in this way. He was at the time carrying out a big " deal " in pictures with a Dutchman, and, in order to facilitate business, the Frenchman had persuaded the Dutchman that he was anxious to marry his daughter. If it now appeared that he was on the point of marrying some one else's daughter, his immediate business would be seriously hindered, and very likely lost altogether. So the marriage with Mademoiselle Vig6e was privately celebrated, without the publication of banns, in the church of Saint Eustache, on January ii, 1776. She was not very keen to marry Lebrun then, but her mother was anxious to see her settled, and she herself was tired of her disagreeable step-father. " I felt so little incentive to give up my freedom," she writes, " that on the way to the church I still asked myself : shall I ? shall I not ? Alas, I said yes, and I exchanged one set of troubles for another." The necessity for concealment still remained until the Dutch affair was concluded. The result of such secrecy was an early trial for the bride. 2 i8 VIGEE-LEBRUN Her friends, seeing her constantly in Lebrun's company, expressed their alarm lest she intended to take the very step she had already taken. It was just the situation of which Victorien Sardou made the finest scene in his melodrama Dora (known in the popular English version as Diplomacy), save that in the play it is the new and innocent husband who is warned, instead of the wife. Among others, Aubert, the court jeweller, quite plainly told Elisabeth that she would be wiser to tie a stone to her neck and jump into the Seine than to marry Lebrun. This was bad for a newly wedded wife to hear, but as she still believed in her husband's respecta- bility and was herself the victim of scandalous lies, she was not yet to be enlightened as to the selfishness of his " affection." The scandals about herself at this trying time were the work of the scoun- drelly Comte de Brie, to whom reference has already been made. Lebrun denounced him to the police for spreading reports damaging to Madame Lebrun's good name, and particularly for writing anonymous letters in which it was asserted that she was a young woman of the lowest morals, several men being actually named as belonging to her crowd of lovers. The complaint to the Commissary of Police in the Saint-Eustache quarter seems to have stopped the lying of the Comte, and for a time the Lebruns were tolerably happy together. They were none too well off in real and personal property, but she was rich in prospects. They had bought on the instalment system the house in the Rue de Cl^ry wherein they lived ; Lebrun's pictures and furniture were valued at about £4,000 sterling. He owed about £1,200, and he was owed £240. His wife brought a dowry of about £600, half inherited from her father and half saved from her earnings, with some furniture, jewels, and the usual outfit of linen. As money went about three times as far in those days, in its purchasing power, as it does to-day, they ought to have made a good start had all their estimated means been tangible. From the day of his marriage till she left him for Italy, thirteen years later, Lebrun took possession of his wife's earnings and fixed the charges for her portraits. As she was not at that time a very good business-woman, this might have been a satisfactory arrangement, had he regarded her interests as much as his own. In order to exploit his wife's powers as fully as possible, Lebrun suggested that she should take pupils, like some other successful painters. She agreed to try, and her time was soon much occupied by several girls whose instruction in the elements of painting not only interfered sadly A SCHOOL THAT FAILED 19 with her usual work, but bored her terribly. Most of these pupUs were older than their teacher, and she found it very hard to maintain discipline. " I had set up this school in an old loft, across the ceiling of which there were some very thick beams. One morning I went up and found that my pupils had tied a cord to one of the beams, and were trying who could swing the highest. I pulled a serious face, I scowled, I talked finely about the waste of time — and then, I couldn't resist having a swing, and enjoyed it more than all the others." Who can wonder that the school was soon closed ! She had pupils after this time who worked in her studio, among them Mademoiselle Emilie Laville-Leroux (Madame Benoist) of whom Vig6e-Lebrun was the first teacher. The " rainy days " came, but the young couple were not flooded out, though at one time they were very near to a public exposure of their difficulties. Possibly at the instigation of Lebrun (who, as a debtor, may have thought it convenient to have no attachable share in his wife's earnings), a petition for a separation of goods between husband and wife was drawn up in her name for presentation to the proper legal authorities. This document set out that Madame Lebrun had been " cruelly deceived" as to her prospects of easy circumstances in marriage. Her husband, by bad investments, had lost so much money that he was pursued by creditors, and she (in the language of the petition) " finds herself at the moment liable to be reduced to the last degree of poverty ; and sees no other means of preventing the complete loss of her fortune than to take such action as the law provides — that is to say, by the separation of goods." Such petitions were as common in the Paris of that age as petitions of divorce are to-day — indeed, they were relatively more numerous. Divorce itself was not yet possible by any process of law open to the general public, but considerable pressure could be brought to bear on a wearisome or too-fickle husband by the wife's proposal to dissolve the partnership in worldly goods, if not actually to end his claim on her society, which, in such cases as the Lebruns', he did not usually value so highly as his power to spend her money. Nothing came of the petition, and, indeed, the picture-dealer soon found his business much improved. He was able, out of his wife's earn- ings, to build a large gallery in the courtyard of their house, where he could show and sell his " old masters " and whatever other examples of art he might have in stock. In his opinion his wife owed a good deal of her 20 VIGEE-LEBRUN success to the cultivation of her taste and talent by contemplation of these masterpieces, and no doubt it was of some help to be able to gaze at will on examples by Italian and Dutch masters. The building of this big room was one of the most sensible things Lebrun ever did with Elisabeth's money, much of which he spent, as he did his own, in gambling hells and on other women. In spite of all his faults of commission and of omission she has a good word to say for him. He was a smooth-tempered person, ready to do little services for her or any one else, and never interfering with her social pleasures, in which he himself had a very small part. She could stay in country-houses, go out to any number of evening parties, to the theatre or to the opera, without having to consider how he was to get on without her. That question never gave him any anxiety, and she does not seem to have .bothered herself about it either. He was never rough to her, or abusive ; he did not spy on her, nor behave in the ordinary way of evil- disposed husbands towards pretty wives who have found them less desirable after experience of married life. He merely behaved as if he were a bachelor, and, like her step-father before him, regarded her industry as his own. There is little doubt that, had he been a person of orderly character, Lebrun would have done very well indeed in his business of art-dealer, wherein, even in the days when the many American millionaires of our own time were represented in advance by a comparative handful of Fermiers -Generals and other financiers, profits much beyond those of ordinary shopkeeping were to be made by an acute and experienced man. A spendthrift and gambler is not the kind of person to succeed in such a business, where a large balance at the bank is often essential to a successful venture. Ready money, indeed, was much more needful in those days, when the banking system, and the whole machinery of credit, had been so much less elaborately developed. As it was, Lebrun was at times prosperous. He usually had plenty of business ; the trouble was, that he would spend his money — and hers — almost as fast as it came in. About the best thing we ever hear of M. Lebrun was that, in 1793, when monu- ments and works of art connected with royalty were being ruthlessly destroyed, he managed to save some fine bronzes. These included the bas-reliefs from the pedestal of the statue of Louis XIV. in the Place des Victoires, five of which found their way into the house of George III. at Kew, and were given back to France by King George V. when he visited M. NICOLAS BEAUJON 21 Paris in April 1914. Lebrun was a member of a committee chosen to select such objects for preservation, and he was the only member who kept the appointment, so that he selected what he liked for the State. An example of the customers desired of art-dealers in the eighteenth century, and particularly of the period with which we are at the moment concerned, may be found in M. Nicolas Beaujon, best remembered in the Paris of to-day as the munificent founder of the great hospital which bears his name. As banker of the court, and later on as Receiver-General of finance in Normandy, he made a very large fortune, much of which he expended for the public benefit, or in private charity. At the time when, about eight years after her marriage, Madame Lebrun painted his portrait, he was living in the Elysee Palace, formerly the Paris home of Madame de Pompadour, and nowadays of the President of the Republic. M. Beaujon was of precisely the kind of capitahst that makes the fortunes of dealers, as we may gather from Madame Lebrun' s account of her visit to him at the Elysee. " The first salon one entered was hung with rather showy pictures, none of remarkable merit — so easy is it for amateurs to be deceived, whatever value they may attach to their acquisi- tions. The next salon was a music-room : pianos great and small, all kinds of musical instruments, nothing was missing from the collection. Other rooms, such as the boudoirs and the studies, were most elegantly furnished. The bath-room was especially charming : a couch, and the bath itself, were covered with beautiful muslin (of which the design represented little branches of flowers) lined with pink, and the walls were hung with the same materials. The suites of rooms on the first floor were equally well furnished. In the middle of one room, the ceihng of which was supported by columns, stood ah enormous gilt basket, surrounded by flowers, and containing a bed wherein no one had ever lain." The contrast between this display of luxury and the life of the master of the house was so sharp that it is worth while to quote further from Madame Vigee-Lebrun's account. " It was impossible for me to move about in that delightful house without heaving a sigh of pity for its wealthy proprietor, and without remembering an anecdote I had heard a few days before. An Englishman, anxious to see everything that was con- sidered remarkable in Paris, successfully sought permission from M. de Beaujon to visit his fine house. When he was shown into the dining-room, he found the big table laid, as I had found it myself, and, turning to the footman who was showing him round, he said : ' Your master evidently 22 VIGEE-LEBRUN enjoys a good dinner ? ' ' Alas ! sir,' answered the man, ' my master never comes to the table ; his only dinner is a dish of vegetables.' The Englishman going then into the drawing-room said, as he looked at the pictures, ' Here at least he can feast his eyes.' ' Alas ! sir,' replied the servant, ' my master is nearly blind.' ' Ah ! ' said the Englishman, as he entered the music-room, 'he is compensated, I hope, by listening to good music ? ' ' Alas ! sir, my master has never heard music here ; he goes to bed too early for that, hoping to obtain a few moments of sleep.' The Englishman, looking out of the window at the fine garden, said then : ' At any rate your master is able to enjoy the pleasure of strolling there.' ' Alas ! sir, he is no longer able to walk.' At that moment the guests invited to dinner passed within sight, among them being some handsome women. ' In any case,' said the Englishman finally, ' here I see more than one beauty who can make him pass some very agreeable moments.' The servant only replied by saying, ' Alas ! ' twice over, without adding another word." In truth, M. Beaujon was so crippled by disease that he could not use either his hands or his legs. Madame Lebrun relates how he would sit in his wheel-chair at the side of the dining-room, while thirty or forty guests were dining, including some ladies, " all well-born and very good company, who were known as the berceuses (cradle-rockers) of M. de Beaujon. They gave orders to his household, and had the free use of his establishment, including his horses and carriages, giving in return for these advantages the few short hours of conversation that they afforded to the poor cripple, weary of living alone." Could any moralist desire a much more effective illustration of the vanity of riches ? M. Lebrun did, undoubtedly, receive a good deal of money from such customers as M. Beaujon, and others of smaller "worth" from the financial point of view. But money, as we have seen, was not comfortable in his coffers or his pockets. If he did not, like Charles Lamb's friend, " literally toss and hurl it violently from him," he at any rate " made use of it while it was fresh " ; and had not her sound (if delicate) constitution, strengthened by a wholesome infancy at Epernon, enabled his wife to work almost inces- santly from morning until evening, the contents of the house in the Rue de Clery might very soon have been distributed among brokers who would have given Lebrun no share in their " knock-out." There was no lack of custom for her painting. Courtiers, ambassadors, wealthy merchants, with their wives and daughters, were already glad to A USEFUL FRIEND 23 sit to so accomplished and charming a painter. One of her most useful friends was the Due de Coss6 (who was to become Due de Brissac on the death of his father in 1784), the acknowledged lover of Madame du Barry. He employed the young artist to copy a portrait of his mistress, as well as to paint an original portrait of himself, and he 4lso purchased several of her early studies. His position as a distinguished leader in social affairs enabled him to advertise her talents very fruitfully. CHAPTER IV MARIE ANTOINETTE State of society amid which Vigee-Lebrun rose into fame — The frivolous crowd at Versailles — Less love and more gallantry — Outward decorum and light morality — Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette — The Queen's bad advisers — Ties of sympathy between Vigee-Lebrun and her royal patroness NOW that we have seen Elisabeth Vigee unhappily married, but started on a career which, in spite of some fearful experiences and great obstacles, was to continue almost unchecked for thirty years, and to run out in as many years of leisured prosperity, we may cast a glance over the social conditions amid which she gained a firm position as a professional portrait painter, and on the external aspects of which at least she exercised some degree of influence. The motives and actions of a person cannot be properly appreciated without regard to the general trend of thought and social conditions in which that person grew up and played a part in the drama of experience. In the case of Vigee-Lebrun these factors are of even special importance, because she lived at one of those rare epochs in which evolution gives place to convulsion, and the division between past and future is marked by a cleft, instead of by a mere shifting of another bead on the endless rosary of Time. As every reader who is likely to trouble about Paris history is well aware, the French Revolution did not begin in July 1789, when the Bastille was destroyed by the mob. The spirit of popular revolt against the old order, the determination on the part of the manual makers of wealth to have some share in its advantages, had long been spreading not only below, but upon the surface of society in Western Europe. As far back as 1766 an insurrection in Madrid, largely brought about by the excessive taxa- tion of bread and oil, had been marked by incidents between the Spanish Court and people which, in the Ught of after years, seem like dress rehearsals for the days when the women of the Paris slums marched to Versailles, 24 STATE OF SOCIETY 25 and when the French King and his family fled, with such disastrous results, to Varennes. In that same year of the Madrid revolt there were serious outbreaks in France, which, for the time being, the Government was strong enough to suppress. Sixteen years earlier Lord Chester&eld had noted that the " germ of reason " which Du Clos, the historian, had about that time declared to be developing itself in France, must prove fatal to the monarchy and the church as they then existed. Every warning, however, was lost on the people whose manner of life was a principal source of discontent. Had the whole nation shared in hardships that were borne for the common welfare, the suffering of the toilers could more easily have been endured. Most of the army of courtiers, sons and grand- sons of those whom, for reasons of policy, Louis XIV had compelled to spend their time at Versailles, lived in idle luxury. The nobility was as distinct from the people without the particle " de," as the officers of a big ship are distinct from the crew. A nobleman was treated as a being set apart by Providence to enjoy the Court and its pleasures ; the rest of the people were born into the world to produce the food and raiment and other wealth which he and his class required, or to minister to his needs by keeping shops or lending money. Between the nobles and the shopkeepers came a vaguely defined class, largely made up of men of letters and artists, whose powers of entertaining or otherwise pleasing made them welcome in the houses of the courtiers and even attracted the courtiers into their dwellings. If everything was roturier to the noble outside his own class, the typical bourgeois, or plain citizen possessed of substantial means, was often more antipathetic to the working-class than were the nobles them- selves. He had no " Divine Right," and his airs of superiority were harder to excuse than those from which they were imitated. Yet it was chiefly through the advance in political influence of the wealthy middle-class that the nobles were losing power in the state, wherein the position, both of themselves and (parodoxically as it may at first sight seem) of their sup- planters who were not "noble," was rapidly becoming untenable. All this is the commonplace of history. Yet, in the days when Madame Vigee-Lebrun was painting the belles of Paris and Versailles, scarcely a fear troubled their minds, or hers, save that of scandalous tittle-tattle. Sincere love, which at most periods of recorded history has been one of the chief social forces at work, was never less powerful in any civilised 26 VIGEE-LEBRUN society than among the courtiers and their parasites in the thirty years preceding the Revolution. The human butterflies that fluttered in the bowers and coppices of Versailles and Marly had no longer that capacity for ardent passion which had existed among their grandparents. Galantene had indeed usurped the place of L' Amour, and fidelity to one lover at a time was somewhat out of fashion. It must in fairness be recognised that, so far as we may judge from the memoirs of the age, there was a good deal of platonic affection left, and that it was not always less possible in Paris than in Edinburgh for " affairs of the heart " to run such a painful course as that which is displayed for our analysis in the letters of " Clarinda " MacLehose and " Sylvander " Burns. It was, however, much more improbable, seeing how widely the example of Versailles and the Court during many years had spread. Men and women " of fashion " certainly took their pleasures gaily in the Paris of Madame Lebrun's youth, and for the most part acted strictly in accordance with the Roman poet's advice : " Carpe diem," of which the best-known and very free rendering is " Gather ye rosebuds while ye may." There were plenty of sober-minded people to be met with among the middle classes, not excepting the artists and authors ; but artists and authors lived then, as they must in most cases, by producing what was agreeable to the people with money to spend. All of them had not even so much self-respect as Doyen, whose refusal to paint an undignified picture was recalled on an earlier page, and the frivolity and superficiality which ruled in the Court often ruled also in the studio, the library and the shop. In their morals, the frivolous class — which unhappily included most of those, bourgeois as well as noble, who came to high office in the state — were in some ways much less careless than their forbears. They were usually careful in keeping up appearances, and it required the habits of a Paul Pry, or even the cunning of a clever detective, to find out any of the truth about half the scandals of the day. To display a liaison was an offence against etiquette ; people who behaved after the candid fashions of the Restoration in England or the Regency in France would, until chaos had established its power at Versailles, have been sent to their country houses very speedily. Outwardly, therefore, there was httle, so far as morals were in question, to offend the most honest prude. Nothing in this respect had changed much since Walpole, in a letter to his old friend Gray (the author of the Elegy), wrote in 1766 from Paris : " It requires the greatest curiosity. ETIQUETTE AT VERSAILLES 27 or the greatest habitude, to discover the smallest connection between the sexes here. No familiarity, but under the veil of friendship, is permitted, and love's dictionary is as much prohibited as at first sight one should think his ritual was." The writer of this letter at the same time warned Gray not to believe a syllable of what he read in French novels about love affairs, or to suppose that amie necessarily implied anything more than a " decent friend." These impressions of social life in Paris, by a man who had the best opportunities of going behind the scenes that any foreigner could obtain, were written just before Elisabeth Vigee left her convent school, but they have a considerable bearing on her experiences of the world when she had come into notice as a portrait-painter who happened also to be a pretty woman. Had the society which centred in Versailles and the Tuileries been altogether frivolous, it would have come to its death even more quickly than it did. Not a few of the nobles had, indeed, followed the motto attributed to the Dues de Broglie : " Love your wives and your chateaux," and had taken away their first objects of affection to rusticate in the second. But all that we learn from Madame Lebrun of the conversation and habits of the people whose portraits she painted, who attended her " evenings," and to whose dinners or suppers she went, bears out the general impression which most students of eighteenth-century France have necessarily formed. There was plenty of light morality in England too, but with that we have nothing to do here. Paris has never been an index to France, either socially or politically, and at no time has the capital less closely resembled the country in its ways of life and thought than in the eighteenth century. The politic measures of Louis XIV in dealing with the nobility had so concentrated the wealth and culture of the leisured class in and about the Court that very many of the large estates in the provinces, and many of the small estates also, were almost entirely neglected by their owners. La Bruyere's terrible description of the peasantry towards the end of the seventeenth century, when the system of Louis XIV was already fully established, is one of the most famous passages of his series of incisive character-studies illustrating the manners and thoughts of his time. A hundred years of abandonment to agents and bailiffs, whose con- stantly repeated instructions from their employers at Versailles were to 28 VIGEE-LEBRUN get more money out of the estates by hook or by crook, had done nothing to brighten the picture. Louis XVI (the opening of whose reign in 1774 synchronised closely with the commencement of Elisabeth Vigee's career) was indeed, as was well said, " separated from the people by his faults, and from the nobles by his virtues," and was so far from being a spendthrift on his own pleasures that his moral integrity was one of his gravest defects in the opinion of his entourage, who could not understand a man voluntarily preferring lock-making to love-making. Years before the thundercloud burst over Paris, Marie Antoinette had become the object of the vilest efforts of scandal-mongers. The story of the campaign to destroy her reputation is one of the most sickening that has ever been told, and the fact that she figures in history as a thought- less pleasure-seeker, not as a really vicious woman, is a triumph for lier over her calumniators. Had she, brought at fifteen as a stranger from the most pompous to the most depraved of courts, become as bad as her enemies, there would have been more cause for pity than surprise. During the early years of her life in France she was feather-headed, and often very foolish in her conduct. After she became a mother, she was much more careful and dignified, and had she been under the influence of honest and prudent people, she would have been spared many of her worst mistakes. UnhappUy, the set — sometimes divided against itself — of courtiers who surrounded her, and had her ear at all times, was in most of its members, its aims and its methods, everything that it ought not to have been from the point of view of the Queen's happiness. These people got riches for themselves by obtaining sinecures and properties through her assistance ; they worked their friends into high positions, even against her real wishes. But for this "set," Calonne, for instance, would never have been ControUer-General. Not only was Elisabeth Vigee born in the same year as Marie Antoi- nette, not only did she owe her fame and fortune chiefly to the favour of that unfortunate Queen, but she was subjected, in the less degree that matched her difference of position, to the aspersions of some of the same tribe of calumniators that attacked her kindly|'patroness. CHAPTER V THE queen's portraits A first sitting from the Queen — Marie Antoinette described by the artist — Were Vigee-Lebrun's portraits good likenesses ? — What Maria Theresa said of her daughter's portrait — Grand toilettes and simple dresses — The Queen sings duets with the artist— The Prince de Baufiremont's picture of the Queen by Vig6e-Lebrun : how was it painted ? — The birth of Vig6e-Lebrun's child — Madame de Verdun the " friend in need " — ^The Queen's considerate conduct — Vig6e-Lebrun paints all the Royal Family except one — Scores of sitters waiting their turns FROM her own record, and from other sources, it is known that Madame Lebrun had painted several portraits of the Queen before she was accorded the favour of a sitting. These were either exact copies of other people's original drawings or paintings, or else variations based on such works. She was willing to do them at low prices — from 240 to 480 francs apiece — seeing that they were in the nature of "com- mand " commissions, and were likely to lead to something better. Small as the prices were, it was not easy to get paid. For the money due on two pictures that were painted and delivered in 1777, costing 720 francs together, she was obliged to write, two years later, evidently at the dictation of Lebrun, a letter to the Controller-General of the Menus Plaisirs of the King, in which she says : " You wiU do me the greatest service if you will give me a special order which will enable me to obtain that trifling amount. No service would be more highly appreciated by my husband, at a moment when he is owed a considerable sum." Little worries of this kind were of no consequence in face of the happiness which came to her when, according to her Souvenirs, in that same year (1779) she was for the first time given sittings by the Queen. At the first sitting, the imposing air which Marie Antoinette always affected when strangers were present frightened the young artist " pro- digiously," but the Queen spoke so kindly to her that her fears were speedily removed. From that moment Madame Lebrun was so permanent a devotee of her royal patroness that her description must be accepted with 29 3o VIGEE-LEBRUN a little reserve. On the whole, it is as clear an account of Marie Antoinette at the height of her good looks as history possesses. She was, as we hear from her favourite artist, " tall, with an admirable figure, rather plump, but not too much so. Her arms were superb, her hands small and per- fectly formed, her feet were charming. She walked better than any other woman in France, carrying her head very erect, with a majesty which made the Sovereign recognisable in the midst of all her court, without detracting from the sweetness and benevolence of her aspect. It is really very difficult to convey to those who have never seen the Queen any idea of the union of so many graces and so much nobility. Her features were not regular ; she inherited the long and narrow oval face peculiar to her Austrian nationality. Her eyes were rather small, their colour was nearly blue ; her expression was intelligent and gentle. Her nose was small and pretty, and her mouth was not too big, although the lips were rather thick. But the most remarkable thing about her face was the brilliance of her complexion. I have never seen another to equal it, and brilliant is the right word to use ; for her skin was so transparent that it did not take a shadow {elle ne prenait point d' ombre). I could not render it to my satisfaction : the colours were wanting that could paint that freshness, those tints so fine which belonged only to that charming face and which I have never found again on any other woman." It is a not uncommon criticism of Madame Lebrun's portraits of Marie Antoinette that they are not really " portraits " at all, but flatteries. After examining representations of the Queen by other hands, and noting where they agree with or differ from the portraits by Madame Vigee-Lebrun, or among themselves, I am convinced that most of those done by Madame Lebrun from life are no more unlike their human original than the works of Romney, of Gainsborough, or of Lawrence are unlike the people (especially the ladies) who sat for them. Let us compare, for example, the portraits of Mrs. Robinson, by Gainsborough and by Romney (Wallace Gallery), or those of Mrs. Siddons, by Lawrence and by Gainsborough (National Gallery), and decide what those ladies really were to the eye. Not only are all Vigee-Leb run's portraits of Marie Antoinette at Versailles (with the possible exception of that first one of 1779) consistent with each other, and with others from her hand in various collections, but they are consistent with the charming bust of the Queen in early youth by Augustin Pajou (the elder), also at Versailles, and with portraits by other artists. As for engravings, the Queen's face was, with the possible exception of PORTRAITS OR FLATTERIES? 31 Voltaire's, the subject of more prints than any that ever gazed out upon the world ; and, widely as they may differ among themselves, there are those among them which go to show that Madame Lebrun, if she has often somewhat "improved" on what nature had done for Marie Antoinette, still enables us to form a true idea of the Queen's appearance in the days before ruin had fallen upon her. The softening treatment used by Millais, in his rendering of the faces of Mr. Gladstone and Disraeli, was no more or less legitimate than the fining off of some defects in Marie Antoinette's face by Madame Lebrun. The first of the portraits distinctly declared to be from life is not, as already suggested, as consistent as might be expected with those that followed. Evidently it gave great satisfaction to the Queen, for whom the artist made two replicas. Two more were made for other people. Of these four replicas, two are at Versailles. They differ from the original in that the necklace has disappeared. The young Queen is dressed in the monstrous hoops and paniers which, about that period, made the ladies of the French court as uncomfortable, and as unnatural to view, as were the ladies of the Spanish court in the days of Velasquez. Regarded in the light of present-day fashions, the costume is hideous, but ugliness in woman's dress seems to be a question not of taste, but of convention, and no doubt Marie Antoinette thought herself beautifully dressed as she stood up in this fortress of frameworks and furbelows. Her hair is arranged in an unbecoming fashion, and her pose is stiff — it could not be otherwise in such clothing. The original of this portrait is in the Hofburg at Vienna, whither it was sent as a present from the young Queen of France to her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa, whose letter acknowledging its reception contains the phrase : " Your big portrait has delighted me. Ligne has found some resemblance, but it is enough for me that it represents you." This Prince de Ligne, who was as much at home at Versailles as at Vienna, ought to have been a good critic of the portrait, and if he could only find ^'some" hkeness, which apparently was rather more than the Empress iierself could do, it is evident that on this first occasion Madame Lebrun's success was not by any means complete. An engraving of this portrait had a great success after the return of the Bourbons, and on that reproduction the original picture was attri- buted to the Swedish artist Alexandre Roslin, several excellent works by whom, notably a portrait of Boucher, are to be seen at Versailles. 32 VIGEE-LEBRUN Rather strangely, there is nothing to show that Madame Lebrun made any objection to this false attribution. Whether the likeness was a good one or not, it is certain that the picture was not altogether a pleasing object to the artist. One must travel far afield to find another in which all her ideas on the subject of dress were so grievously abused. If she did not originate the fancy for simple costumes of the " shepherdess " and " milk-girl " type, which indeed Watteau and Greuze had painted long before, she made them the mode in portraiture. The Queen was attracted by the artist, whose timidity speedily gave place to confidence as she found how gentle and considerate Marie Antoi- nette really was. Something almost of friendship sprang up between these two young women. The Queen was told by some one that the artist could sing well, and afterwards there were few " sittings " which did not include duets sung by the artist and the sitter, for Marie Antoinette was very fond indeed of music, though she had not a very good voice. "As to her conversation," says Madame Lebrun, "it would be difficult for me to describe all its grace and kindliness; I do not believe that Queen Marie Antoinette ever missed an opportunity of saying something agreeable to those who had the honour of approaching her, and the goodwill she has always shown towards myself is one of my sweetest memories." We have seen that, according to her own narrative, Madame Lebrun first painted the Queen " from life " in 1779, and that the portrait was a "panier" one, showing Marie Antoinette in monstrous hoops and yards upon yards of flouncings and furbelows. There is, however, a charming portrait signed and dated the previous year (1778), which has all the appearance of an original work. In her own lists of pictures — compiled, no doubt, from rough memoranda, and abounding in errors — the artist says that in 1778 she painted two " copies " of portraits of Marie Antoinette, mentioning no original portrait of the Queen. The question to be decided, therefore, is this : was Madame Lebrun doubly incorrect in sajdng that the first sittings were in 1779 and that only copies were painted in the previous year, or is this fine picture of 1778 the earliest portrait of the Queen " from life " by the artist ? In the letter to Prince Theodore de Bauffremont, of which a facsimile is given in this book, Madame Lebrun, in May 1837, when she was eighty- two years of age, states that she made the portrait in 1778, and the following - ■ ■* # ^^^■p.^^^^ '^ ^m^^-l 1 w^^^K^B^^^'^''^'''''-:'i^'-- T ^ rF4c^j^^''-"v''^ ^pV ... V»iV 4 \ '"' r^^^^^^^^^g^^^^^^^BF \ If" iJi^ jMM ---^--— - THE BAUFFREMONT PORTRAIT 33 note attached to the picture, dated 6 Oct., 1837, and signed by the Prince, seems to prove that in this statement she was correct. "This portrait of the Queen," writes the Prince, "is by Madame Lebrun. I have had it re-backed {fait rentoiler) because of a hole which I believe to have been a bayonet thrust made during the first Revolution of 1789. She has signed it at the bottom with the point of a penknife, as she always did. The Queen is painted in 1778, when my dear and beloved wife and myself bought (back) (rachetdmes) this portrait from the estate of my aunt, Madame La Comtesse de Choiseul. I had it shown to Madame Lebrun, who wrote to me the letter which accompanies this. The portrait is in the salon of my dear Laurence.' ' No one, I think, who sees this portrait (of which a reproduction is here given, and of which an almost exact twin, in the collection of the Baron Edouard de Rothschild, was reproduced in M. de Nolhac's book) will deny that it is a very fine example of her work. She does not state that she painted it " from life." We know that in the painting of portraits based on other people's works she was an adept, and I am strongly of opinion, from a frequent comparison of some of her portraits of herself with her portraits of other persons, that she sometimes sat for other figures than her own. That she drew and painted from her reflexion in a mirror with great ease, we cannot doubt, and, as she made the statement to the Prince de Bauffremont just about the time when she was bringing out her Souvenirs (wherein she tells us of the " copies " of por- traits of the Queen which she produced in 1778, and of no original portrait) is it unreasonable to suggest that the youthful face was painted from some- body else's picture of the Queen, lent to Madame Lebrun for the purpose, and that the rest of the " portrait " was a representation of her own pleasing figure ? She was the same age as the Queen, and her contours were no less graceful than those which she professed to be reproducing. Elsewhere in these pages I have referred to the frequent reappearance of particular hats or scarves in Vig6e-Lebrun's pictures. There are other things besides draperies. In the portrait at Versailles of the un- happy wife of Philippe Egalite, she is wearing at the waist a medalHon showing a disconsolate woman, with dishevelled hair, seated beneath a willow, with a dog, no doubt signifying fideUty, looking up at her. The word Amitie appears on a sculptured urn near by. The special appropri- ateness of this medallion to the circumstances of the Duchess in 1789, when the portrait was painted, has often been felt. It is therefore specially 3 34 VIGEE-LEBRUN remarkable that in a portrait of Madame de Laborde, now in the Morgan collection, that lady is seen wearing the same medallion, and is posed very much as the Duchesse d'Orleans is represented in the portrait at Versailles. The eldest child of the King and Queen, " Madame Royale," as this Princess Marie Therdse was formally called, had been born in 1778, a year before Madame Lebrun became the Queen's painter ; and in the year after the " panier " portrait of the Queen from life was produced, the painter herself gave birth (February 1780) to a daughter, who was to be a source of great pleasure to her at first, and afterwards of great disappointment. This event interfered very little with her work. " Madame de Verdun, my oldest friend, came to see me in the morning. She foresaw that I should be brought to bed during the day, and, as she knew my carelessness, she asked if I was prepared with all that would be wanted'; to which I replied, with an air of surprise, that I did not know what was needful ! ' That is just like you,' she said ; ' you are a regular gargon. I warn you that it will happen this evening.' ' No ! no ! ' said I, ' I have a sitting to-morrow, and I do not wish it to happen to-day.' Without replying, Madame de Verdun left me for a moment to send for an accoucheur, who arrived almost immediately. I sent him away, but he hid in my house until the evening, and at ten o'clock my daughter arrived in the world. I shall not attempt to describe the joy which I felt when I heard my child cry ; every mother knows it." Of the infancy of Julie (Jeanne Julie Louise) we know less than of her mother's, and we only begin to learn anything particular about her when we come to the time of exile from France. Madame Lebrun had one other child, also a daughter, who followed the first after a few years, and lived but a very short time. One day, not long before the birth of this second child, Vigee-Lebrun found herself too unwell to go to Versailles, where the Queen had arranged to give her a sitting. In those times, when the horse was the quickest means of communication, it was impossible to send a message over a distance of twelve miles in time to prevent the sitter from getting ready for the painter. On the next morning, having sufficiently recovered, she hastened to Versailles to explain her apparent Ihe-MajesU. The Queen's carriage was at the door, and when the artist arrived, one of the gentlemen-in- waiting (Campan) said to her in an angry manner, "It was yesterday. Facsimii.h of a I.kttek fkom Madamk Lhbhun TO THK PkINCK DF. BaUFFKHMONT THE QUEEN'S KINDNESS 35 Madame, that Her Majesty expected you, and as she is now going out she will certainly not give you a sitting to-day." Madame Lebrun remarked that she only came to take Her Majesty's orders. She was sent for to the Queen's dressing-room, and having explained her non-appearance of the day before, and asked to know the Queen's pleasure, Marie Antoinette countermanded her carriage and at once began a " sitting." The end of this reminiscence reminds us of several anecdotes of royal personages and their painters — of Charles V and Titian, of Philip IV and Velasquez for examples. " I remember," says Madame Lebrun, " that in my eagerness to respond to such kindness I snatched up my paint-box so hastily that I upset it ; my brushes, my pencils fell on to the floor. I stooped to repair my clumsiness. ' Stop, stop ! ' said the Queen : ' you must not stoop ; ' and, in spite of my protests, she picked everything up herself." This kindly act on the part of Marie Antoinette was such as any woman of decent feeling would naturally perform for another whose condition was that of Madame Lebrun at the time. Surely it is a strange perversion of respect which would give to acts of sympathy or courtesy on the part of a Prince, a merit which would not be allowed to them in the case of a commoner. High as was the painter's admiration for the Queen, she does not enlarge further on this example of womanly sympathy. The patronage of the Queen, however ill-respected that Queen may have been by those who surrounded her, brought many commissions to the painter. As she herself has recorded, she painted in turn every member of the Royal Family except the Comte d'Artois, younger brother of the King. The Comte de Provence (afterwards Louis XVIII) relieved his tedium as a sitter by singing vulgar songs. " How do you think I sing ? " he asked the painter. " Like a prince. Monsieur," she tells us was her reply. Scores of ladies and gentlemen of the Court — particularly ladies — were soon waiting their turns to " sit." Almost any Court painter can get plenty of commissions, but when that painter is able to diminish wrinkles, to straighten crooked mouths a little, to fine down noses and to brighten eyes without spoiling the likeness, it is natural that there should be some difficulty in getting an appointment for " sittings " in that painter's studio. CHAPTER VI ACADEMICIAN Devotion to work — The artist goes to Belgium with her husband — Combining business and pleasure — The charming Prince de Ligne — Mutual attraction — From Brussels to Paris for the opera — Express travelling in the eighteenth century — The Flemish and Dutch painters — Vig6e-Lebrun's imitation of Rubens — Her " chapeau de paille " — Return to Paris — She is proposed for election to the Academy of Arts — DiflSculties in the way — The Queen's influence forces the doors — Ingenious " reasons " for breaking the rules — Vigte-Lebrun's portrait of the Queen en gaulle — Its withdrawal from exhibition — A joyful evening at the theatre — Convention versus fashion THE gospel of work has rarely had a better exemplar than Vigee- Lebrun. She usually worked all the morning and all the afternoon ; deciding, very early in her career, to decline those frequent dinner invitations which, as people dined between three and five, broke up her day and seriously disturbed her digestion. She scarcely ever tired of her work, however much her body might at times get weary of exertion. After three years and more of almost continual painting, she took, in 1782, a little holiday which had a considerable influence on her art. A famous collection of pictures, formed by a princely house, was to be dispersed in Brussels, and M. Lebrun hoped to do some profitable business at the sale. For some reason or other he took his wife with him, though in so doing he was interfering with her money-making. The reason almost certainly was that her prestige as the favourite artist of the Queen of France might be of value to himself. Whether he benefited much by her presence we do not know, but in any case she had a pleasant time. The Duchesse d'Arenberg, whom she had often met in Paris, welcomed her in that famous old house above the Petit Sablon Square in which, until a few years ago, a great collection was almost as easy of access to art-lovers as in a public gallery. The Prince de Ligne — he who had discovered a likeness in her " panier " portrait of Marie Antoinette, but with whom she was not till now personally acquainted — showed the visitors round his own gallery, chiefly notable THE PRINCE DE LIGNE 37 for portraits by Rubens and Vandyck. He also invited them to his country house, where his charming manners and Uvely wit seem to have put him, in the opinion of Madame, at least on a level with the Due de Lauzun. If she was attracted by the grace and wit of the Prince, he on his side was impreissed by her beauty and inteUigence, and from that time onwards she had no more faithful adherent than this influential cosmopolitan, who, wherever he went, praised the quality of her paintings and the charms of her appearance and social gifts. A remark made by Madame Lebrun apropos of this new friend throws a strong light on the zeal for pleasure which characterised the " high life " of those days as much as it does the plutocracy of to-day. She tells us that " a good many friends of the Prince de Ligne sometimes left Brussels after breakfast, arrived at the Opera in Paris just as the curtain went up, and, after the representation, returned at once to Brussels, travelling all night" ; and "that is what they call loving the Opera!" she adds. Evidently the road from "the little Paris" to the big one was better than the English roads of that period. The distance from Brussels to Paris in a bee line (or a crow line, whichever is straighter) is at least i6o miles, so that if the opera-goers travelled at an average speed of twelve miles an hour they would have taken from seven in the morning till eight in the evening to cover the distance. The descendants of these music-lovers find their big motor-cars preferable to their great-grandmothers' chaises for such one-day trips to Paris, about the nearest equivalents to which in these days are such excursions as village choirs in the Eastern Counties take to Blackpool and back " in one day." On leaving the Flemish capital and its social delights, the Lebruns made a tour in Holland, and Madame was particularly struck by the good looks of the women of the North, and by their extreme shyness of strangers, which caused them to run away as soon as a traveller came in sight. At Amsterdam, one of the pictures by Van der Heist (whom she calls " Wanols," in her easy manner with names) at the Hotel de Ville evidently gave her more pleasure than all the Rembrandts. "I don't believe," she says, " that there is a more beautiful or truer painting in existence. It is nature itself. The burgomasters are dressed in black ; the heads, the hands, the draperies, all are inimitably beautiful: these men live — one beUeves oneself in their presence. I am certain that picture is the finest of its kind ; I could with difficulty leave it, and the impression it made on me renders 38 VIGEE-LEBRUN it even now present to my eyes." This is the greatest praise that, in her Souvenirs, she ever gave to a picture, and it affords strong evidence of her taste in the particular branch of art to which she was called. Sir Joshua Reynolds, speaking of another of the Amsterdam groups by Van der Heist, had said: "This is perhaps the finest picture of portraits in the world ; comprehending more of those qualities which make a perfect portrait than any other I have seen ; they are correctly drawn, both heads and figures, and have great variety of action, characters, and countenances, and those so lively, and truly expressing what they are about, that the spectator has nothing to wish for." Had she not specified the black dresses, we might have beheved that Vigee-Lebrun was referring to the same work ("Meeting of Officers of a Train-band") which the English artist so highly praised. A sensible remark which she makes as to some of the best pictures of Rubens, seen on her way back through Flanders, is that they were much better placed in the Flemish churches than in the Luxembourg or the Louvre in Paris. It was in a private collection at Antwerp that she saw the portrait by Rubens which most directly influenced her own art of all those seen during this first experience of foreign travel — this kind of belated honey- moon with a husband with whom she was never to go far from home in future. The picture in question was the celebrated " Chapeau de Paille" — so called on the lucus a non lucendo principle, because the hat is not straw, but beaver-felt {poil). She supposed the picture to represent one of the wives of Rubens, but she is on surer ground when she says that "its force lies in the two different lights — those of the direct rays of the sun, and of the reflected sunlight. The ' clears ' are in full sunlight, and what, for want of a better word, must be called the shadows, are reflected light. Perhaps one must be a painter in order to appreciate all the power here displayed by Rubens. The picture delighted and inspired me to such an extent that while at Brussels I did a portrait of myself in which I strove after the same effect." This picture by Rubens, and an excellent replica or copy of the picture by Vig6e-Lebrun which it inspire'd, hang in our own National Gallery to-day, and we can learn much of the powers of either artist, the Flemish giant or the French sylph, by studying the two works in the same visit. Apropos of Madame' s charming imitation of the art of Rubens and of her own face and figure, a curiously misleading rendering of its qualities THE "CHAPEAU DE FAILLE" 39 is given in an engraving done by J. G. Muller in 1785, wherein the chief purpose of the picture is so entirely ignored that the whites of the eyes give a nigger-hke expression by their intense contrast to the heavily shaded parts of the face. The Baron Portalis, in some remarks based on this engraving, draws attention to the manner in which " this violent clashing between the black and the white accentuates very happily the piquancy of that very expressive countenance." Thus the engraver conveys to the critic exactly the opposite impression to that which the painter had striven, with a large measure of success, to produce — of the contrast, not between light and deep shade, but between a lesser and a greater light derived from the sun directly and by reflexion. Madame Lebrun herself, in referring to Muller' s print, justly observes that the black shadows of the engraving take away all the effect of a picture of that kind. In this same year which saw the making of one of Vigee-Lebrun's most notable self-portraits, her husband also was at work at his easel, and made his first appearance at the Salon with a painting representing a subject which must have appealed much more to him than to her. It was called " A Toper embracing a Maid-servant." No doubt it was painted under the influence of Teniers and Ostade. Soon after the Lebruns had returned to Paris, and largely on account of the admiration aroused by the portrait after the manner of Rubens' picture, Joseph Vernet decided to propose Vigee-Lebrun for election to the Royal Academy of Painting. It was no light task which he had taken upon himself, if he meant to see her elected, and but for the outside pres- sure which was brought to bear on the members present at the election it seems almost certain that she would have been rejected. In the first place, the " director " of this Academy, M. Pierre, who was also "First Painter to the King," was strongly opposed to the admission of women ; and in the second place, it was the general opinion among the Academicians that if any more women were to be admitted the claims of Adelaide Labille-Guiard ought first to be recognised. There were already three women Academicians (Madame Roslin, the pastellist, Madame Coster, a flower-painter, and Madame Vien, a miniaturist and painter of " still life"), and that, thought M. Pierre and his friends, was already three too many. These adversaries began a campaign against Madame Lebrun' s can- didature, in which the weapons employed were partly legitimate and partly slanderous. The chief legitimate objection was that, her husband 40 VIGEE-LEBRUN being a picture-dealer, she was ruled out by a clause in the statutes of the Academy which declared that no member must be engaged in trade. It is true that she herself was not a dealer, but it might with some show of reason be held that a wife must be a partner of her husband in more than the merely conjugal sense. The other weapon employed was the accusation that her best pictures were touched up by Frangois Menageot. This most amiable historical- painter, who had a flat in the Lebruns' house, was always a friend of hers, and gave her plenty of advice — which, on the evidence of her work, we may suppose that she did not take. The story of his helping her was little heard again after the public had the opportunity of seeing both his work and hers hung on the same wall at the Salon. In any case, she was admitted as a member of the Academy on the last day of May, 1783. In recording this fact, she says : " M. Pierre spread about that I was elected by order of the Court. I believe that, as a matter of fact, the King and Queen had been good enough to wish to see me enter the Academy, but that is all." It is " all " that Madame Lebrun chooses to remember. Let us see what actually happened, as shown in the original documents bearing on the part taken by the King and Queen, which are textually reproduced in M. de Nolhac's account of the business. The Comte d'Angiviller, who held the comprehensive position of " Director-General of Royal Buildings, Gardens, Manufactures and Acade- mies," was several times consulted by Marie Antoinette as to the chances of her favourite painter being admitted to the Academy. At last, the Queen having shown the strongest interest in the matter, M. d'Angiviller took anxious thought, and proceeded to draw up the following ingenious statement for presentation to the King : " In the statutes given by Louis XIV to the Academy of Painting, it is forbidden to every artist to deal in pictures, either directly or indirectly. This regulation has been confirmed by Your Majesty in the clearest manner ; it is of the highest importance to maintain a law which contributes to the glory of the arts and, what is still more important, sustains them in a country where they are so useful and so necessary for commerce with foreign countries. " Madame Lebrun, the wife of a picture-dealer, has very great talent, and would certainly have been an Academician long ago but for her husband's business. It is said, and I believe truly, that she has nothing ACADEMICIAN 41 to do with that business, but in France a woman has no other standing than that of her husband. The Queen honours by her kindness Madame Lebrun, who merits it, not only by her talents, but also by her conduct. Her Majesty has done me the honour of asking me if there is not some means, without breaking the statute, and while preserving all its force, to gain admittance for Madame Lebrun into that body, which it is well to sustain in all the exactitude and the rigour of the statutes, above all, since Your Majesty has granted freedom to the arts. I have had the honour to reply that the protection with which Her Majesty honoured Madame Lebrun fell upon a subject sufficiently distinguished to make an exception in her favour rather a confirmation than an infraction of the law, if it were based upon that honourable protection, and that Your Majesty would be able to authorise it by a formal act. " I therefore beg Your Majesty to give me directions, and to order that in future the number of women who can be admitted into the Academy shall be restricted to four. That number is sufficient to recognise talent, women never being able to assist the progress of the arts, because the modesty of their sex makes it impossible for them ever to study from nature and in the public school established and founded by Your Majesty." The composer of this document must surely have written with a smile on his lips. It is one of the finest examples of " special pleading" ever seen, not surpassed by the reasoning of the learned brother concerning the father's will, in A Tale of a Tub. Because the statute was so excellent, it was to be safeguarded by being flagrantly disregarded. There were already three women members, and as four was the exact number that ought to represent feminine talent, Madame Lebrun ought at once to be let in. In the last lines of M. d'Angiviller's petition, " nature," which meant still-life and fully-dressed friends when Elisabeth Vigee and Rosalie Bocquet worked together as children, evidently implies the nude model, unless the " and " after nature is a slip, and the impossibility was merely that of men and women studying together. The tortuous reasoning of M. d'Angiviller convinced the King, who was glad to do anything he could to please his wife, and in the minutes of the Academy of Painting for the meeting of May 31 the swallowing of the royal pill by that body is thus recorded : " The Academy, executing with profound respect the orders of its sovereign, has received the demoiselle 42 VIGEE-LEBRUN Vig^e, wife of the sire Lebrun, as a member, upon the reputation of her talents, and invites Madame Lebrun to send some of her works to the next meeting." Madame Labille-Guiard was, however, also admitted, the taint of commerce not being attached to her. As the Academy in its minutes refers to the terms of the new statutes which the King had author- ised M. d'Angiviller to draw up, including the limitation to four women members in future, some jugglery must have been necessary to cover the fact that the two new members brought the number up to five — unless, indeed, one of the three ladies already mentioned as members of the Academy had died in the interval. Apparently it was arranged that while Madame Labille-Guiard was elected in the ordinary way, her rival should be regarded as being thrust in by royal " dispensation." In any case she brought more distinction in the end to the Academy than she received from it. At the moment, as her response to the demand for a diploma picture, she sent in the allegorical work " La Paix ramenant L'Abondance," which hangs to-day in Gallery XVI of the Louvre. The enemies of women were furious at the admission of the two most distinguished women-painters of the day to the Academy, and the versifiers were speedily employed in writing unpleasant lines about them. Madame Labille-Guiard fared the worse, her character as well as her art being attacked, whereas in the case of Madame Lebrun it was only her alleged pride that was assailed, in addition to her talents. She was told not to be stuck up because she had a fine carriage-and-horses, and that her pride was as impertinent as the colouring in her pictures was bad. The high praises she received made up for any such pin-pricks, and her fame, till then chiefly confined to the Court, now spread throughout the public generally. Their arrival together in the Academy, their common experience of hostile criticism did not serve to make the two new Academiciennes friendly to one another. It is significant that Madame Lebrun never refers to her rival by name, though she probably has her in mind when, on one occasion, she speaks of women artists who are jealous of her because they are more ugly than herself ! In that same year she was to have another snub, followed by another triumph, in connection with a picture which soon became famous all over Europe. At the Salon which opened shortly after her admission to the Academy she was represented by quite a number of pictures, among them TROUBLE AND TRIUMPH 43 being the diploma work already mentioned (for which, by the way, the models were two young friends of her own) ; the " Chapeau de Paille" portrait of herself, and portraits of the Queen and of the King's sister-in- law the Comtesse de Provence, both these princesses wearing the simple white muslin dresses known as " gaulles." Such a fuss was made about the "impropriety" and "indecency" of representing the Queen in this indoor costume — which some of the most old-fashioned or of the most disagreeable people described as a " chemise" — that the picture was with- drawn from the Salon a few days after the opening. It is certain that already, apart from the machinations of her enemies, the Queen gave great dissatisfaction to a large section of the public by just such a dis- regard of the conventions of royalty as this incident illustrates. Indeed, while at Court she was disliked on account of the exclusiveness of her friendships, in the town she was severely criticised for her lack of dignity and neglect of etiquette. Partly, no doubt, in consequence of the profit made out of this portrait by the enemies of the Queen, it had a great success, and Madame Lebrun recalls with special satisfaction an incident at the Vaudeville Theatre late in the season of that same year, when a species of revue called by some such name as La RSunion des Arts was produced. Her friend Brongniart (an architect of repute) and his wife, who were in the confidence of the management, took her to a box on the first night. Let her tell the rest of the story : " As I had not the least inkling of the surprise in store for me, you can imagine my emotion when the actress representing ' Painting ' came on the stage, and I saw that she was surprisingly well got up to look like myself, at work on my portrait of the Queen. At the same moment all the people in the stalls and boxes looked towards me and applauded enthusiastically : I do not think any one could ever be more touched, or more grateful than I was that evening." The unpleasant reception given to the Queen's portrait at the Salon by a section of the public was quite neutralised for the artist by this pleasing episode, and was followed by no loss of favour at Court, nor did the Queen cease to dress herself as a peasant when she engaged in the pleasure of dair5dng at her village near the Little Trianon, making the mistake of supposing, as an historian has well said, " that in those days a Queen of France could Uve for herself." It was not till some years after the much abused " portrait en chemise " was exhibited that women of the richer classes could appear in public 44 VIGEE-LEBRUN simply dressed without the risk of insult or contempt. They still had to balance themselves on their high, pointed heels, and to surround themselves with hooped petticoats. Such insignia of the old order existed after the new ideas planted by Rousseau and the philosophers of the Encyclopcedia had become deeply rooted and fruitful. Marie Antoinette tried to live in the two worlds, the old and the new — a thing impossible for any one in such a position as she occupied in France. Possibly a French princess might have done all that she did and become all the more popular with a large section of the public. For a foreigner it was hopeless. CHAPTER VII SOCIAL LIFE Vig6e-Lebrun in society — Her intimate friends — The Marquise de Grollier — ^Wit without malice — The over -polite Madame d'Angiviller — A passion for verdure indoors — Benjamin Franklin — His silence and his popularity — A Parisian who knew everything — Strange way of dis- covering a lost wife — The Abb6 Delille — Inconvenience of being " fond of everybody " — The " Snakes " and " Crabtrees " of Paris — Vigte-Lebrun's " evenings " — M. Doyen's opinion of geniuses — Music at home — Garat's lovely voice — ^The fascinations of the Comte de Vaudreuil — Afternoon rest and no dinner-parties THE social life of Madame Vigee-Lebrun was necessarily restricted by her passion for work, at the same time that her fame as a painter brought her many opportunities of visiting houses frequented by people who were specially worth meeting. One of these houses, where she had been welcome even before she became famous, was that of Madame Grimod de la Reyniere, a lady of a noble but impoverished family, who, in marrying the son of one of the wealthiest of the farmers-general of taxes, had made that exchange of rank for wealth which was not yet so frequent a bargain as it was to become in the nineteenth century. Her husband was as much celebrated for his dinners as for his money, and, among his intimates, for his absurd delusions that he could paint and that he had a fine voice. He was dreadfully afraid of thunder, and, whenever a storm began, he retired to a thickly-curtained room in the basement, where he made one of his men-servants beat a big drum as loudly as possible until the thunder had ceased. His wife was always " upon her dignity," apropos of which fact Doyen once said, when asked what he thought of her : " She ' receives ' very well, but I think she has an attack of loftiness" {Je la crois attaquSe de noblesse). From the early days of her married life there was no house in which Madame Lebrun was more happy than that of the Marquise de Grollier, where a few chosen friends were accustomed to come in the evening, and where now and then the young artist enjoyed the special pleasure of a 45 46 VIGEE-LEBRUN long tete-d-tete with the "grande dame," her elder by some thirteen years, " Her conversation, always lively, was rich in ideas, full of happy touches, and for all that one could not recall, among all the witty things that constantly fell from her lips, a single word which was soiled by scandal. The fact is all the more remarkable since that very superior woman owed to her tact, to the extreme clearness of her understanding, a perfect knowledge of men, and that she was a bit of a misanthrope, as her talk more than once showed me. . , . One day, when we were talking of the attachment and fidelity of our two little dogs, I said : ' I wish that dogs could speak — they would tell us such pretty things ! " ' If they spoke, my dear,' she replied, ' they would also understand, and they would soon be corrupted.' " At one or other of the dinners or supper-tables which she frequented, Vig6e-Lebrun frequently met with the Comtesse d'Angiviller (formerly Madame Marchais), the wife of that " Director-General of Royal Buildings, Gardens, Manufactures and Academies" who was so helpful in the matter of the Academy " election." She was an exceedingly gushing person, who never, as Dr. Johnson said to a woman of her type, " considered what her flattery was worth before applying it so freely." Madame Lebrun could stand compliments pretty well, but some of Madame d'Angiviller' s passed the limit which divides the agreeable from the ridiculous, and at times were embarrassing both to the recipient and to the rest of the company. For example, she cordially greeted a man of quite exceptional ugliness with the remark, " Why, really. Monsieur, you have grown quite handsome ! " Madame Lebrun' s description of this too polite lady recalls an unusual form of nature- worship. "Although I have often seen Madame d'Angiviller, and have frequently sat next to her at table, I cannot say whether she was ugly or pretty. Her face was always covered by a veil, which she did not take off even at dinner. That veil not only covered her face, but also an immense bouquet, which she constantly carried at her side, made of sprigs from green trees. . . . When I went into her bedroom, I was still more surprised to see it adorned by stands always covered with every kind of foliage, not even taken away at night." Vigee-Lebrun frequently saw Benjamin Franklin. The first time was at the Court, when he was received, with the other foreign ambassadors, by the King. In his Quaker-like costume, among the magnificent nobles from the great European States, he must have afforded an even more A BUSYBODY 47 striking contrast than Castlereagh was to offer when he attended the Con- gress of Vienna in a plain suit, without wearing his orders. Any one more out of place, one might think, in the Paris society of that time, could hardly have been found than Dr. Franklin, and at the house of her friends the Brions, where Vigee-Lebrun often met him, he would sit without saying a word, so that she was " tempted to beheve that he had made a vow of silence." But, however dull might be his conversation and his costume, "No man was more the fashion in Paris, or more sought after. The crowd ran after him on the promenades and in other public places ; hats, walking- sticks, snuff-boxes, everything was d, la Franklin." One of Madame Lebrun's acquaintances, whose name is not among the famous in history, but who was a highly remarkable specimen of a type which still exists, was the Comte d'Espinchal. His whole pleasure and business was to find out everything that was going to happen in Paris before the rest of the world could know. An engagement to marry, a love intrigue, a death, the acceptance or refusal of a new play or picture- such incidents were generally old news to him when they were still fresh to others. He knew an enormous number of people of every class, from the great nobles to the call-boys at theatres, from duchesses to grisettes. He knew to whom every box at the Opera or the Comedie Fran9aise belonged, and, most astonishing fact of all, he knew the identity of almost every woman at the masked balls of the Opera, however closely their faces might be covered; and though at that time these balls were much more " select " than they were afterwards to become, this was a marvellous gift. Naturally enough, he was not popular on these occasions. But once he was able, by not knowing one woman at such a ball, to relieve the great anxiety of a stranger. He noticed a man whom he had never seen before, rushing hither and thither, with every sign of distress, going up to every woman who wore a blue domino, and running off again with an air of desperation. " You seem to be in trouble, sir," said the Count. " If I can be of any good, I shall be delighted to serve you." " Ah ! sir," replied the stranger, " I am the most unhappy of men. Imagine that this morning I arrived from Orleans with my wife, who gave me no rest until I would bring her to a ball at the Opera. In this crowd I have lost her, and the poor Uttle woman doesn't know the name of the hotel, or even the name of the street where we have put up." " Don't worry your- self," said the Count,—" I will take you to her. Your wife is sitting at the second window in the foyer." There, indeed, she was. Her husband, 48 VIGEE-LEBRUN almost beside himself with joy, could not sufficiently express his thanks. "But how on earth, sir," he asked, " did you know this was my wife?" "Nothing is simpler," was the reply; "Madame being the only woman at the ball whom I do not know, I had already made up my mind that she had very recently come up from the country." The gayest, most irresponsible creature among the intellectual people of that time was the Abbe Delille, who represented almost at its best that strange type of quite unclerical "clergy" which had no official functions except to draw incomes from benefices which rarely or never saw their " occupiers." He had come into notice by a verse translation of the Georgics, became an Academician in 1774, and was made Professor of Latin Poetry at the College de France, about which time he obtained a rich endowment of church property through the influence of the Comte d'Artois. Voltaire regarded him as one of the highest ornaments of French literature. Madame Lebrun's impression of him was that he had never grown up. He was in her eyes " the most charming, the best, the most intelligent child one could possibly see. He was known as chose Uglre, and I have always been struck by the aptness of that description, for no man has ever skimmed over the surface of life more lightly than he did, without forming a strong attachment to anything in the world. . . . His fine wit, his natural gaiety, lent an indescribable charm to his conversation. No one could tell a story better than he; he delighted every circle he frequented by innumerable tales and anecdotes, without ever being bitter or satirical ; one could say that everybody was fond of him, and also that he was fond of everybody." This last characteristic was a weakness which caused some trouble among his friends, as he was always liable to be captured by the last comer. When reproached with this tendency he would admit it, and defend himself by saying, " I per- suade myself that the person who comes to seek me wants me more than that other who is waiting for me." It will have been noticed how highly Vigee-Lebrun reckons good- nature among the qualities of her acquaintances. It was not commonly regarded as a social virtue in those days, when backbiting flourished as perhaps never before or since, on either side of the Channel. It was the period of the School for Scandal, a play which the critic of the Morning Post, on the morrow of its first performance, justly described as one wherein a group of characters " are ever ready, at the call of scandal, to sacrifice the reputations even of their dearest friends at the too fashionable shrine CALUMNIES 49 of calumny." If calumny could not be more "fashionable" in Paris than in London, it was assuredly more virulent, the licence allowed to the malicious tongues and pens exceeding anything that Sheridan even suggests. Slander had become so prevalent in the pleasure-seeking society of that age that no one could be safe from its effects. Elsinore, when Hamlet told Ophelia : "Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny," was a place full of charity and veracity compared with the Paris of the eighteenth century, especially of the latter half. The zest for slander had its origin in frivolity. As Mercier wrote concerning the " proverbs " played in certain drawing-rooms : " Simple slander would not hit the victim sufficiently hard ; what was wanted was that she should expire from wounds made by the sharpest possible arrows, and all this merely for amusement." How openly slanders were published in those days when, as a rule, the freedom of the press, outside politics, was tempered only by fear of personal chastisement or private influence, we shall see in the life-story of Vigee-Lebrun herself. Several of the Parisian varieties of Snake and Crabtree are recalled by Madame Lebrun, the most detestable in her sight being Chamfort, who must have been odious indeed if she could abhor him, seeing that he was a protege of her favourite the Comte de Vaudreuil. She allows that his talk was very clever, but it was so acrid and so malicious that it had no attraction for her, even if his coarseness and cynicism had not absolutely disgusted her. If she was, during the decade which preceded the outbreak of the Revolution, a social favourite, much invited, she invited many in her turn, and it was quite " the right thing " to pass an hour or two with the Queen's favourite painter. The rooms of her house in the Rue de Clery were simply furnished, though of course the big gallery adjoining, in which her husband did his business, was richly appointed, and hung with pictures of price. Her enemies spread about that she lived in extravagant luxury, and that her hangings, her couches, her candelabra, her plate and every- thing else were after the style of Versailles. One man in particular, the young and vicious Chevalier de Champcenetz, whose hostility she believed to be due to his step-mother or his mother-in-law (we cannot say which, for we only know it was his belle-mere) being jealous of her, declared that her ceilings and walls were richly adorned with gilt mouldings, and that she burnt only the expensive wood of aloes for her fires ! According to Madame Lebrun' s account, the origin of all these stories 4 50 VIGEE-LEBRUN of her luxurious dwelling and habits, and of the jealousy of the helle-mhre of Champcenetz, was that the company who came to her " evenings " in her "modest rooms" was specially select! Men and women of high social position, authors and artists of the first consideration, filled her bedroom (the walls of which were papered to match the chintz curtains and hangings of the bed), where, according to a custom stiU not extinct in Paris, she " received" her guests. She used to say in her old age that in those days in the Rue de C16ry there was sometimes such a crowd of distinguished persons present that, for want of enough sofas or chairs, people sat on the floor, and that " Marshal de Noiailles, very fat and very old, had one evening the greatest difficulty to get up again." He was only about seventy at the time, it is true, but that was regarded as very old in those unhygienic times. Foremost among the artists who came were, as might be supposed, Menageot (who lived upstairs), Brongniart, Hubert Robert, and Vernet, the last two having been among her best friends from her childhood. The Abb6 Delille headed the literary set, with the poet Ecouchard Lebrun (no relative of her husband), and its tail, in the opinion of the hostess, was that poet's friend, Pierre Ginguen^, critic then, and historian after the Revolution, whom she disliked excessively, and who struck a discordant note whenever he appeared. She was an enthusiastic admirer of Ecou- chard Lebrun' s poetry. Like some more famous poets, he did not at all think that his name was writ in water. One day he read out an ode to himself in which he had written : " Comme un cfidre aux vastes ombrages, Mon nom, croissant avec les ages, Rggne sur la post6rite. SiScles, vous Stes ma conquSte ; Et la palme qui ceint ma t6te Rayonne d'immortalitd." No one smiled or had a word to say except "It is magnificent ! It is true." Madame Vigee-Lebrun's admiration for her namesake's work was so high that she had become friendly with the man himself, and, remembering the horrid things that people sometimes said about her, she defended him warmly against those who spoke evil of him. As it happened, the man was a blackguard — a fact she realised at the Revolution, when he turned on those who had been his chief benefactors and published foul verses concerning the very people he had formerly beslavered. On one HER "EVENINGS" 51 occasion the wise Doyen, always her prudent friend, found her alone and in tears after she had been defending the poet against some of his detractors. "What is the matter, my child?" he asked. " I could not stand those men," she replied : " they calumniate Lebrun in a horrible way." When she had repeated what they had been saying (among other things that the poet had sold his wife to the Prince di Conti) Doyen smiled, and said, " I do not assert that all they have been saying is true ; but you are too young, my dear friend, to know that most wits have everything at their country house and nothing at their town house, in other words, everything in the head and nothing in the heart." In one of the long letters addressed to the Princess Natalie Kourakin, Madame Lebrun describes the manner in which she entertained her guests on these occasions. She does not flatter herself that " all these great personages" come to see her. They come to see one another, and to enjoy " the best music that could then be heard in Paris." The leading composers of the day, Gretry (composer of Aucassin et Nicolette and Richard Cceur-de-lion), Sacchini (who came to Paris from England in 1782), and Martini (really named Schwartzendorf, who was Superintendent of Music to Louis XVI) often treated the company in the Rue de Clery to some of the numbers from their operas before those works had been publicly produced. In Sacchini' s case, those compositions probably met with a better reception after Madame Lebrun' s simple and appetising suppers than they did at the Opera-house, unless his biographers have been unkind. The instrumentalists included the violinist Viotti, and the pianist Cramer, and sometimes Prince Henry of Prussia, brother of Frederick the Great. Of the singers, the most remarkable was Jean Pierre Garat, in those days hardly more than a boy, the possessor of one of the most lovely voices ever heard ; and Madame Todi, who sang comic songs and serious ballads equally well, though it would be libellous, perhaps, to describe her as a serio-comique. The hostess herself did not fear to sing occasionally. She had never had time to take any lessons, but, she writes, " my voice was rather pleasing: that amiable Gretry declared that I had some silvery notes." Of all her guests, men or women, nobles or financiers, artists, authoirs, or musicians, the one whose presence at her soirees gave her the greatest pleasure was the Comte de Vaudreuil, of whom she never speaks without kindness. Like nearly all those, men or women, with whom she made friendships after she had been called to Versailles — though she had met 52 VIGEE-LEBRUN him before that time — he was a member of the set of which the actual sovereign was that Duchesse de PoUgnac who, as the closest personal friend of Marie Antoinette, was, with numerous helpers, the cause of many of the Queen's most foolish acts and of much of her unpopularity. Madame Lebrun assures us that her dear Comte de Vaudreuil pos- sessed " every quality and grace which can render a man attractive. He was tall, well made, and bore himself with remarkable nobility and elegance. His expression was agreeable and refined, his countenance as mobile as his ideas, and his kindly smile prejudiced one in his favour at first sight. He was very intelligent and witty, but you were tempted to think that he never opened his mouth except to make your remarks appear more ex- cellent, so amiable and graceful was his way of listening to what you said. Whether the conversation were serious or not, he would adapt himself to every turn and nuance, for he was as well-informed as he was lively ; he was an admirable raconteur. Some of his verses were praised by the most exacting critics, but they were only read by his friends. He was all the less desirous of their being more widely circulated, in that he had in some of them employed both the spirit and the manner of epigram. It was indeed necessary, when he indulged in epigrams, that some bad action had revolted his pure and noble soul, and one can say that, if he showed small pity for what was evil, he was enthusiastic for everything that was good. . . . The only contradiction noticeable in that character so whole- some and so straightforward, is that M. de Vaudreuil very often com- plained that he had to live at Court, when all his friends knew that he would not have been happy anywhere else. After reflecting over this odd idea of his, I satisfied myself as to the explanation. He was, from his charming disposition, a child of nature, which he loved, and from which he got much too little enjoyment ; his rank kept him away too often from a world towards which the soundness of his understanding and his taste for the arts attracted him incessantly. On another side he was undoubtedly pleased to occupy so distinguished a position at Court, and one which he owed to his personal merit, his frank and loyal character. Besides, he adored his prince, Monseigneur the Comte d'Artois, whom he never flattered and whom he never left in his time of trouble. It is rarely that such a friendship is established between two men of whom one is so near a throne ; for this friendship was mutual. ..." At the end of her long eulogy of her idol among nobles, she quotes some lines in which, amid much other THE COMTE DE VAUDREUIL, 1784 NO MORE DINING-OUT 53 flattery of the Comte de Vaudreuil, Ecouchard Lebrun declares that he " always joins good words to good actions." Apart from her own " evenings," and her visits to the houses of some of the grandes dames whose portraits she had painted, Madame Lebrun found recreation after her long hours of work in going out to supper with her intimate friends, especially to houses where she heard some more good music, or where there were pleasant little dances — though she much preferred singing to dancing. Often giving three sittings a day, and returning to her studio directly after dinner, she wore herself out so much that her friends became alarmed to see her getting thinner every month. At length they persuaded her doctor — who must have been a poor kind of doctor to need such persuasion — to order her a nap every afternoon. At first she found it difficult to get to sleep at that time, but by keeping shut up in her bedroom, with the curtains drawn, she at last got into the way of it, and derived such benefit that for the rest of her life she could rarely be induced to give up what she called her " calme." She gives another reason for her resolution to refrain from accepting invitations to dinner, but we may regard it as of little account in com- parison with loss of health and of precious daylight hours, though it may well have been the immediate suggestion for the actual break with her dining-out past. Being dressed in readiness for a dinner-party at the Princesse de Rohan- Rochefort's, and while waiting for her carriage, she went into her studio to look at a portrait commenced that morning. " I was wearing a white satin dress, which I had put on for the first time. I sat down on a chair which was standing opposite my easel, without noticing that my palette was lying upon it. You can imagine that my dress was in such a state that I had to stay at home, and from that moment I took the resolution never to accept any invitations except for suppers." CHAPTER VIII BOOKS AND THEATRES Vig^e-Lebrun's reading — No novels before marriage — " Clarissa Harlowe " — First experience of fiction — Going to theatres — Leading actors and actresses — Sophie Arnould — Mademoiselle Clairon in retirement — Mademoiselle Dumesnil — Madame Dugazon as " Nina " — Mole and Monvel — The ballet — " Two big dogs and a bone " — Vestris and his son HER "calme " was the only physical and mental repose that Madame Lebrun allowed herself between morning and night. There was not so much sitting quietly in armchairs before the fire in those days, nor in hammock-chairs in the garden — such comfortable things were not yet familiar, and the garden seats of Versailles or of Marly were generally of stone. In any case, to enjoy a book in peaceful solitude was not a favourite occupation of the kind of people among whom she lived, and she was not much of a reader at any time, if we may judge from the' extreme rarity of references in her letters and Souvenirs to books that she herself knew. She declares that until after her marriage she read nothing but religious books, among them " La Morale des Saints Peres, of which I did not get tired, for everything is there," and some school- books of her brother. Had she been familiar with the novels of her youth she might have found it more difficult, as she afterwards thought, to have resisted those " amateurs of her face" of whom we have heard already, and she attributes the preservation of her virtue at that time chiefly to the moral and religious principles instilled into her by her mother. When she did feel that, as a married woman, she was free to eat the hitherto forbidden fruit of romance, the first novel she read was a translation of Clarissa Harlowe. That immense novel of Richardson had an extraordinary success in France. Indeed, it probably had more influence on French fiction and French ideas than any other English book ever published. The Abbe Prevost, who himself in Manon Lescaut (written in England) had struck a new note in imaginative literature, honoured 54 " CLARISSA " 55 Richardson by translating his work, and another notable translation was that by Pierre Letourneur. It was no doubt either Prevost' s or Letourneur" s version of Clarissa in which Elisabeth Vigee made her first acquaintance with Enghsh Uterature, and with secular fiction. She could not have fallen in with a better book at that time than this curiously intimate study of a woman's character by a man, the power of which was so strongly felt by Balzac, seventy years after its publication, that its effect is to be recognised again and again throughout the Commie Humaine. The ten volumes of Clarisse Harlowe filled a large part in Madame Lebrun's reading. In her social world new novels, new poems, and new plays were still read in part or in whole by their authors in ladies' drawing- rooms, before they were seen in print, and an intelligent person could often be better informed as to the literature of the day than in our own time is possible, even to the most constant student of the " New Books " columns in the best newspapers. It was, therefore, at evening parties that she obtained most of her knowledge of what was going on in the world of Polite Literature (and of rather impolite literature too, sometimes), as also of the movement of thought in the arts, in politics, and in manners and ideas generally, and certainly the Goddess of Folly did not hold undisputed sway in her large circle of friends. When she did not go out to parties, or entertain in her own rooms, she frequently went to the theatre, being very fond of plays, and acquainted with most of the leading players of the time. Le Kain was the chief figure among the actors in her early days — that impressive tragedian who, dis- covered and instructed by Voltaire, overcame the physical disadvantages of ugliness of face and of voice by the sheer power of his acting. Brizard (we recall the players by their stage names, and not as Cain, or Boitard, or whatever names their fathers bore) was highly successful in " heavy father" parts, and made so great an impression in the versions of King Lear and (Edipus by Ducis, that this most independent of playwrights himself attributed part of his own success to Brizard' s acting. Sophie Arnould's best acting days were over about the time when Madame Lebrun saw her in Castor and Pollux at the Opera. " I was little capable," she tells us, " to judge of her talent as an actress. ... As to her talent as a singer, the music of that time bored me so horribly that I did not attend sufficiently to be able to speak about it. Mademoiselle Arnould was not pretty, her mouth being very ugly indeed, and her eyes 56 VIGEE-LEBRUN alone gave full expression to the remarkable esprit which made her so famous." In this case Vigee-Lebrun may not be altogether fair to Mademoiselle Arnould, whose sarcasms concerning a certain picture by her critic will be recalled on another page. The most famous French actress of the eighteenth century, Mademoiselle Clairon, had retired, smarting under a sense of injustice, in 1765, at forty- three years of age, so that Madame Lebrun never saw her act. But she was specially invited to meet La Clairon at the house of Larive (Le Kain's successor), who owed a great deal to the influence of that actress. " I had imagined her very tall, but she was, on the contrary, very short, and very thin. She held her head very straight, which added dignity to her appearance. I never heard any one else speak with so much emphasis ; for she always retained the tragic tone and the airs of a princess ; but she seemed to me well-informed and intelligent. I sat beside her at dinner, and she talked to me a good deal. Larive paid her the greatest respect ; the deference he had for her showed at once his admiration and his gratitude." Mademoiselle Dumesnil — from whom Peg Wofhngton took lessons in Paris, of whom Garrick declared that she became for him the actual character that she represented, whatever it might be, and who had actually made an audience recoil in terror during one of her tragic scenes — retired from the stage in the year of Vigee-Lebrun' s marriage, so that the painter's memories of the actress were few, and appear, indeed, to be based rather on common knowledge than on personal reminiscence. Her reference to this notoriously unequal player ends with the information, derived from some unnamed person, that Mademoiselle Dumesnil " drank a bottle of wine before going on, and had another bottle kept ready for her in the wings." Judging from many similar stories of public characters and their stimulants, we are justified in believing that the "bottles" were not much bigger than the two tiny phials of egg-flip which Mr. Gladstone used to empty, in full view of the House of Commons, during any one of his great oratorical efforts. In comedy there was no one to equal Pr^ville, who, for many beside Madame Lebrun, was the perfect comedian, Dugazon (who stepped into Preville's shoes on the retirement of that greater actor in 1786) was too farcical to please her, but for his sometime wife she had a great liking, both as a spectator and as a friend. Madame Dugazon had a huge success in the emotional play Nina, ou la Folk par Amour, in which she played A BRILLIANT DEBUTANTE 57 the title role, and Vigee-Lebrun went about twenty times to see the piece, being more affected each time by the pathetic performance of the principal actress. She writes : " I was too great an admirer of Madame Dugazon not to ask her often to come to supper with me. We used to notice that, when she had been plajdng Nina, her eyes were still a little haggard — in a word, that she remained Nina all the evening. It was assuredly to that faculty of profoundly entering into her role that she owed the astonishing perfection of her talent." The artist made an admirable picture of the actress in the character of Nina, and several other artists represented La Dugazon in the same scene of the play, wherein she fancies she can hear her lover's voice in the garden. At the Theatre Fran^ais Mole was highly successful in comedy parts, but was a failure in tragedy, whereas his rival Monvel was admirable both in tragedy and comedy. Vig^e-Lebrun declares that on one occasion when, in the course of his part, Monvel had to bow to the other characters on the stage, she got up in her box and returned his bow, much to the amusement of her companions ! Monvel' s far more famous daughter, whose stage name was Mademoiselle Mars, was only ten years old when Lladame Lebrun left Paris for her long exile in Italy and Russia. But it may conveniently be added here that some forty years afterwards she wrote to the Princess Natalie Kourakin, who had seen Mars in Paris in the days of Louis XVIII: "You will certainly not have forgotten her pretty face, her charming figure, and her angeUc voice. Happily that face, that figure, that enchanting voice are so perfectly preserved, that Mademoiselle Mars has no age, nor do I believe she ever will have ; and every evening the public by its enthusiasm shows that it is of my opinion." The most brilliant stage debut that Madame Lebrun ever witnessed during her long life occurred when she was seventeen. It was that of Mademoiselle Raucourt as Dido. The debutante was about nineteen, and "the beauty of her face, her figure, her voice, and" (one better than La Mars) " her diction, everything gave promise of a perfect actress. She joined to so many advantages a remarkably modest air and a reputation for austere morality which made her very much sought after in the highest society ; people gave her jewels, stage costumes, and money for herself and her father, who never left her. Later on, she changed her behaviour very considerably. ... If Mademoiselle Raucourt did not remain sage, she remained a great tragic actress ; but her voice became so rough and hard that, when you shut your eyes, you might fancy a man was speaking." 58 VIGEE-LEBRUN At the Opera, Madame Saint-Huberti so fascinated Madame Lebrun that for this one member of the audience the rest of the performers were merely people who interfered with her pleasure. In the ballets at that time the men were often more regarded than the women. Gardel and the elder Vestris were, in Vig6e-Lebrun's girlhood, the principal male dancers, and the most notable premise danseuse was the rather notorious Madeleine Guimard. On seeing a dance wherein the two men had to pursue the danseuse, who was small and thin, some wag said it looked like two big dogs quarrelling over a bone ! Gardel is partly remembered as the man who finally banished from the stage the masks formerly worn by dancers ; it was the elder Vestris who said, "There are only three great men in Europe — the King of Prussia, Voltaire, and I." Of his son, who succeeded him at the Opera in 1781, and whom Madame Lebrun calls " the most wonderful dancer that could ever be seen," so light and graceful was his pirouetting, old Vestris declared that if he touched the ground at all, " it was only out of consideration for his comrades ! " CHAPTER IX COUNTRY-HOUSES Country visits — At Colombes with the financier Verdun — At GeneviUiers with the courtier Vaudreuil — Private theatricals — Boredom at Raincy with the Due d'OrlSans and his mor- ganatic wife — Big house-parties of the Marquis de Montesquiou at Maupertuis — The Chateau of Mortefontaine as " Liberty Hall " — A difficult house to sleep in — A ridiculous beau — The " Belle-et-Bonne " of Voltaire — Montmartre — Moulin-Joli THE days when Elisabeth Vigde had to depend for her enjoyment of the country upon occasional Sunday excursions to Marly or Chantilly with the Suzannes were over as soon as she became a welcome guest in wealthy houses. While still in her teens, she was the friend of Madame de Verdun, the wife of one of those powerful farmers of the taxes who, under the system then weighing heavily in France, were authorised to make large fortunes in the process of extracting money out of an impoverished people. M. de Verdun appears to have been a kind- hearted tax-gatherer, who gave away a good deal in charity. He was also a source of considerable profit to artists and art-dealers. His country seat was the historic chateau of Colombes, about five miles from Paris, between Asni^res and Argenteuil. It had once been the home, after her flight from England, of Queen Henrietta Maria, in whose time the wall- paintings by Simon Vouet, Court painter to Louis XIII, were still fresh. The dampness of the Seine valley had now badly damaged them, but M. de Verdun had them thoroughly " repaired," and made them, from the point of view of that period, " as good as new." At Colombes, Elisabeth Vigee, both as maiden and as married woman, was a frequent guest, and used sometimes to stay there, when she could keep away from her studio, for days together. There she found many of her Paris friends, artists, writers, and wits, and took part in amateur theatricals, a favourite amuse- ment at that time, in which she thought herself rather a good performer, as she probably was, being lively of mind and graceful of figure. GeneviUiers, about three miles to the west of Colombes, within the 59 6o VIGEE-LEBRUN same loop of the Seine, was a place to which invitations were specially welcome. It was not particularly pretty, and the house itself was not picturesque. But it was the seat of the Comte de Vaudreuil, who had bought it and furnished it " plainly" — according to the ideas of the age — and " in the best taste." As it had a little theatre, theatricals could there be enjoyed with unusual advantage. Eminent professionals [used to assist, and comic-operas were performed in which Madame Dugazon, the honey-voiced Garat, and the retired actors Cailleau and Laruette (superb in parts of the "father" and "guardian" kind) shared the r61es with Madame Vigee-Lebrun, her brother Etienne and his charming wife, and that wife's brother M. de Riviere. The Comte d'Artois (afterwards Charles X) and his followers were often among the audience on these occasions, and the first time they unexpectedly entered the theatre Madame Lebrun was so nervous that, but for the confusion such a withdrawal must have caused, she would have thrown up her part. However, "our excellent Prince" with his " usual grace " came behind the scenes after the first piece " to encourage us with every imaginable compliment," and all was well. Lebrun, by the way, the artist's husband, was custodian of the Comte d'Artois' collection of pictures. Early in 1780, Madame Lebrun stayed for some time at Raincy, in the forest of Bondy, where the Due d' Orleans (grandson of the Regent) had a country place. This veteran soldier was more devoted to intel- lectual society than most of his race. He had been a keen amateur actor in his time, but he did not " return to the stage " when the clever young artist was staying with him and his morganatic wife, Madame de Montesson. Had he done so, Madame Lebrun would have been less bored. As it was, the only amusement she found at Raincy, apart from the society of the amiable Madame Bertholet, " who played very well on the harp," was in watching the meets and runs of the ducal buckhounds. " I there discovered," she writes, "why it is that there are men, and especially princes, who become passionately fond of hunting, for that exercise, where a large number take part in it, certainly provides a grand spectacle. The general movement, joined to the sound of the horns, has truly something of a warlike effect." How truly an artist she here shows herself ! It is not the zest of the chase, the exhilaration of the exercise on horseback in the open air, that, in her opinion, make men go out hunting. It is the fine picture which ■ ^ *'- iSkviM''^^^^^^^^^^^^^H ^^^^^H k 4L .''^«Sh1^^^^H ^^^^^^^^^^^v ^^^Bn^H ^I^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^H ^^^^^H^ -N.-^;.^iMM fi^^^H ^^^^^^^ ^ "^^■s.J^^^*°^^^^|BI^M '-r * ^^^^^^^^^^^^^H ^^^^^^^^H B^^^^^^^.^ ^^^^"'"^''^bI ''' ^IH^^^^^^^^I PI^H ■p^^n^|||^^|flP # 'Ij^^^^H ^ iBk% i^PIHBk "^Hh ^^^Rp J HiaiiJ ^BhL^ ^'^^B^^^L ^^i^^^h fv M»» /^^SkMlM ^^^^^^^.''~'~ ^H Er ^^^^^^^^^^H^ X ^^^UbB^BI^^^^^H ^^^KJ ' «^ 1^ ^^BRv '/ ^HSH^HH ^^^^^^Bk. ^B ye/ , 'IH^E^v .^1^^^ 'Jl^^IBBI^^^^^H ^^1 1^7 . .»^;^^HiHHiH ^^^i ^ ih\J^^-^^^B^ ^ '"9 L H ^^m ■''' ■^St^^^^^^^KuSSHKI^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ COUNTRY VISITS 6i is shown, to the accompaniment of martial music ! But she was not at Raincy to enjoy herself ; she was there on business, having been com- missioned by the Duke to paint his own portrait and his wife's. The artist was at that time expecting the birth of her first-born, and was rather scandalised one day, when she was painting Madame de Montesson's portrait, by the conduct of the old Princesse de Conti, who (having called to see the artist) persisted in addressing her as " Mademoiselle." That fashion of marking the inferiority of the wives of bourgeois and " roturiers " to the great people who so addressed them — MoU^re's wife, for instance, was commonly called " Mademoiselle Moliere," — had gone out with the reign of Louis XV. Maupertuis, the seat of the Marquis and Marquise de Montesquiou, was one of the houses to which Madame Lebrun specially liked to be invited. She first went there, it would seem, to paint the portraits of her host and hostess and their daughter-in-law, a girl of fifteen, of whom she made a charming picture. The Marquis, who was equerry to the King's brother, the Comte de Provence, lived in great state at Maupertuis, where not only magnificence was regarded, but good order. From his own wealth he was able to entertain large house-parties in great luxury, thirty or forty guests being usually there whenever the family were at home, and by his office at court he was able to make free use of the horses and carriages of his royal master. In Paris, Madame Lebrun found the Marquis de Montesquiou stiff and inclined to pick faults, but at Maupertuis he was a different creature, agreeable both in what he said and in his way of saying it. One may describe him as a pessimist in town and an optimist in the country. One evening when he was at Maupertuis, there was, for a change, only a small number of guests. The Marquis drew the horoscope of each in turn. For Madame Lebrun he predicted long life, and that she would be a pleasant old woman, " because she was not a coquette." A strong contrast to Maupertuis was afforded by Mortefontaine, eighteen miles north-east of Paris, where, in the chateau surrounded by a beautiful park (with a lake which was to form the subject of one of Corot's finest pictures), lived Monsieur Le Pelletier "of Morfontaine" — as the name of his territory was usually pronounced, and as Madame Lebrun followed a common practice in spelling it. Though he was fond of improving his intelligent mind and his park, he kept his house very badly. Indeed, Madame Lebrun could not remember that she had ever seen 62 VIGEE-LEBRUN such an untidy interior. He was, in everything, the most desultory and ridiculous of beings. One of his habits was to take notes at the time, in a little pocket-book, of everything that was said in his hearing which seemed remarkable. "I have often tried," says Madame Lebrun, "to read over his shoulder, but although his writing was very big, it was so formless that I coidd not make out a word, and I defy his heirs to make use of any reminiscences he may have left behind him." He was tall and gaunt ; he wore an immense pointed wig, like a sugarloaf, with curls at the sides ; and, at fifty-five, he was for ever boasting of his irresistible powers of fascinating women. Order and ceremony were alike banished from Mortefontaine, and everybody behaved as if he was in his own home, only with more disregard for the peace of other people. The Comte de Vaudreuil, the Chevalier de Coigny (another of the Trianon courtiers), Ecouchard Lebrun, Brongniart, Hubert Robert, Etienne Vigee and Riviere used to amuse themselves and the rest of the company with charades, which they made up in the night, and whenever one of them thought of a good word for a charade he would knock up all the guests to tell them this important piece of news. " This mad fun shows what liberty one had in that beautiful place," says the artist who records it ; and it undoubtedly seems pretty good evidence that the Chateau de Mortefontaine was more of an "Hotel Tohu-bohu" (to borrow the name of a modern French farce) than of a quiet country-house. In illustration of her host's unjustifiable conceit concerning his personal charm, Madame Lebrun tells a story which was told to her by the Chevalier de Coigny. One morning when the Chevalier called upon Le Pelletier, he found this rather nauseous boaster lying on a couch, beside a table covered with bottles, pots of ointment, scent-sachets, and other such aids to lady- killing, and so pale, not having yet put on his rouge, that he looked as if he were dpng. " Ah ! my dear Chevalier," he cried, " how delighted am I to see you ! You can give me your excellent advice on a matter which occupies a great deal of my attention. You must know that I have just broken off all my love affairs ; I am free, absolutely free ; and you, who know the prettiest women at court, will tell me to which of them you would advise me to pay my addresses." The Chevalier, who enjoyed " roasting" this absurd fop, named all the greatest beauties of Versailles, but each one he mentioned had some defect in the eyes of M. Le Pelletier. At length the Chevalier, getting rather bored, no doubt, by the unexpected duration of the talk, burst out laughing and said : " My dear sir, since AN ELDERLY FOP 63 you are so hard to please, I advise you to follow the example of Narcissus, and to fall in love with yourself." Madame Lebrun gives yet another example of Le Pelletier's absurdities, which will remind George Meredith's readers of the Martin Tinman in The House on the Beach, who, after having once appeared at Buckingham Palace, used to put on his court suit every day at home. On some public occasion with which, as Prevot des Marchands, M. Le Pelletier was officially concerned, the King gave him the cordon bleu (ribbon of an order of knighthood), and the man's head was turned by its possession. He wore it always. "I almost believe he must have put it on ovier his dressing- gown," his friend, who was herself entirely proof against his charms, declares. " One day I saw him climbing about the rocks which border the lake at Mortefontaine, dressed according to his custom as though he were about to start for Versailles. I cried out to him from below, where I was walking, deep in my rural reveries, that his blue ribbon was quite absurd in that beautiful bit of nature. He was not in the least annoyed with me for having thus made him conscious of his eccentricity, for after all it must be said that this poor M. Le Pelletier was the best man in the world." One of her country visits was to Villette, the hostess of which was the charming " Belle-et-Bonne," as Voltaire named her, the delight of that old philosopher's closing years, who, with his full consent, had married the blase Marquis de Villette in November 1777, six months before Voltaire's death. Madame de Villette, remembering the trials of her own girlhood, from which the kindness of Madame Denis and Voltaire had saved her, looked after the welfare of the young girls in the village, and took a personal share in their education. Vigee-Lebrun herself saw Voltaire at the Theatre Fran^ais on the evening of his " Triumph," but she never was presented to him. However, she had a memory of his last days which gave her great and natural satis- faction. Voltaire was stapng at the town residence of the Villettes, that house (still standing) on the left bank where he was shortly to die, and Madame Lebrun was very anxious to visit him, but having heard that he was greatly fatigued by the number of visitors, she gave up the idea. It happened, however, that Hall, the Swedish artist, who had just finished a miniature of her, showed it to Voltaire, and " The famous old man, after having gazed at it for some time, kissed it again and again." She was, of course, much flattered, and was grateful to her friend Hall, whose 64 VIGEE-LEBRUN handsome daughters, two or three years later, sat for the figures in her picture of La Paix ramenant L' Abondance, Lucie being the "Plenty" and Adele the " Peace." On the occasion of Madame' s visit to the Villettes in the country, the Marquis, who had taken quite seriously the name of " The French TibuUus" which Voltaire had given him, greeted her with some verses in which he called her " Sublime Lebrun, the pride of France," and declared that the glory which accompanied her made his little chiteau seem great, and restored the country to life, and that she herself made the sunlight more beautiful, and realised for him his castles in Spain ! Women (and men too) could stand a good deal of that kind of gush in the eighteenth century, and Madame Lebrun had a fairly good appetite for such literary sweets, with which her namesake, Lebrun " Pindar," as he liked to be called, and her brother Etienne, kept her well supplied. As a brief example of " Pindar's" flattery, here are some lines from a poem in which the nightin- gales of Mortefontaine are made to say concerning the artist : " Nous I'avons vue errer sur ce rivage Et rembellir par ses appas, D'un seul de ses regards, dans ce petit bocage, Mille Amours sont n6s a la fois ; Et nous, sous le mdme feuillage. Nous etions dej4 n4s des accents de sa voix." Madame Lebrun enjoyed one of the privileges of Royal princes, in that she nearly always found herself in her own little coterie of intimates wherever she went to visit or to dine. At Mortefontaine, at Colombes, at Genevilliers, at Tivoli on the slopes of Montmartre, where she was almost a weekly guest of the financier Boutin, her special court, Vaudreuil her lord-in-waiting, Ecouchard Lebrun her poet-laureate, Brongniart and Delille gentlemen in attendance (one can scarcely call Delille her chaplain, for the church had little place in her circle) must have received many an extra invitation because her hosts knew that she would like to find them wherever she went. Montmartre was almost rural in those days, at least as rural as Bellevue to-day ; and more restful still for the hard-working artist was Moulin-Joli, the delightful home, on an island in the Seine, of M. Watelet, a wealthy Receiver-General, who not only loved to surround himself with authors and painters, but was himself a man of letters and an artist of distinction, a member both of the Academic Fran9aise and of the Academic de Peinture. ^,^,»->>iiS-sz'^ga,>^..„.. i££i«n,^ MOULIN JOLI 65 The life at Moulin-Joli in summer was rather like that of some large villa on the Thames above Richmond in our day. " Ah," wrote Madame Lebrun to the Princess Natalie in after years, " how I should have loved to stroll with you through those woods of Moulin-Joli! Here, indeed, was one of those spots that one can never forget ; so beautiful, so varied, so picturesque, so Elysian, so wild — in fact so ravishing altogether ! Imagine a big island, covered with woods, gardens, and orchards, cut in two by the Seine. One went from one bank to the other by a bridge of boats, adorned on either side by flowers planted in boxes, and whereon seats, placed at equal distances, allowed one to enjoy at one's ease the perfumed air and the lovely views. Seen from a little way off, that bridge, with its reflexion in the water, produced a charming effect. Forest trees, of noble growth, bordered the river on the right, whUe on the left the bank was covered with immense poplars and weeping-willows, the boughs of which made arbours with their leafy branches. One of these willows formed a huge canopy, beneath which one could rest, and dream pleasant dreams. The Prince de Ligne, in his memoirs, speaks of that superb willow. I cannot tell you how happy I was in that lovely place, of which, to my mind, I have never seen the equal." It was a great disappointment to Madame Lebrun that, after her return from Russia in 1802, she missed a chance of buying Moulin-Joli, owing to the non-arrival of her savings from St. Petersburg. The estate was sold for about £3,000 to a coppersmith, who turned the beautiful trees into fuel. CHAPTER X CALONNE A famous balloon-ascent — The m&nage Lebrun — Lovely women and pretty costumes — Vigee- Lebrun's portrait of Calonne — Sophie Arnould's malicious mot — Gossip about Calonne and Vig6e-Lebrun — The artist described as the Aspasia of Calonne's reign — Lebrun's belated defence of his wife's reputation — Banknotes in a snuff-box — Character of Calonne — Per- sistence of the scandal — The bogus " Comte de " Rivarol a possible enemy of the artist — A coat-turning poet DAYS and nights, or merely afternoon visits, at one or other of the pleasant places we have been receilling, helped to preserve the health and increase the happiness of the busy portrait-painter. Sometimes, of course, she would leave her easel even on her working-days, as when, one summer afternoon, she went to the Tuileries Gardens to see the ascent of MM. Robert and Charles in a balloon. A huge crowd had collected, for the first balloons were as attractive as the first aeroplanes; and when the cords were cut and the balloon rose majestically to so great a height that it went out of sight, many people, from mingled admiration and anxiety for the aeronauts, had tears in their eyes. Among them was Madame Lebrun. Such thrilling extra- excitements were, however, rare in the life of one of the most industrious of women, industrious in a period when very few women of her class and associations did any work beyond their household duties. She was making a large income, according to the standeird of a time when a thousand francs was considered a very good price for a big picture by a distinguished artist, and when few but those who dipped in the coffers of the state were rich in the modern meaning of the term. Two thousand to eight thousand francs were about the prices she generally got (or rather her husband got) for her pictures. He gave her very little cash, but as she had excellent credit, a carriage and horses, and plenty of prosperous friends, she never felt the want of ready-money very seriously 66 SETTING A FASHION 67 for herself, at that time. The real objection to Lebrun's conduct of her affairs was that he spent everything, putting nothing out at interest for the future, and that she had little or no spare money for charitable purposes. However, up to 1785, at any rate, she lived, on the whole, as happy a life as any woman married to such a man could expect to live. He troubled her much less than he might have done, his principle being that so long as she did not interfere with him, she herself could go where she Hked, and do what she liked. Her work was usually to her taste, her sitters being women or men of the Court or of the plutocracy, with an occasional artist or actress. Among her most successful portraits were those of the Duchesse de Gramont-Caderousse, painted in 1784, and of the Baronne de Crussol in the following year, both exhibited at the Salon of 1785. Marie Gabrielle de Sinety, Duchesse de Gramont-Caderousse, as she appears in Vigee-Lebrun's picture, is a delightful example of feminine charm in the fullness of youthful happiness. Here is the artist's little story of this portrait, which attracted so much public attention on its first exhibition, and excited the enthusiasm of critics expressed both in prose and in verse : " As I could not endure powdered hair, I induced the beautiful Duchess not to wear any powder when she came to be painted. Her hair was of ebony black ; I separated it upon the forehead, and arranged it in irregular curls. After my sitting, which ended at dinner- time, the Duchess left her hair just as it was and went in that state to the play. So pretty a woman as she was, can set the fashion ; that mode took lightly at first, and at length became general." The Baronne de Crussol appears to be older than the Duchesse de Gramont-Caderousse and is not so pretty. But she is very handsome, with her fine eyes and that coquettish mouth which is as common to the women of Vigee-Lebrun as is the enlarged thyroid gland in the necks of the women painted by Rossetti. Portraits of the Comtesse de Chatenay, a blonde with big eyes, and the Comtesse de Clermont-Tonnerre, with a turban on her head, were exhibited that year, and also the fine portrait of Gretry, now at Versailles, and that of the Controller-General of the Finances, Charles Alexandre de Calonne. This last portrait provided an opportunity for the worst attack from malicious pens to which Madame Lebrun was ever subjected. That one of the critics should refer to the portraits of Calonne and the four beautiful women as suggesting a sultan in his seraglio was more unpleasant for these ladies than for the Minister or the artist. 68 VIGEE-LEBRUN But when another " critic" said of Calonne's picture "it is here that the greatest number of difficulties have been overcome by the painter, and that she has the most completely proved herself to be mistress of her subject," it was a more serious matter for the object of this equivocal praise. The story thus plainly stated in a jeu de mots was common gossip in the boudoirs of that time. "When Sophie Arnould saw at the Salon this portrait of the Controller-General, in which he is shown seated, the lower part of the legs being unseen, she said : " Madanje Lebrun has cut off his legs, so that he must stay where he is, and remain faithful." In all her life, nothing angered Vigee-Lebrun so much as the common talk that she had shared in the ample pickings which Calonne was publicly accused of having taken from the coffers of the State. At the time when the portrait was painted he had only lately been appointed to his great position. It was said that the payments made to the artist by the Minister were far beyond the price she would have received for such a picture from any other quarter, and that this extreme generosity, from a man who had been heavily in debt when he took office, was due to a Uaison between the artist and her sitter. Before finally considering the merits or demerits of a question so frequently brought up in her own correspond- ence and memoirs, let us see the kind of way in which the affair was mentioned by her contemporaries at the time when she and Calonne were acquainted. In the letters (the originals of which are preserved in the Imperial Library of St. Petersburg) from some one closely in touch with the Court life at Versailles to some one in Poland, which were published in Paris during the Second Empire under the title Correspondance Secrete inSdite sur Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, La Cour et la Ville de I'jyy d iyg2, there are several references to this Calonne-Lebrun business. In January 1786 the writer says : " M. de Calonne, who displays grandeur and magnificence in all his acts, has given New Year's presents to Madame Lebrun. First of all, he offered her a handful of pistachio-nuts, wrapped in paper-twists, and while she amused herself in unwrapping them, he laughed and said, ' Take care not to tear the mottoes ! ' What was the astonishment of Madame Lebrun ! Each bonbon was wrapped in a bank- note for 300 francs. After jesting about such a pleasing kind of paper- wrappings, M. de Calonne took from his pocket a superb gold box which he presented to that amiable artist, saying as he did so, ' Here is some- thing to keep your sweets in ! ' Madame Lebrun, wishing to put the Marie, Duchesse de Gramont-Caderousse (Dr. Williamson, for the Executors of the late .: J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.) From a miniature by Villers after the;' portrait by Vigde-Lebrun Madame Vigee-Lebrun and her Daughter (Dr. Williamson, for the Executors; : of the late J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq.) Fromja miniature by Janvier PARIS GOSSIP 69 bank-notes in this box, found that it was already filled with new twenty- franc pieces, each wrapped in a bank-note of the same value as the others." In the early spring of 1787, after the dismissal of Calonne from his place as Controller-General (in which he had only succeeded in bringing the finances into a more desperate state than they were in before), the same correspondent writes, again from Versailles : " It is positively declared that, since his disgrace, M. de Calonne has given a splendid set of carriage-horses to Madame Lebrun. He so Httle expected to be sent far away from Paris that, a few minutes before he received the order to go into exile, he had asked the Jacobin Monks in the Rue Saint-Dominique, near the house to which he had retired on leaving the Ministry of Finance, to find him a place where he could store a thousand casks of wine and five hundred loads of wood," a statement which has an air of exaggeration, to say the least. At the following Christmas-time the writer has a last, and double shot at the reputation of the artist, when he tells his distant correspondent that : " The celebrated Aspasia of the reign of M. de Calonne, Madame Lebrun, has departed for Italy, to rejoin de Vaudreuil." This last statement was certainly untrue. The Comte de Vaudreuil had gone to Italy, but it was not until they met in Vienna, six years later, that Madame Lebrun saw him again. Although not written till several years later, the defence of his wife which M. Lebrun printed in 1793 chiefly refers to the time of which we are speaking. It was, in reality, published (gratis) by its author to shield himself from the unpleasant attentions of Jacobins who suggested that, as Madame Lebrun was notoriously an ardent Royalist and had helped Calonne to waste the national wealth, her husband was probably equally guilty of attachment to the ancien regime, and might well be sent to prison, if not to the guillotine. In her girlhood, wrote this now much-worried man, the conduct of the Citoyenne Lebrun, sage and modest, gave no opening to ill-nature. As a wife, she was everything she ought to be. Enemies asserted that Calonne had given her pastilles wrapped in bank- notes, pensions on the Treasury (" formerly Royal "), interests in the finances, and so on, but it was a tissue of falsehoods. Calonne came to the house before he was a Minister of State. When he had been appointed Controller-General of the Finances, people pestered the Citoyenne Lebrun to use her influence with him on their behalf. He had sent her, in pay- ment for his portrait, bank-notes to the total amount of 3,600 francs, enclosed in a snuff-box worth about 1,200 francs. " She had never seen 70 VIGEE-LEBRUN Calonne again ; he came no more to see her ; he had paid for his picture." Where, asks Lebrun, are the people who benefited by the Citoyenne's interest with Calonne ? It had been spread about that the Controller- General had paid for a house which the Lebruns had built in the Rue du Gros-Chenet, where the Citoyen Lebrun was now residing. So far was this from being true, that a good part of the bills for that house had not yet been settled. In any case, it, and the other house in the Rue de Clery, were the only property his wife possessed, though she had long been earning plenty of money — as much, indeed, as five-and-twenty thousand francs (£i,ooo) a year, while he also had made a good deal by " a very active and very extensive " trade in works of art. He did not say that the plenty of money his wife had earned had largely been expended in his own pleasures, in which she had no share. And it may also be noted again, in passing on, that a thousand a year then meant very much more than it would mean at the present day. Even Gainsborough, as Mr. James Greig shows in his admirable monograph on Madame Lebrun' s great contemporary, did not expect to have more than a thousand a year to spend when, at forty-seven years of age, and in high repute as a portrait-painter, he left Bath for London. The naturally anxious Citoyen Lebrun further stated, in proof of his wife's innocence of dipping in the public Treasury, that there had been no lavish expenditure in his house — that at most four servants (three women and one man) had been kept, and asked why it was so difficult to believe that he and his wife had enough money for so modest a household, and for building another house, if they desired so to invest their savings ? It is not to be supposed that Calonne, intelligent, agreeable, and unprincipled, would have had any more scruples in making love to the charming woman who was painting his portrait than did the Choiseuls and Bries of fifteen years earlier ; when, as we know from herself, adven- turous young men used to "sit" to her with the deliberate intention of seducing her. In those days of her maidenhood her mother acted as chaperon ; now the artist was a married woman with no affection for her husband. She was a protegee of the Queen, and it was to the Queen's influence with the King that Calonne himself — said the foes of Marie Antoinette — owed his appointment to the control of the Finances, so that in devotion, chiefly selfish on his part, to the cause of the Queen, artist and sitter had a certain kind of sympathy at the outset. It may be illogical to say that a man who is dishonest in money matters would be unscrupulous EujROPEAN Magazine . M. DE C^\L OJVE CHARLES ALEXANDRE DE CALONNE After the portrait ol Vig.;-e-LeI>niii . From thL- EiMopean Magazine. i78q 70I CALONNE 71 in love, but there is no doubt that as a financier Calonne had very loose principles. No sooner had he obtained his appointment as Controller- General than he had the audacity to go to the King and say : " Sir, I owe two hundred thousand francs. Another man would conceal the fact from you, and pay his debts out of the funds entrusted to him ; I prefer to acknowledge them ! " King Louis, a simple soul, who was much impressed by this candid avowal, went to his desk, and took out some securities to the amount stated, which, without saying a word, he handed to the new Minister. Calonne kept the shares, and paid his debts in some other way. His governing principles in financial operations were that a man who wishes to borrow must appear to be rich, and that in order to seem rich he must make a great display. Economy, he said, is doubly disastrous ; it warns the men with money not to lend to an embarrassed Treasury, and it makes the arts languish as much as prodigality keeps them alive. The apphcation of these principles, in his case, was itself " doubly disastrous." It sent him, half ruined, into exile, and it hastened the coming of the Revolution. Calonne, who gave away freely what did not belong to him, could have had no difficulty with his conscience in spending the money wrung from the tradespeople and peasantry on his own pleasures, but there is not the smallest substantial evidence that he gave Madame Lebrun more than a fair price for his portrait. Had he done so, the money would soon have got into the hands of her rascally husband ; it was not suggested that she received it secretly. The story of the extravagance in which she lived, at the immediate expense of Calonne, was repeated round and round, with just such varia- tions as this kind of gossip always takes. Some jester in 1789, at a time when Calonne was in London and Madame Lebrun still in the Rue de C16ry, published a letter in which she is supposed to write to the ex-Minister from that address, beginning with " My dear love," and ending with the hope that " the beauties of Covent Garden will not make you forget your faithful V. Lebrun." This bogus letter assures the exile that France owes its regeneration to him in the same way in which London owed its magnificence to the person who started the great conflagration of 1666. It was the coal-fires of England that had made Calonne so pensive as he now seemed to be. " When you burnt rosewood in my grate," says the letter, "and lit my candle with bank-notes such ideas had not entered your head." 72 VIGEE-LEBRUN In the Galerie des Dames Frangaises, published in London in 1790, some one — probably that self-styled " Comte de" Rivarol who was so prolific a source of such literature — gives a " character sketch " of Madame Vig^e-Lebrun, in which she is called "Charites." This lady, it is said, " had devoted her brilliant artistic talents [traits) to a being worthy of that homage. He began the great work which occupies our attention ; calumny fell foul of him, wishing to give the first blow to the Colossus who to-day lies low. . . He was struck by the blow, and destroyed by it, and a priest, now also a fugitive, raised himself upon his ruin, whilst his adversary hastened away to breathe under a free and peaceful sky." " The great work which occupies our attention " was presumably the Revolution, then rapidly advancing on its course ; and the credit given to Calonne for " beginning" it was partly his due, whether we take it as satirically or seriously intended. If seriously, it might well refer to the fact that part of the hopeless mixture of ideas which he had proposed as a remedy for the bankruptcy of the Treasury was the extension of taxation to the privileged classes. There is some reason to think that Rivarol was an active, though unavowed enemy of Madame Lebrun, though the only offence that, so far as we know, she had given to him personally was that when her brother brought him to her studio, in order that she might make his acquaintance, she was too busy to listen to the flow of amusing talk for which he was celebrated. " I was putting what we call ' harmony ' to several pictures which were otherwise finished. One knows that this last process does not allow any inattention, so that in spite of the wish I had always had to hear M. de Rivarol talk, I enjoyed very little of the charm of his conversation, being so much preoccupied. Besides, he talked with such volubility that I was almost bewildered by it. I observed, however, that he had a hand- some face and an exceedingly elegant figure ; none the less he found me so duU that he never came to my house again. It is true there might be another reason for his not returning there. He passed his life with the Marquis de Champcenetz, who was always exceedingly ill-natured towards me." It was Champcenetz, as we have already seen, who spread about that she lived extravagantly in a gilded palace. Lebrun' s " defence " of his wife, the gist of which has been given, was occupied rather in denying that she had been enriched by Calonne than that she had been the mistress of that highly unpopular Minister. As to a pension which she was declared to have received from Calonne, A TURNCOAT-POET 73 it is not unlikely that the origin of this particular clause in the variable indictment against her may be found in the fact that he had given a pension of two thousand francs to " Pindar " Lebrun, the poet who was said to write for him the verses which he claimed as his own compositions. One day, when Calonne read one of these bits of poetry to Rivarol, and asked him, with a self-satisfied air, whether he thought the lines " sentaient le colUge," his visitor replied, " Oh ! non, Monseigneur, mais quelque peu la pension." In further return for Calonne' s pecuniary favours "Pindar" Lebrun compared the incompetent Minister of Louis XVI to Sully, the incom- parable Minister of Henri IV ! It may be added that at the Revolution he turned round and poured abuse on the Court and its Ministers ; later on he eulogised Napoleon (who gave him a pension three times as great as the first), and had he not died before the return of the Bourbons, there is no reason to doubt that he would have written an ode to the glory of Louis XVIII. The history of courtly poets is less pleasing than that of Court painters. CHAPTER XI REPLIES TO DEFAMERS Madame Vigee-Lebrun's reply to her calumniators — Her simple tastes — Why her carriage was in Calonne's courtyard at night — The Minister's periwig as evidence of her innocence — — A point in her favour — Her husband's consolatory promise — The benefit of the doubt WHAT was Madame Vigee-Lebrun's own reply to the oft-recurring statement that she had received large presents of money and money's-worth from the Controller-General of Finance, and that she had been his mistress ? In the first place, she asserts that she cared very little for money — which, though she liked the comforts and pleasures that money may buy, is true. Her husband, as we know already, took all that she got for her work, leaving her often with no more than six francs in her pocket — women had pockets in those days — ^and refusing to let her have fifty francs when she asked for that amount. He seems to have paid her bills, however, more or less regularly. But " I spent very little indeed on my clothes," she writes. " I was even accused of negligence, because I only wore white frocks of muslin or linen, and never had trimmed dresses except when I went to paint portraits at Versailles. The dressing of my hair cost me nothing, for I did it myself, and usually I twisted in it a muslin kerchief, as you may see in all my portraits of myself, with the exception of that in which I am wearing a Grecian costume." All this is not of much con- sequence either for or against her virtue, though it supports her denial of extravagance. "Though I think," says this much-abused lady, "that I was the most harmless creature that ever existed, I had enemies ; not only were there women who had a spite against me for being less ugly than themselves, but a good many others could not forgive me for being suc- cessful, and securing higher prices for my portraits than they could get ; the consequence was that a thousand things were said against me, one of which, above all the rest, gave me intense pain. Shortly before the 74 MADAME LEBRUN'S DEFENCE 75 Revolution I painted a portrait of M. de Calonne, and I exhibited it at the Salon of 1785. . J I was subjected to the most odious calumnies on that occasion ; first of all a thousand absurdities were circulated concerning the payments I had received for the portrait. It was said that the Controller- General had given me a large number of bonbons wrapped in bank-notes, also that I had been given, in a pdti, a sum of money large enough to empty the Treasury. . . . The truth is, that M. de Calonne had sent me four thousand francs in bank-notes, in a box which has been valued at twenty louis. Some of those who were present when I received that box are still alive, and can bear witness to what I say. They were even surprised at the smallness of the payment, for, a little while before, M. de Beaujon had sent me eight thousand francs for a portrait of the same size, and no one thought I was overpaid." She goes on to the specific accusation that she had been over-intimate with M. de Calonne. Apart from mere inventions by her enemies, the tale was founded, according to her account, on the fact that, just at that time, her husband had built the house in the Rue du Gros-Chenet (not fully paid for till she returned from Russia in 1801), and that one night her carriage had been seen waiting in the small hours outside the Ministry of Finance. She asserts that on the evening in question she had lent her carriage to a lady who actually had a liaison with Calonne, and who had taken advantage of Madame JLebrun's kindness to save her own reputation at the expense of the owner of the carriage. Putting all ques- tions of morality on one side, it is certainly in the highest degree unlikely that so intelligent a woman as Madame Lebrun would have allowed her coachman to drive up and down, or wait in the courtyard of Calonne' s official residence while she spent the night there. She was not a fool. Her own strongest "proof" of innocence in respect of Calonne, however, was not a matter of evidence, but of taste. After emphasising her extreme simplicity in personal adornment she clinches her " defence " in the following words : " Assuredly it was not such a woman as that who was likely to be seduced by the title of a Receiver-General of Finance, and in all other respects Monsieur de Calonne always seemed to me Httle seductive ; for he wore the periwig of a Treasurer {une penuque fiscale) . A periwig ! you can imagine how, with my love of the picturesque, I should have been able to get used to a periwig ! I have always detested them, even to the point of refusing to marry a wealthy suitor because he wore a periwig; and I much dishked having to paint the portraits of men with such things on their heads." 76 VIGEE-LEBRUN Were it not that she was a very old woman when she put forward this final reply to the Calonne calumny, which still vexed her, we might almost regard it as evidence that there really was some ground for the story so persistently repeated between 1785 and 1793. Wigs of any sort were certainly becoming unfashionable in the days when Calonne was in power, and Parisians in general were allowing their hair to grow long, to be powdered and tied with a bow at the back. But the periwig for great officers of state and church still held its own in France up to the Revolution, as it did in England till long after, our Bishops retaining their wigs into the Victorian era, our judges and barristers and the Speaker of our House of Commons wearing them officially at the present day. Proverbs, according to a famous Englishman of the eighteenth century. Lord Chesterfield, are not to be used in polite conversation, but it is impossible not to be reminded of the familiar saying as to one man being allowed to steal a horse whilst another may not look over the wall, when we read Madame Lebrun's remarks on M. de Calonne' s periwig, and re- member that only a year before his portrait was exhibited she had shown two of the Comte de Vaudreuil, in which that perfect friend is seen wearing a wig which only differs from the Controller-General's in being less abundantly curled. If a charming woman of our own time, accustomed to the society of people of refined taste and of the latest fashion, were accused by busy- bodies of being too friendly with an unscrupulous public man, and she were to ask : " Is it likely that I, who dress in the quietest fashion, and do my hair as simply as possible, should allow a man who still wears a frock-coat and mutton-chop whiskers to make love to me ? " it would probably be held to be very unlikely indeed. When, however, it was realised that this man who w£is so behind in the fashions had been placed in one of the highest positions in the state through the wire-pulling of a clique to which, if the lady herself did not actually belong, she was very closely attached by interest and long personal friendships, that he was a lively person of rather engaging manners and conversation, and that the lady's husband had ceased to interest her heart, her question might appear not quite so easy to answer in the negative without some further evidence of the extreme improbability that she wished her hearers to recognise. This business about Calonne is a source of difficulty to any one who wants to find out all that is to be known as to the nature and experiences of Vigee-Lebrun. If she said in so many words, " the thing is an absolute HER HUSBAND'S PROMISE! ^^ lie," we at the present day could readily accept her disclaimer. But that is just what she does not say, the gist of her remarks on the subject illus- trating the ancient method of begging the question with that other question, " Is it Ukely ? " So far as her 'public reputation was concerned, the scandal mainly con- fined itself to the presents she was said to have received from the Finance Minister, who was known to be scattering money right and left while, in spite of excessive taxation, the deficit in the national balance-sheet was constantly growing. Only a few great families which kept aloof from the Court would have thought it very wrong of Madame Lebrun to have one lover or more, so long as the loving was unobtrusively conducted. To all but his own party, which by no means included the whole Trianon set, Calonne was as odious as was Strafford — no comparison is suggested between the characters of the two men — to the Parliamentary party in England. Evident factors in favour of Madame Lebrun' s innocence are that she was too keen on her work to have much time or inclination for galli- vanting, and that had she been disposed towards lightness of conduct, there were several men of her acquaintance who would certainly have had a far better chance of winning her affection than the lover assigned to her. What did her husband do at the time to defend his wife's reputation ? She was for ever saying to him, " You see what infamous things are being spread about," but although she declares that he showed a sainte colore his words are more suggestive of a holy calm. " Let them say what they like : when you are dead I will raise in my garden a pyramid reaching to the sky, and I will have a Ust of your pictures engraved on it ; people will then know very well where your fortune came from." His efforts at a later period to persuade the Jacobin world that she had not taken public money from an unjust steward of the public property effected its object, if he was really in serious danger, for he survived the Terror, and if his nerves were for a time horribly shaken by justifiable dread of arrest, he retained his freedom and his stock-in-trade. It may be added that some Jacobin official, into whose hands a letter from Madame Lebrun to Madame du Barry fell, was so unkind as to endorse it as being written by the wife of the citizen Lebrun, and " Mistress of Calonne." It has been necessary to devote numerous pages to the Calonne episode in Vig6e-Lebrun's life, both because it held so large a place in her own 78 VIGEE-LEBRUN thoughts, and because, unless the main facts were, as far as might be, recalled, the reader would be left with no means of deciding for himself whether there was or was not any foundation whatever for the taunts so persistently and spitefully thrown at her by the enemies of herself and of her patrons. On a consideration of the persons, the circumstances and motives in this matter, so far as they are known or may reasonably be assumed, many readers will agree that if the case were left to a fair-minded and intelligent jury of to-day in the familiar form of questions : (i) Did Madame Lebrun receive an excessive payment for Calonne's portrait ? and (2) Was Madame Lebrun the mistress of Ccdonne ? the " benefit of the doubt " would probably commend itself to the twelve citizens who at the moment represented " the palladium of our Uberties." CHAPTER XII MADAME DU BARRY A visit to Madame du Barry — Louveciennes then and now — The waterworks of Marly — The Pavilion above the Seine — Spoils of a king's mistress — The Due de Brissac — Madame du Barry as Lady Bountiful — The envoys of Tippoo-Sahib — Dinner on the floor — Trouble about a portrait — Indian presents for Madame du Barry IN 1786 Madame Lebrun was asked to stay at Madame du Barry's comitry home, and to paint a portrait from life of that notorious adventuress, who, from being a dressmaker's assistant, had become, for about five years, as Mistress of Louis XV, the most powerful person in France. After the death of that king she had retired, amply endowed, to the beautiful place that he had given her at Louveciennes (or Luciennes as it was commonly written in those days), on the Mil above the left bank of the Seine, between Bougival and Marly. As this village was also to be the country home of Madame Lebrun herself during the last thirty years of her life, where she experienced a great deal of happiness and some brief but intense anxieties ; and as her dust now lies in the little cemetery at the top of the hill, it will not be out of place to describe a spot which is still much as it was in her lifetime, even in those years just before the Revolution when she passed such peaceful days in the luxurious chateau of " The Du Barry." Villadom, which has made the wooded valley of the Seine below Paris so speclded with white and red in many parts, has largely spared Louve- ciennes, and as you walk up the village street, or down the wide lane that leads past the gardens of Madame du Barry's home, you may, if you have a little imagination, forget for a while the passing of time and fancy your- self in the Louveciennes of long ago. In springtime, when the wild cherry is in bloom in the copses, and the celandine covers the roadsides with its yellow stars, while the ferns and the little toad-flax are pushing out their young shoots from the crevices of the ancient walls of stone and plaster, 79 8o VIGEE-LEBRUN the long lanes of Louveciennes are delightful to the senses. The scent of blossom and moss and of the freshly turned earth of the gardens is in the air, and even the very roofs of some of the old cottages are gardens of wild flowers, planted by the wind and the birds. There is a link between past and present which, to any one familiar with the Souvenirs of Vigee-Lebrun, gives a startling reality to his thoughts of her presence as he wanders in her paths above the valley of the Seine. On more than one occasion she speaks of the noise made by the " machine" which pumps the water up from the river to the great aqueduct built, under Louis XIV. for supplying the fountains of Marly and Versailles. Once she complains that her rest is disturbed by the incessant roaring of this example of clever engineering. It is roaring still. As you begin to descend the hill you hear it, getting louder and louder. Then, as you come within sight of the river, you see the great dam over which the water falls, to turn the machinery by which the reservoirs of Versailles are partly fed — machinery very different from that which made the water go uphill to please the Bourbons as it gushed from the mouths of Tritons and lions at the other end of the pipes, but quite capable of keeping people awake when they first come to stay within sound of its working. The former mistress of a king of France, and actual mistress of a duke, Marie Jeanne Vaubemier, Comtesse Du Barry, was forty years old, or a little more, when Madame Lebrun came down to Louveciennes to paint her portrait. It was the first time these two women, each so typical of certain aspects of their period, had met one another, and the artist was " extremely curious" to see the courtesan. She found her " tall, without being too much so ; she was plump, her neck and shoulders a little large, but very beautiful; she still looked charming, her features were regular and pleasing, her hair was fair and curly like a child's, her com- plexion alone was beginning to lose its freshness. She received me very kindly, and seemed to have very good manners. But I found her more at ease in her mind than in her manners. Her expression was that of a coquette, for her long eyes were never fully opened, and there was some- thing childish about her pronunciation which was unsuitable to her years." The visitor was given a suite of rooms on the side of the Ch§.teau looking over the river, and within full sound of the " machine " of which " the mournful noise" so distressed her nerves. Below her rooms was a MADAME DU BARRY 8i gallery (badly in want of spring cleaning) wherein vases, busts, marble statues, and many other art treasures were jumbled together, so that " one might have fancied that one was staying with the mistress of several sovereigns, all of whom had enriched her by their presents." Nearer the river than the Chateau is the famous " pavihon " built under Madame Du Barry's own directions; the doors, chimneypieces, and fittings, the furniture and bric-a-brac of which, in those far-off days, were of the most expensive and, according to the taste of the time, most " elegant " char- acter. The windows of this luxurious house overlooked what Madame Lebrun calls " the most beautiful view in the world", — ^rather an exaggera- tion, perhaps, even in those days, from a woman who had been through Italy and Switzerland, and had seen many of the glories of English scenery, but excusable as the impression of any one under the immediate influence of the Seine valley at that spot. The hostess herself was much more simply adorned than her rooms. At all seasons of the year she wore " nothing but loose gowns of cambric or white muslin ; and every day, whatever the weather, she went for a walk in her park or beyond it, without any untoward results, so robust had her life in the country made her." We may reasonably suppose, without indelicacy, that Madame du Barry's dessous were thicker on days of frost than on days of broiling sunshine. Fresh from Paris, where she spent most of the evenings in friendly crowds, or from country-houses where the hostesses spent much of their time in welcoming arriving and speeding departing guests, Madame Lebrun found the Chateau of Louveciennes very quiet. She declares that only two ladies called whilst she was there — a great contrast, no doubt, to the days when Madame du Barry was first installed in her gorgeous and beauti- fully situated nest. But, as Madame Lebrun reflects, " it was no longer Louis XV who lounged upon these fine sofas, it was the Due de Brissac ; and we often left him alone there, because he liked to take a siesta." He came frequently, and lived in that house as if he were at home, but nothing, in his behaviour or in that of Madame du Barry, could lead one to suspect that he was more than " the friend of the mistress of the chateau," though " it was easy to see that a tender attachment united these two people." On most evenings the two women were alone, and the guest evidently found the society of the hostess a little dull. Madame Lebrun, indeed, rather naively remarks that Madame du Barry avoided all details about Louis XV and his court ; 6 82 VIGEE-LEBRUN " it was even evident that she preferred to keep off that subject of talk, en sorte qu' habituellement sa conversation Stait assez nulle." The Chatelaine of Louveciennes was the Lady Bountiful of the village, where " all the poor were relieved by her. We often went together to visit some one who was in distress, and I remember the righteous anger she showed one day, when she found a poor woman, just delivered of a child, and with nothing provided for her wants. ' What ! ' said Madame du Barry, ' you have not linen, or wine, or beef-tea ! ' ' Alas ! nothing, Madame.' As soon as we got back to the chateau, Madame du Barry sent for her housekeeper and some other servants who had not carried out her orders. I cannot tell you" (this is part of a letter addressed to the Princess Kourakin) " how furious she was with them, while she made them do up a bundle of linen that she sent them off with, at once, with some beef -tea and a bottle of red wine for the poor invalid." Tippoo Sahib, the ruthless Sultan of Mysore, whose resolute oppo- sition, feebly aided by the French army, caused so much trouble to Corn- wallis, had determined, in 1787, on a great effort to drive the English out of India with the aid of the French. With this idea he sent two envoys, Mahomet Dervisch Khan and Mahomet Usman Khan, to France, to ask for the help of his former allies in achieving so magnificent an object. Madame Lebrun saw these dusky strangers at the Opera, and was so struck by the sight of their " superb heads " and brilliant costumes that she asked the Queen to ask the King to ask the envoys — a lot of asking — to sit for their portraits, she having ascertained that nothing but a direct request from His Majesty would induce them to be painted. No doubt their religion, as good followers of their great namesake who founded it, made them so particular in this respect. On receiving the royal request they agreed to sit at the house where they were quartered. When the artist came into the room, Usman Khan fetched some rose-water and threw it over her hands, and Dervisch Khan then posed for his portrait. She painted him standing up, holding a dagger, and found him an excellent model. When he got tired, she put the canvas to dry in another room, and began the portrait of the elder ambassador, whom she represented sitting down, with his son at his side. Evidently these distinguished Orientals took a fancy to the charming lady who, unveiled, had stood so long in their presence, for they invited her to come to dinner one day, and allowed her to bring her beautiful friend, Madame de Bonneuil. " We accepted out of pure curiosity. On entering X .■^ a 'A J3 o J IS ■t. - cfl 3 V3 B « ,'r , " so that you will not be hurried, or worried about other business." " Before beginning, converse with your sitter ; try several poses, and choose not merely the most pleasing, but that which is suitable to the sitter's age and character, as that may increase the resemblance." " Try to do the head, the face especially, in three or four sittings of an hour and a half each — two hours at the longest— for if the sitter gets tired and impatient the expression changes." With women sitters " you must flatter them, tell them they are pretty, that they have a fresh complexion, etc., etc. That puts them in a good humour, and makes them sit with more pleasure. . . . You must also teU them that they pose admirably. . . . You will do well to ask them not to bring their friends, who will all want to express their views, and will spoil everything. As to artists and people of taste, you can ask their opinions. Do not be cast down if some people fail to find any DR. JOHNSON'S OPINION 107 likeness in your portraits ; there are many people who do not know how to see." " Look at Greuze's heads, and notice particularly the usual arrange- ment of the hair of your sitter. That adds to the Ukeness and the truth. You must carefully observe the ' passages ' where the hair is seen with the flesh, so as to render them as faithfully as possible, that there may be no hardness, and that the hair may blend well with the flesh, as much by contour as by colour, in order that it may not look like a wig, which it assuredly will do otherwise." In describing her own methods she writes : "I tried my best to give to the women whom I painted their natural expression ; those who had no expression (physionomie), and one sees such people, I painted pensive, and negligently reclining." It will be seen that in theory Vigee-Lebrun held the same opinion as an English contemporary of her youth. Dr. Samuel Johnson. " Sir, their chief excellence is being like," said that eminent talker when some question of portraits was being discussed. But she held it with a broad difference, in that in her case the likeness had to be " pleasing." That was the keynote of her success. It is true that the patronage of Marie Antoinette was chiefly responsible for the artist's immense vogue, and it is no less true that this patronage would not have lasted beyond the first " commands " if the Queen's personal appearance had been represented with no other object in view than the exactly realistic reproduction on canvas of the features and colouring of the sitter. CHAPTER XVII THE TOUR IN ITALY, I789-92 Vigee-Lebrun in Italy — The sights of Florence — Rome and its art treasures — Michelangelo and Raphael — A visit to Angelica Kaufimann — Search for a quiet lodging — Varieties of nightly disturbances — ^Noisy worms in the rafters — Vigee-Lebrun's work in Rome — Some of her sitters — A prima donna with a chest like a pair of bellows — The passions of the Duchesse de Fleury — Napoleon's question and its answer — The Comtesse de Boigne's view of Madame Lebrun — Sir William and Lady Hamilton at Naples — Madame Lebrun's unfortunate choice of a bank for her savings — Disappointed of returning to France, she sets out for Vienna IT is now time to rejoin the artist in Italy. From Turin she journeyed, by way of Parma and Bologna, to Florence. The first thing she did there, after having taken possession of her rooms at the hotel that had been recommended to her, was to go with her child and friendly M. de Lespigniere for a walk on the hills in the environs, whence such beautiful views of Florence can be enjoyed. Julie, looking at a group of cypresses, said, "Those trees invite us to be silent." Such a remark from a little girl of seven surprised even her own mother, who never forgot it. Vigee-Lebrun visited the Medici Gallery, where the Venus, the Niobe, and the pictures of Salvator Rosa impressed her greatly ; and the Pitti Palace, where she was specially attracted by works of Guido and Rembrandt, as well as by a picture " at once very fine and very strong, by Carlo Dolci, a Holy Family by Ludovico Carachi, and the ' Vision of Ezekiel,' an admirable little picture by Raphael. I also saw there the portrait of a woman dressed in crimson satin, painted by Titian with as much of vigour as of truth." She saw, in fact, most that there was to see of pictures and palaces in Florence — including, of course, the Ufiizzi Gallery, which, by its collection of portraits of painters of all nations, from their own hands, provides so valuable a record of the personal side of art during several centuries. She too was asked to contribute to that famous gallery, and she naturally felt honoured by the request. She was on the point of leaving for Rome, loS LETTER FROM ROME 109 and she promised to send a portrait of herself from that city. The promise was duly fulfilled, and the picture, famiUar from a thousand photographs, hangs in its place among those of so many other painters, of greater or less consequence in art. Speaking of the Uffizzi collection, she says, "I noticed, with a certain pride, the portrait of Angelica Kauffmann, one of the glories of our sex." In November 1789 Madame Lebrun had arrived in Rome, whence, on the ist of December, she wrote to her old friend Hubert Robert a long letter in which she gave him her impressions of the city whose " eternity " had not, in those days, been so furiously assaulted by utilitarian urban authorities as it has been in the last twenty years. In Saint Peter's she had remarked to M6nageot, who acted as cicerone, that she wished the columns had been left in their simple roundness, and he had answered that originally they were so designed, but that as they did not appear solid enough, they had been surrounded by pilasters. Of the " Last Judgment " by Michelangelo she writes : " There is grandeur both in the composition and the execution. As to the disorder that reigns there, it is, in my opinion, entirely justified by the subject." She was very angry with those who repeated the story that Raphael's death was due to his loose living. " The proof that nothing is more false is that we know him to have been passionately in love with that beautiful boulangere, without whom he could not live, to whom he remained so faithful that for her sake he refused honours, riches, and the hand of Cardinal Bibiena's niece — so faithful that when at last the Pope wavered and allowed the Fomarina to return to Rome, the joyful emotion of Raphael, the happiness of once more seeing that adored woman, contributed greatly to hasten his end. . . . No, Raphael was not a libertine ; it is only necessary to look at his heads of the Virgin to be certain of the contrary." It is almost impossible to doubt that in writing so warmly in defence of the personal character of one of the greatest members of her own pro- fession in any age, Madame Lebrun was thinking also of the attacks that had been made on her own character, and the logic with which she defends Raphael from his calumniators is at least as strong as some of that with which she had replied to the aspersions of her jealous detractors in Paris. Naturally, being in the same city with AngeUca Kauffmann, Elisabeth Vig^e-Lebrun went to see a sister-artist who not only shared with her the highest honours in woman's art at that time, but had known also, no VIGEE-LEBRUN and perhaps in a more poignant degree, the sorrow that usually results from an imprudent marriage, with the scattering of her earnings by a rascally husband. " I found her," writes the French artist to Hubert Robert, " very interesting, apart from her talent, on account of her intelligence and her knowledge. She is a woman of about fifty (Angelica Kauffman was, in fact, forty-eight at that time), very delicate, her health having suffered in consequence of her unhappiness in marrying, in the first instance, an adventurer who had ruined her. She has since been married again, to an architect who acts as her man of business. She has talked with me a great deal and very well, during the two evenings I have spent with her. Her conversation is agreeable : elle a prodigieusement d' instruction, mais aucun enthousiasme, ce qui, vu mon peu de savoir, ne m'a point HectrisSe." At Rome, as in most other places — ^it is hard to remember an exception — ^Madame Lebrun was dreadfully worried by noises, and found much difficulty in settling comfortably in any house commended to her. Through- out her travels she was pursued by noises at night : now it was horses in some neighbouring stable, now market-carts in an adjoining street ; now it was people singing, and now washerwomen pumping water ; now rats in a wainscot, and now a bird in an opposite window. But it was at Rome that the strangest of all such disturbing influences spoilt her rest, and compelled her to leave a lodging in which she had hoped, from its retired situation, to pass her nights in refreshing sleep. In spite of such hopes, she had been wise enough to arrange for a trial-night in the place before signing an agreement with her landlord. That agreement was never signed, and the reason for the breakdown in the negotiations shall be given in her own narrative. " Scarcely had I got into bed, when I heard over my head an absolutely intolerable noise ; it was caused by an innumerable quantity of worms which gnawed the rafters. As soon as I opened the shutters the noise stopped, but it was none the less necessary to abandon that house, to my great regret. ... I am convinced that the most difficult thing to do in Rome is to house oneself." At length, however, the harassed artist did get some lodgings where worms gnawed not the beams, and horses champed not in their stalls, and where there were no absolutely intolerable noises of any kind to make her nights hideous. There having set up her easel, she speedily found herself in the full tide of portrait-painting. The first sitter she mentions was A WONDERFUL SINGER m a very pretty child of sixteen, Miss Pitt, a daughter of Lord Camelford, whom she represents as Hebe, sitting in a cloud, and holding a drinking- cup to an eagle. The eagle which "sat" for this picture, and which belonged to Cardinal de Bernis, gave the artist a great fright. " The cursed animal, which was accustomed to be always in the open air, chained in a courtyard, was so furious at finding itself in my room, that it wanted to. dash upon me." The Comtesse Potocka, who is shown in her portrait seated on a mossy rock beside a cascade, astonished the artist by her sang-froid. The Comte brought her to the studio, and, as soon as he had left the house, she said : **' That is my third husband ; but I think I shall take back the first, who suits me better, although he drinks." Mademoiselle Roland, the mistress, and shortly afterwards the wife Qi an English nobleman, was the subject of a portrait which (though the name has been given in an exhibition catalogue at the London Guildhall to one of Madame Lebrun's other portraits of ladies) it seems almost impossible to identify. Among the distinguished women whom Madame did not paint at Rome was the prima donna Banti, whose wonderful voice was apparently due to a physical organisation which, as described by Vigee- Lebrun, was assuredly unusual, if not unique. " This admirable singer was shaped in a very peculiar manner : her chest was high, and constructed exactly like a pair of bellows, as she showed to me and some other ladies in a dressing-room, after the concert, and I thought that this strange organisation accounted for the power and flexibility of her voice." The most eminent personage whom Madame Lebrun failed to paint at Rome was the Pope himself. The Abbe Maury, an old acquaintance of the artist, came to tell her that His Holiness wished to sit to her. " But it was necessary that I should be veiled while I painted the Holy Father, and the fear that I could not under such conditions accomplish anything to my satisfaction obliged me to decline this honour. I did so with much regret, for Pius VI was still one of the handsomest men that could be found." Her chief friend in Rome was the lovely and fascinating Duchesse de Fleury. "We were naturally drawn to one another; she loved the arts, and, like me, had a passion for the beauties of nature. I found in her a companion such as I had often desired." The Duchess's passion had other objects than scenery and flowers. She was at that time carrying on a correspondence with the Due de Lauzun, a man as immoral as he was 112 VIGEE-LEBRUN attractive, and Madame feared that, however innocent, such a correspond- ence was dangerous for her friend. However, so far as Lauzun was a source of anxiety, the danger was removed by his being sent to the guillotine. Madame' s friendship with the Duchesse de Fleury would of itself prove the easiness of her own moral prejudices. That charming young woman was not so much a grande as a perpHuelle amour euse. On her return to- Paris after the Revolution she and her husband obtained a divorce, and she married a young man whom she loved passionately, until they got tired of each other, and she was again divorced. Then she took another lover. One day during the Empire, Napoleon said to her : " Aimez- vous toujours les hommes ? " " Oui, Sire," she replied, " quand ils sont polis." Of Vigee-Lebrun at Rome we get a not over-friendly glimpse from the Comtesse de Boigne, who, in her Mimoires, recalls that Julie Lebrun was one of her play-fellows in that city, and of Julie's mamma writes i " Madame Lebrun, a very good person, was still pretty, always very foolish ; she had a distinguished talent, and possessed in excess all the little affecta- tions to which her double role of artist and pretty woman entitled her. If the term petite maitresse had not become as bad taste as the fashions that are nowadays implied by it, it could fairly be applied to her." After eight months at Rome, Madame Lebrun set out for Naples, travelling in the rather depressing company of M. Duvivier, who in that same year (1790) lost his wife, formerly the " Madame Denis " so familiar to readers in the life of her uncle, Voltaire. M. Duvivier had no sense of natural beauty : the sheep in a flowery meadow near the sea depressed him because they were not as clean as those he had seen in England ; and the great clouds casting shadows on the Apennines caused him no emotion except the fear that it would rain the next day ! He thought nothing of the views on the way to Naples, preferring, he said, the scenery of Burgundy^ " which promised good wine." By some extraordinary freak of fortune, the Hotel de Maroc at Chiaja^^ on the sea coast opposite Capri, left no memory of noise or discomfort irt Madame's mind. Her satisfaction with the house was increased by its being next door to that of the Russian ambassador at Naples, the Comte Skavronski, who was so polite as to send her in an excellent dinner on the evening of her arrival, and whose wife very soon arranged to sit for a portrait. This beautiful noodle — for such she evidently was — had been, richly endowed with money and jewels by her uncle, the famous Potemkin,. LADY HAMILTON 113 but she made a poor use of her wealth. Her favourite way of passing the time was to He at full length on a sofa, wrapped in a big black pelisse, and " without her stays." Boxes full of the " latest creations " came to her from Mademoiselle Rose Bertin, the principal dressmaker in Paris, but she scarcely troubled to look at them, nor did she wear the wondrous diamonds that she possessed. " A quoi bon ? Pour qui ? pour quoi ? " she asked, when any one suggested that she should put on her fine dresses or her jewels. She told Madame Lebrun that, in Russia, she had a woman serf under her bed every night, whose duty it was to send her to sleep by telling her a story. Unlike Scheherazade of the Arabian Nights, this serf told the same story every time, no doubt a more efficacious method of inducing sleep. After this indolent Russian beauty, Madame's next sitter was a woman more accustomed to posing than any other who had ever been shown on a Vig^e-Lebrun canvas. This was Emma Hart, or Lyon, soon to be Lady Hamilton. The artist painted four portraits of the " professional beauty." The first was a " Bacchante " lying beneath an arched rock near the sea. Sir William Hamilton paid £96 for it, and sold it for ;^3i5, thus making a big profit out of his wife's portrait, according to his habit. Another of the four pictures, composed somewhat in the Romney manner, showed the lovely Emma again as a " Bacchante," running, with bare arms out- stretched to play a tambourine held high before her, vine-leaves in her flowing chestnut hair, and Vesuvius in eruption in the distance. Yet another was the " Sibyl," which the artist took about Europe with her, rolled up in transit, as a specimen of her best work ; and the fourth was another " Sibyl " painted for the Due de Brissac. Sir William Hamilton and his mistress were pleased with Madame Lebrun's society, and the undignified British ambassador endeavoured to entertain her with stories of the most prominent ladies of the Neapolitan Court, so scandalous that she could not repeat them. He declared that some of these ladies could not read, that a good many " did not know there was any other country than Naples," and that their only occupation was " I' amour," with frequent change of the objects of their affection. Assuredly the King of Naples gave little encouragement to learning or virtue. He left the trouble of government — such as it was— to the Queen, and generally resided at Caserta, much interested with a factory there, the work-girls of which, as Madame was told (perhaps by Sir William Hamilton), made his seraglio. 8 114 VIGEE-LEBRUN One of her notable sitters at this period was the Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry. This handsome prelate was as well known in Italy for his love of the arts as he was for the generosity and tolerance with which he fulfilled his episcopal functions. At his country seat in County Londonderry he kept a great state, and in Dublin his big carriage, drawn by four horses, was a familiar sight in College Green during the sittings of the Irish Parlia- ment. Towards the end of his hfe he spent some of his vacations in Paris, where the splendour of his private house suggested the name of. an hotel which opened in the Place Vendome in those days, and through imitation of which many another Hotel Bristol has puzzled the curious as to why Bristol, more than any other Enghsh port, should have caught the fancy of hotel-builders. Not only did Madame Lebrun paint several portraits of the Bishop of Derry in Italy, but she also copied for him — ^with some variations — ^her portrait of herself that she gave to the Ufifizi Gallery at Florence. After a long visit to Naples, Vigee-Lebrun, still of course accom- panied by Julie and the governess, went on by way of Siena and Mantua to Venice, where the artist-diplomatist Denon did all he could to make her stay enjoyable. Among other things, he exhibited her " Sibyl " in his studio, and thereby brought her much acceptable praise and attention. She saw the spectacle of the Doge throwing the ring into the sea, and the splendid Bucentaur galley that comes out of dock on those occasions ; as for pictures, she spent many happy hours in contemplating the master- pieces of Tintoretto, Veronese, and Titian. Of her own work done in Venice, the most notable example is the portrait of the handsome Greek woman, Isabella Marini, afterwards Comtesse Albrizzi. One of the familiar sights of Venice at that time was the ancient burial-ground, adjoining the " English " Cemetery, and containing the tombs of some of the earliest Venetians. Madame Lebrun, being anxious to see it, went there in a gondola one moonlight night with a friend of M. Denon. As they might have expected, they found the gate locked. However, by mounting on some stones fallen from a breach in the top of the wall, they got inside through that breach. When they wished to return, it was " nearly an hour " before they could find this place of entry. Having got outside, they met with two sentinels, who let them pass without any questions. " They no doubt took us for a pair of lovers," says Madame, " people who are always highly respected in Italy." One only of her memories of Venice was really very unpleasant — she lost there BONAPARTE'S ORDER 115 over thirty thousand francs, part of the money she had earned in Rome and Naples. She had been warned by a member of the French Embassy at Naples that the Venetian Government might shortly be attacked by the French army. "Surely," she had said, "republicans will not attack a republic ! " The warning was too well justified. Bonaparte, when he captured Venice and removed so many of its treasures, gave orders that Madame Lebrun's money in Haler's bank should be kept safely, and interest paid to her ; but the order was not properly carried out, and she says that she never received more than two hundred and fifty francs interest on the large sum she had sent to the bank. From Venice she passed to Turin, where she was delighted with her reception by the Queen of Sardinia and by her former " sitter " the Comtesse de Provence, wife of the prince who, some twenty years later, was to be King of France as Louis XVII I. Madame Lebrun had come to Turin with the intention of returning to France, under the impression, then generally prevalent, that the time of massacres and executions was over, and vainly supposing that the exception from the law against emigris of artists abroad for the purposes of their profession would be held to cover her case. Meanwhile she accepted an invitation from Porparati, her host on her former passage through Turin, to stay at his farm, about four miles from that city. It was a delightful spot, and Vigee-Lebrun and her child were very happy there until, one evening, the post brought a letter from M. de Riviere (her sister-in-law's brother) telling her of the awful events of August 10, and asking her to await his arrival at Turin. When he came, a fortnight behind time, he was able to reassure her as to the safety of her mother, her brother, and her husband — ^who about that period was arranging a divorce from her — ^but the state of affairs in Paris destroyed her hope of returning there. Before leaving the neighbourhood of Turin, she repaid her host for his kindness by painting his pretty daughter's portrait. On her way from Turin to Milan, the three French travellers'^ igee-Lebrun, her daughter, and the governess — were stopped as French " enemies," but there was not much difficulty in obtaining a permit to go on. Madame thought that Milan Cathedral was fort belle (few indeed are the travellers who can contain their admiration of that famous example of ornate architecture in two words), and she was charmed with Lake Maggiore. She even lived for a time on Isola Bella, with the permission of its proprietor. Prince ii6 VIGEE-LEBRUN Borromeo, Of course she went to see Leonardo's " Last Supper," already in a sadly decaying state. " Since then," says Madame, in mourning over its fate, " I have learnt that that chef d'ceuvre has been otherwise degraded. I have been told that, during the last wars of Bonaparte in Italy, the soldiers amused themselves by firing bullets from their muskets at the ' Cena ' of Leonardo da Vinci ! Cursed be these barbarians." At length, by the advice of the Austrian envoy at Milan, the Comte de Wilscheck, who promised her a warm welcome from his many friends in Vienna, she set out for the Austrian capital, travelling by way of Tyrol and Styria, and finding the scenery very pleasant from the beginning to the end of her long journey. Madame' s little party did not travel alone. There was a Polish beauty, the Comtesse de Bystry, whose acquaintance Vigee-Lebrun had made in sitting next to her at a concert, and as both the stranger and her husband took a fancy to Madame, they advanced their own departure for Vienna so that she might travel in their company. CHAPTER XVIII LIFE IN VIENNA, I792-3 Social life at Vienna — Extraordinary number of pretty women — A romantic wedding — " Nor spinster, nor wife, nor widow " — The octogenarian Prince de Kaunitz — He exhibits Vigee- Lebrun's " Sibyl " portrait of Lady Hamilton — News of the execution of Marie Antoinette — Death of the Duchesse de Polignao — Madame Lebrun's feelings — The happy relations of rich and poor in Vienna — A court ball — Untiring dancers — A week in Dresden — Triumph of the " Sibyl " picture — Delightful Prince Hemry of Prussia — Provisions for the journey to Russia — The start — Weary travellers THAT year, 1792, in which the artist-exile arrived in the city whence her Queen had come more than twenty years before, was the most terrible of the Revolution, but in the early days of her long sojourn in Austria she was happy enough. She and the Bystrys had become so easy together that they decided not yet to separate. As they could not find comfortable rooms in Vienna to hold them all, they lived in one of the suburbs until these Poles returned to their own country, when Madame Lebrun moved inside the walls, among those grandes dames to whom the Comte de Wilscheck had given her introductions, and by whom, no doubt, she would in any case have been well received, if with more formal courtesy. Chief among them, it would seem, was the Comtesse de Thoun, whose " evenings " were attended by " all the high society of the town," and by many French imigrSs of social distinction, including the Polignacs, that family whose fortunes had been bound up so closely with those of Marie Antoinette. The artist had, as we know, always a keen eye for feminine beauty, and she found much of it here. " I have never," she says, " seen in any drawing-room so many pretty women as were to be found in that of Madame de Thoun." Most of these ladies brought their work, settled themselves at a large table, and went on with their embroidery. " Sometimes," as Madame Lebrun recalled over forty years afterwards, " I was asked to give my advice upon effects and shades of colour ; but as nothing hurts my eyes more than to look at bright colours by the light 117 ii8 VIGEE-LEBRUN of lamps or candles, I admit that I often expressed an opinion without looking. As a rule, I have taken great care of my eyesight, and I have been well repaid, since, even now, I can paint without being obliged to use glasses." Several of the ladies whose crudely-coloured needlework distressed Madame Lebrun's eyes, repaid her by sitting to her for their portraits. Of these were the Comtesse de Sabran and the Comtesse Kinska (n^e Diedrichstein), whose position was peculiar, she being, as Madame writes, " nor spinster, nor wife, nor widow." She had " every possible charm ; her figure, her face, in fact all her person was perfection ; and I was greatly surprised when I heard her story, which was truly like a romance. The parents of Comte Kinski, and her own, had agreed together " — ^like the mothers of Jane Austen's Darcy and Miss de Burgh — " that the young people, who had never met, should marry one another. The Comte lived in some German town, and only arrived at the bride's home for the wedding. As soon as the service was over, he said to his young and charming wife, ' Madame, we have obliged our parents ; I regret to have to leave you, but I cannot hide from you the fact that I am already attached to a woman without whom I cannot live, and I go to rejoin her.' His post-chaise was waiting at the church door, and, that adieu having been uttered, the Comte entered the carriage, and returned towards his Dulcinea." According to her custom, Vigee-Lebrun, as soon as she had settled in Vienna, called on the leading members of her own profession. One of these artists, but little regarded now, was Franfois Casanova, brother of the notorious boaster Jacques Casanova " de Seingalt." Francois, apparently, had much the same nature as Jacques. He made a great deal of money by his battle-pieces and pictures in glorification of the deeds of princes, but his life was so disorderly that, at sixty years of age, he was no better off than when he began. He was a capital story-teller, mixing up personal experience and invention just as either came handy for his purpose ; and he was prompt at repartee. It is true that the only example of his repartee which Madame Lebrun gives is not specially brilliant. An old German baroness, when she heard some one say that Rubens was an ambassador as well as a painter, remarked, " What ! a painter ambassador ! Surely he was an ambassador who amused himself by painting." " No," answered Casanova, " he was a painter who amused himself by being an ambassador." One of Madame's friends in Vienna was the celebrated Prince de 1793 119 Kaunitz, then considerably over eighty, but still one of the finest horse- men that could be seen. It was in his drawing-room that " the Sibyl " portrait of Lady Hamilton was exhibited for a fortnight, during which the Prince " did the honours of that picture to the town and to the court with a grace that was all kindness for me." The death of this kindly old man, whilst she was still at Vienna, afforded an object-lesson in the shallowness of popular esteem to Madame Lebrun, who had received many such lessons before she left Paris. " Up to the time of his death, the glory that he had gained as Minister still remained to him ; on New Year's Day, and on his birthday, a huge crowd came to his house to congratulate him, no one kept away, one might have supposed he was Emperor on those occasions. I was therefore greatly astonished, at the moment of his death, by the indifference of the Viennese at the loss of their celebrated countryman." Vigee-Lebrun, as we know, had always been fond of theatricals, and at the houses of the Strogonoffs and the Fries (both of which families provided her with several subjects for portraits) she saw some amateur performances entirely to her taste. For a time the social delights of Vienna were saddened, if not stopped, for the French exiles by the news from Paris, first of the execution of Louis XVI, and then of that of Marie Antoinette. This last tragedy does actually appear to have killed the Duchesse de Polignac, who, however unhappy her personal influence over the Queen may have been, really loved her deeply. Madame Lebrun did not read the news of either event. Having one day seen in a gazette a list of persons who had been guillotined, wherein were the names of nine of her own acquaintances, she never— so she tells us— looked again at newspapers (which she calls papier s-nouvelles) until those troubled days were over. She heard from her brother in Paris that the King and Queen had died on the scaffold. It would seem that the horror which she felt at the Paris events of 1793 was little allied with grief. It is dif&cult to discover, at any point in her memoirs, that she gave up any particular pleasure in consequence of bad news. Hers was one of those buoyant natures which, so long as the immediate evidence of anguish and death can be kept away from them, are not very deeply affected. The knowledge that a dead body was in the same house with her always caused her intense distress, even when she had never seen the dead person in life or in death. But the gloom cast on her mind by the tragedies of the Revolution was never of long duration. In speaking of 120 VIGEE-LEBRUN the grief of the Duchesse de PoUgnac on hearing of Marie Antoinette's death, Madame Lebrun says : " It is certain that I can judge how frightful the events of France must have been for her, by the sorrow they caused to me." The news of all the worst of those events, so far as her own life was concerned, came while she was living in Vienna. Yet she tells us, " I was as happy at Vienna as it is possible to be, away from one's relatives and one's country." She was not ungenerous, she was even exception- ally free from envy or malice, but she was so far an egoist of the common sort that, so long as the world went well for herself she asked little more from the world. Madame Lebrun' s account of Vienna at the time of her sojourn there might convince a trustful reader that not only was the old and rigid class system of society perfectly represented in and around that city, but that it existed to the advantage and happiness of the whole community. As a succinct statement of the " Lady Bountiful " ideal of " social position " her simple page on this subject could scarcely be bettered. She begins by remarking that as far as the ways of people comme il faut were in question, there was no perceptible difference between Paris and Vienna. But as to the people who were not comme il faut, " Nowhere else have I seen that air of happiness and easy circumstances, which never ceased to rejoice my eyes during my stay in that great city. Whether in Vienna itself, or in the surrounding country, I have never met with a beggar ; the labourers, the peasants, the waggoners, all were well-dressed. One saw at once that they lived under a paternal government, and one may truly call it so. Moreover, the rich Viennese families, some of which have enormous fortunes, spend their incomes in the way most honourable to themselves and most useful to the poor. They provide an immense amount of work, and benevolence is a virtue common to all the well-to-do classes. One of the things that most astonished me was, the first time I went to the theatre, to see many ladies, among them the beautiful Comtesse Kinska, knitting thick stockings in their boxes. I thought this very strange ; but since I was told that these stockings were for the poor, I was pleased to see the youngest and prettiest women working like this — all the more so because they knitted while attending to other things, without even looking at their work, and with a prodigious speed." They were as good knitters, apparently, as the Scotch herring-lasses — one could not put it higher than that. Rich and poor alike kept their happiness alive by dancing. No C A T A L O G U E OF ALL THAT NOBLE e? SUPERLATIVELY CAPITAL ASSEMBLAGE O F Valuable Pictures, DRAWINGS, MINIATURES, and PRINTS, THE TROFERTV OF THE Right Hon. Charles Alexander De Calorme^ LATE PRIME MINISTER of FRANCE; SELECTED WITH EqUAL TASTE, JUDGMENT, AND LIBERALITY, During his Refidence in France, and his Travels through Italy, Germanvj Flanders, and Hot l an d, and while in England; AT THE IMMENSE EXPENCE OF ABOVE SIXTY THOUSAND GUINEAS, THERE IS ALSO INCLUDED A SMALL ELEGANT, COLLECTION OF CABINET PICTURES, BE<1_UIATHED TO HIM BY THE LATE MONSIEUR D'ARVELET, HIGH TREASURER of FRANCE; Forming together the moil fplendid Collection in Europe, which were Intended for a magnificent Gallery at his late Houfe in Piccadilly. COMPRISING The INESTIMABLE WORKS of the mod admired MASTERS of the Roman, Florentine, Bolocnbsg, Vbnhtia.n, Spanish, French, Dutch, and English Schools. Which will be SOLD by AUCTION^ B Y Meffrs. Skinner and Dyke^ On MONDAY the 23d of March, 1795-, and FIVE following Days,. PUNCTUALLY AT TWELVE o'CLOCK, AT T H I GREAT ROOMS, in SPRING GARDENS, BY ORDER OF THE NOW MORTGAGEES. To be publicly yiewed Four Days precedine rfie Sile, (Sunday excepted.) Bad, at Two Shilling! and Six-pence each, in Spring Gardens, al& of Ma DYKE, Alderfgate Succt. TITLE PAGE OF THE CALONNE SALE CATALOGUE, MARCH 1795 .C.UI04W3 may be Bad, at Two Shilling, and Six-pence each, in Spring Gardens, al& of Mefl". SKINNER a„J DYKE, Alderrgate Succt. FURIOUS DANCING 121 Lancashire operatives at Blackpool or Southport, no Ragtime or Tango enthusiasts in London drawing-rooms or Margate saloons, ever threw them- selves into the ecstasy of motion with more tireless zest than the Viennese of those days, to say nothing of to-day. Madame Lebiun was invited to a court ball, on the occasion of the marriage of the Emperor Francis II to his second wife the Princess Marie-Therese of Naples, whose portrait she had painted in 1792. At that ball the dancing was, of course, after the manner of courts ; but at a ball given by the Russian ambassador " the waltz was danced so furiously that I could not conceive how all these people, in turning round and round in that fashion, could help making themselves so giddy that they would fall down. Both men and women, however, are so well accustomed to this violent exercise, that they do not leave off for a single moment, so long as the ball lasts." Here, as often elsewhere, the reader of Madame Lebrun's own accounts of her experiences must find a grain or two of salt to help him to swallow easily. Her old acquaintance the Prince de Ligne, still as hvely, if not quite so sprightly as when he showed the Lebruns round his house near Brussels in 1782, gave her such a flattering account of the Empress Catherine of Russia, whom he had accompanied during the famous journey in the Crimea, that when some of the most influential Russians in Vienna urged her to go to St. Petersburg, and assured her that the Empress would be delighted to see her, she succumbed to the temptation. Leaving Vienna on a Sunday in April, 1795, she went, " by a very pretty route," to Prague, where she arrived four days later. One day was devoted to seeing Prague and its art treasures, and on the next she went on towards Dresden, where she was moved to " adoration " by Raphael's " Virgin and Child," which made all the other masterpieces in the gallery appear to be lacking in dignity. One need scarcely say that, in such a centre of the arts as Dresden, her own " Sibyl " was once more unrolled, framed, and exhibited, this time by the express wish of the Elector of Saxony, who ordered that it should be shown in that same gallery where Raphael's great work had enthralled her. " During a week all the court came there to see my picture. I went there myself on the first day, in order to show the Elector how much I was touched and how grateful I was for that high favour, which I was far from expecting or desiring." What a naive soul was hers, and how innocently she enjoyed her triumphs ! After this week of triumph, " being in a great hurry to reach St. 122 VIGEE-LEBRUN Petersburg," she went straight to Beriin, where she devoted five days to sight-seeing in that city, which at the time was, as it seemed to her, too big for its population, so that the streets were a Uttle dull. Then, on May 28, 1795, she set out on a drive of some forty or fifty miles, along a road which was mostly of sand, to visit Prince Henry of Prussia at Reinsberg, where that former acquaintance of the artist received her with " une bonte sans egale.' ' Indeed, there is no record in her Souvenirs that she was ever treated more handsomely. Her taste for the theatre was gratified by the Prince's own company of French comedians, and there was plenty of music, of which he was still as fond as in the times when he joined in the quartette at her house in the Rue de Clery. " I cannot tell how sad I felt in leaving this excellent prince, whom, alas ! I was never to see again, and whom I shall regret all my life. The welcome he had given me, the kindness with which he had overwhelmed me during my stay with him, all seemed to render that separation painful. His attentions for me did not relax for a moment, and, immediately after I had left Reinsberg, I was touched to the last degree on discovering the quantity of provisions, both eatables and wines, that he had had placed in my carriage, knowing that I should find nothing until I got to Riga, There was enough to feed a Prussian regiment, and the good prince could feel quite certain that I should not die of hunger on the road." But if the little party of travellers — " Madame, Mademoiselle et la gouvernante " — had plenty to eat and drink, they would willingly have changed some of their provisions for pneumatic tires had such accessories then been invented. The sandy roads were so bad that two miles an hour was exceptionally good progress in many places. However, travelling by day and night, they at length reached Riga, where they were obliged and glad to rest for a few days, awaiting their passports for St. Petersburg. CHAPTER XIX ST. PETERSBURG, 1795-180O Commanded to Court — No time to get a dress made — Kindly reception from Catherine II — Comte Esterhazy reproaches Madame Lebrun for her forgetfulness of etiquette — Her supposed enemies at the Court — Extravagant hospitaUty of the Russian nobles — The Prin- cesse Dolgorouky and her hopelessly devoted lover — How Potemkin had stormed a fortress to amuse her — Tableaux vivants at the Princesse Dolgorouky's — Madame Lebrun is robbed by a servant, and loses ;£i8oo through the failure of a Russian bank — The " Greek supper " story — A lie exposed — The artist paints the grandchildren of Catherine II — Trouble about the costumes — The grand-duchess Elisabeth — Stanislas Poniatowsky. TOWARDS the end of July 1795 Madame Lebrun arrived in the " new capital " of Russia, having been three months on her much interrupted way from Vienna. She was in great need of rest. If the sandy roads of Central Germany had been wearisome, the roads from Riga to St. Petersburg had been dangerous. They were in many places -simply tracks of loose stones, like the beds of mountain rivers in summer, and the shocks were all the more violent because the carriage was of the roughest description. The inns being so bad on that route that it was impossible to stop in them, the travellers had gone on " from jolt to jolt " -without any rest until they reached their destination. Twenty-four hours .after her arrival, whilst Madame was still reposing after that horrid bone- shaking, the Bourbons' "Ambassador" to Russia, Comte Esterhazy, came to welcome her, and, on the same evening, returned to tell her that the Empress Catherine would receive her the next afternoon at Tsarko-Selo. This promptitude on the part of the Empress was as disturbing as it was flattering to Madame Lebrun. Most readers of her own sex will sympathise with her distress that there was no time to get a suitable dress made, and that she must either go in a simple mushn gown, such as she usually wore in the evenings, or disobey the Imperial command. The second alternative was, of course, not to be cogitated; such behaviour -would have started her very badly on her professional and social route in .Russia. When, the next morning, she went to lunch with the Esterhazys 123 124 VIGEE-LEBRUN before the presentation to the Empress, her hostess could not carry her pohteness so far as not to ask: " Haven't you brought another dress?" No wonder that Vig^e-Lebrun " became crimson " at this question. " I explained to her that I had not had time to get a more suitable dress made. Her dissatisfied air so much increased my anxiety, that I had need to arm myself with all my courage when the time came to go to the Palace." However, M. Esterhazy, to Madame's astonishment, had assured her that the Empress was " really a good sort of woman." She was somewhat reassured, too, by an encounter, on the way through the gardens of the Palace, with the Grand Duchess Elisabeth (the wife of the future Alexander I), a pretty girl of seventeen or thereabouts, who was watering some carnations at a window, and who spoke to the artist, ending her remarks with the flattering statement : " We have long waited to have you here, Madame, so much so that I have often dreamt that you had come." To the French painter her reception by the Empress of All the Russias— and of Poland by that time — was naturally one of the great events of her life. Accustomed though she was to courts and princesses, she made a mistake at the outset which would have earned her the grave displeasure of some monarchs even in our own enlightened times. Let us have her account of this reception. " I was trembling a little when I came into the presence of the Empress, and a few seconds later I was in a tete-d-Ute conversation with the Autocrat of All the Russias. M. d'Esterhazy had told me that it was necessary ta kiss the Empress's hand, and in accord with that usage she had taken off one of her gloves, which ought to have reminded me of the rule, but I entirely forgot it. Truly the aspect of that famous woman made such an impression on me, that I could think of nothing else except to look at her. I was at first exceedingly surprised to find her very short : I had imagined her ta be of prodigious tallness, as high as her renown. She was very fat, but she had still a handsome face, which her white hair, brushed high off the brow, framed to perfection. Genius seemed to rest upon her wide and lofty forehead. Her eyes were soft and well-shaped, her nose the true Grecian, her complexion highly coloured (fort anime), and her countenance very mobile. She said to me at once, in a gentle voice, a little thick for all that, ' I am charmed, Madame, to receive you here ; your reputation has arrived ahead of you. I am very fond of the arts, and especially of painting. I am not a connoisseur, but an amateur.' Everything she said during that conversation, which was rather lengthy, about her wish CATHERINE II 125 that I should like Russia well enough to stay there for a long time, was so kindly that my timidity disappeared, and when I took leave of her Majesty I was completely at ease. Only I did not forgive myself for not having kissed her hand, which was very pretty and very white, and I regretted that forgetfulness all the more because M, d'Esterhazy reproached me for it. As to my costume, the Empress did not appear to have noticed it, or perhaps she was less fastidious than our ambassadress." According to Madame Lebrun, she became at once a subject of petty intrigue at the court. She tells us that the Empress ordered her chamber- lains to give her a suite of rooms in the palace, as she wished to be able to see her painting portraits, and that the chamberlains, believing her to be an adherent of the Comte d'Artois, and fearing that she came to intrigue against M. Esterhazy in the interests of that Prince, assured the Empress that there were no suitable rooms vacant. Madame thought it probable that the Bourbon envoy himself was in accord with the chamberlains in this matter. " But truly," she says, " one could know very little of me not to be aware that I was too much taken up with my art to be able to give my time to politics, even apart from the aversion I have always felt from all that has any resemblance to intrigue." In any case, she felt that she would have been far less free at the palace than in her own lodgings, and the kindness with which she was treated by the great ladies of St. Petersburg made up for any little unkindness she received from the immediate entourage of the Empress. The hospitality of the wealthy Russian nobles at that period was displayed on a highly generous scale. No foreigner, if he had a satisfactory introduction, ever needed to take his meals at an hotel or a restaurant. " I remember," writes Vigee-Lebrun, " that during the last month I was in St. Petersburg the Prince Narischkin, Grand Equerry, kept an open table of twenty-five to thirty covers for strangers who were recommended to him." Wherever foreigners of " good position " travelled in Russia they could lodge and feed free of expense at the country-houses of nobles, merchants, or landed proprietors, who were surprised at the warmth with which their guests thanked them for their generous treatment. "If we were in your country," said these lavish hosts, " you would certainly do as much for us." Madame Lebrun's comment on such a confident opinion was fully justified, so far as Western Europe was in question. It is expressed in the one word — " Alas ! " It was not long after her arrival in Russia that Madame Lebrun made 126 VIGEE-LEBRUN two friends who were to remain in her friendship for many a year to come: the beautiful Princesse Dolgorouky, and the " amiable" Princesse Kourakin. She also became acquainted with the Austrian ambassador, Comte Cobentzl. The two ladies, indeed, and the Comte, " kept house together." Let not the reader of modern French novels suppose that there was any- thing wrong with this arrangement. Madame Lebrun stayed in the house for a week, and her report is as follows : " The Comte de Cobentzl was passionately in love with the Princess Dolgorouky, who made not the slightest response to his affection ; but the indifference with which she received his attentions could not drive him away, and, as some song says, he preferred her severities to the favours of other women. Hopeless of any other happiness than that of seeing her, he was determined at least ta enjoy that to its full extent ; whether in the country or in the town, he never left her. As soon as his despatches, which he wrote with great ease, were sent off, he flew to her house, and made himself completely her slave. One would see him run at the least word, the least gesture of his divinity." All of which goes to suggest that " cherchez la femme," if we regard the object sought as a passive influence, must have been applicable to many little difficulties of diplomacy between the Austrian and Russian Govern- ments at that time. Apropos of ambassadors, Madame Lebrun tells the following httle story of a dinner at which she was present, given by a Princess Galitzin to Duroc and Chateaugiron, envoys to Russia of the French Repubhcan Government. The cook, knowing nothing of the French Revolution, and supposing the principal guests to be the ambassadors of the King of France, decorated his filets, and moulded his pates, " en fleurs-de-lis." The effect, of this misplaced compliment was so unpleasant that the hostess, fearing she might be supposed guilty of a bad practical joke, sent for the cook and questioned him about this display of fleurs-de-lis. " The good man replied, with a self-satisfied air, ' I wished to show to Her Excellency that I know what is the correct thing to do on grand occasions.' " To return to the Princesse Dolgorouky and her slave. Entertaining: and obliging as the ugly and middle-aged Cobentzl seems to have been, he was always eclipsed by more brilliant and more lavish admirers of his. helle dame sans merci. Among them had been Potemkin, who had not only showered diamonds upon her, and, on one occasion, sent a courier to- Paris, travelling night and day, to get her some shoes to wear at a ball, but had actually (as was commonly asserted) ordered an assault on a hostile ■issssmmmnsimifim :-'■: •^■i7"'-L"^^y:-1''--yi-- TABLEAUX VIVANTS 127 fortress before the time previously fixed, because she had expressed a desire to see this " spectacle." Madame Lebrun gives some remarkable anecdotes in illustration of the extravagance and autocratic behaviour of Potemkin, but she adds nothing to what the Comte de S6gur, the Prince de Ligne, and others have recorded concerning him. His costly stage- management of the tour of Catherine II through her empire is one of the best known, the most absurd, and the most melancholy facts in Russian history — melancholy, because he managed to prevent the sovereign from learning anything of the real state of her people, and spent on it vast sums wrung from the toil of those patient slaves. The Comtesse Skavronska; who, as has already been stated, was Potemkin' s niece, said to Madame Lebrun, " If my uncle had known you he would have overwhelmed you with honours and with wealth." Possibly he might have done so, but in any case the artist had no desire again to go through the humiliation she had endured after receiving a bonbonniere with some bank-notes from a Minister whose portrait she had painted. As a fact, she had few Russian men among her sitters, the three artists, Borovikofsky, Chtchoukin, and Lampi dividing the vogue as painters of Russian noblemen at that time. At Alexandrovsky, where the curious menage d trois — the two Russian princesses and the Austrian ambassador — spent the summer months, Vigee-Lebrun stayed for a week, enjoying the moonlight water-parties, and still more pleased by the amateur theatricals. To these, at her suggestion, tableaux vivants succeeded, the figures for which she dressed and arranged, preferring serious subjects, " or those from the Bible," as she quaintly says. She also arranged, from memory, several pictures in the " grand style," such as " The Family of Darius " (possibly after the Veronese now in the National Gallery). The greatest success was with " Achilles at the Court of Lycomedes." Her idea of the correct dress of a Homeric warrior seems to have been as remote from probability, in a different direction, as that of the Comedie Fran^aise of her youth. She took the part of Achilles herself, in the tableau, " because I was generally dressed in such a way that a helmet and a shield suf&ced to make up a very accurate costume." Happily for Madame Lebrun's modesty, she had forgotten the statues of Greek warriors in the Louvre collection ; happily also, she did not have the idea of painting a portrait of herself as Achilles. Her " classical " mother-and-child portrait is charming. What would her classical warrior portrait have been, in the eyes of those to whom subject has some relation to art ? 128 VIGEE-LEBRUN It will be remembered that, after leaving Italy, Madame had the misfortune, in spite of the order of Napoleon in her favour, to lose a great part of her savings in a Venetian bank during the French invasion. Twice afterwards, in St. Petersburg, she lost a good deal of her money. First, she was the poorer by fifteen thousand francs through the dishonesty of a young man-servant, whom she managed, on his conviction for the robbery, to save from the gallows. This loss was due, one would naturally say, to the folly of keeping so large a sum in her house. But in the other case, the loss occurred precisely because she kept her money in a bank. During the first month of her residence in St. Petersburg she earned ;£i8oo. Under friendly, but unfortunate advice, she placed this money in a bank which suspended payment shortly afterwards, with a total loss to her. Up to this time, she wrote to her sister-in-law, she had saved nothing out of her earnings. This was not strictly true, as the house in the Rue du Gros-Chenet at Paris, which her enemies described as a gift from Calonne, had been built, according to her husband and herself, out of the fruits of her painting as well as of Lebrun's business. The old calumny was still pursuing her. In the letter in which she tells of the failure of her banker at St. Petersburg, she also tells how a certain Monsieur de L ■ (whose name she does not give) had told the Baronne Strogonoff that he was present at the famous " Supper after the manner of the Greeks," and that to his knowledge it cost sixty thousand francs. He had also intimated that he was on very friendly terms with the giver of that feast. One day, when Madame was in the bedroom of the Baronne Strogonoff, who was indisposed, this Monsieur L ■ was announced. Madame hid herself behind the curtains. When the visitor — in the conventional manner which would now be so unconventional in England — was shown into the room, the lady in the bed said to him : " ' Well, you ought to be very happy, for Madame Lebrun has arrived.' Then she tried slily to draw him on as to his liaisons with me, and the Greek supper. My man began to get confused, the Baronne still putting questions, when at length I showed myself. I went up to him, and said, ' Monsieur, you know Madame Lebrun very well, it seems ? ' He was obliged to answer ' Yes.' ' That is very strange ! ' I replied, ' for I, Monsieur, am Madame Lebrun, whom you have calumniated, and I meet you to-day for the first time in my life.' At these words he was so much overcome that his legs trembled under him. He took his hat, and since then has not been seen again, for CATHERINE II. AT HOME 129 the doors of the best houses have been shut in his face." This letter to Suzette Vigee ends with the following reflection: "It is sad to remark, as I have too often had to do, that in a foreign country it is only French people who are capable of trying to injure their compatriots, even in employing calumny. Everywhere, on the other hand, one sees the English, the Germans, and the Italians, mutually sustaining and supporting one another." Vig6e-Lebrun would not have been herself if she had not changed her abode whilst at St. Petersburg. She moved from her first lodgings into a house in the big square of which one side was formed by the Palace of Catherine II. She had the pleasure, every morning, of seeing the Empress open a French window and throw bread-crumbs to the birds, which came regularly to receive their rations. In the evenings, through the windows of the brightly-lit rooms of the Palace, the Empress could be seen playing at hide-and-seek with her grandchildren and their attendants. Two of these grandchildren, Alexandrina and Helena, both between twelve and fifteen years old, sat for their portraits, by command of the Empress, to the French artist, being painted together on the same canvas. This picture, which is now at Gatschina, is signed, and dated 1796. The two girls are dressed in their own costumes, but, as first represented, they were dressed by the artist in costumes which, she says, were " a little Greek, but very simple and very modest." The reason for the alteration was that Zuboff, the favourite who had succeeded Potemkin in Catherine's affections, told Madame Lebrun that the Empress was scandalised. In the artist's own opinion the effect of the picture was spoilt by the alteration, apart from the fact that " the pretty arms, with which I had done my very best, could no longer be seen." She declares that the Empress herself denied that she had made any complaint, and she charges Zuboff, who does not seem to have hked her, with inventing the criticism. His enmity, she suggests, was due to her neglect, during six months, to seek his good offices by means of a letter of introduction to his sister, which the artist had with her. It seems certain, however, that the Empress did not care for the picture, and she never sat to Madame herself, though she gave her some other commissions. The second " command " portrait was of the Grand Duchess Elisabeth, whom we have seen watering her carnations. She was a nice-looking girl, 9 130 VIGEE-LEBRUN if we may trust that portrait. Indeed, the artist assures us that at a ball at the Palace, where she was unable to keep count of the multitude of lovely women who passed before her as she sat watching the polonaises, the four young princesses of the Imperial family were the most beautiful. They were all four dressed d la Grecque, their tunics being fastened on the shoulders by diamond hooks, so that they seem to have shown their pretty arms on this occasion, and to give the lie to Zuboff. Madame herself assisted at the toilette of the Grand Duchess Elisabeth, " so that her costume was the most correct" — a conclusion that, remembering her idea of the correct costume for Achilles, we may find it difficult to endorse. We know from the Comtesse Golovine, who was in St. Petersburg at that time, that the Empress was much displeased with the Grand Duchess for appearing in this dress, which, in her eyes, was far from being "correct." After the death of Catherine, who, as Vig6e-Lebrun believed, had been a very fountain of happiness for her subjects, the brief and unhappy reign of the eccentric Paul I was in no way inimical to the interests of the French portrait-painter. The new Empress, Marie Feodorovna, had happy memories of her visit to Paris. Madame Lebrun had there been presented to her ; and now, in 1799, she painted a great portrait of the new Empress, with all the usual accessories of Royal portraiture — crown, columns, sumptuous curtain and the rest. Her vogue as a painter was also maintained by the exhibition of her last portrait from Ufe of Marie Antoinette, and the favour shown to her by that involuntary roi fainSant, Stanislas Poniatowsky, whose portrait she painted twice, helped to keep her busy. Her charge seems to have been about £300 for a portrait of ordinary size, a large price in those days. In addition to her portraits of others, she painted for the Academy of St. Petersburg, into which she had just been received with the usual honours, the picture of herself, with her palette in her hand, which, from prints and photographs, is familiar to the admirers of her work. ^4 CHAPTER XX THE MARRIAGE OF JULIE A heavy blow — The marriage of Julie Lebrun to M. Nigris — Madame Lebrun's description of her daughter — A spoilt child — An unfaithful governess — The artist leaves for Moscow — The change does her no good, and she returns to St. Petersburg — Favour shown by the Emperor Alexander and his wife (The Grand-Duchess Elisabeth) to Vigee-Lebrun — She leaves Russia — Visit to Queen Louise at Potsdam — Sketches the Queen's portrait — The Queen's candour about her plain children — Madame Lebrun detained in Frankfort by the rumour of Bona- parte's assassination. IT was now, when her fortune seemed to be in the full tide of success, that she received a blow which hurt her more than any that she had yet felt. The news of her mother's death, in April 1800, must have distressed her, though she does not refer to it in the text of her Souvenirs, but the marriage of her daughter in the same year gave her far more sorrow. Julie — " Brunette " her mother and her friends called her more often — was not, perhaps, quite as pretty as that mother describes her : " My daughter was now seventeen. She was charming in every respect. Her large blue eyes, wherein so much intelligence was shown, her nose a little retrouss6, her pretty mouth with its beautiful teeth, a dazzling freshness of complexion, all formed one of the prettiest faces you covild see. Her figure was not very tall, but she was svelte without being devoid of embonpoint. A natural grace reigned in all her person. There was as much vivacity in her manners as in her wit. Her memory was prodigious — everything she had learnt in her various lessons or by reading she remembered. She had a charming voice, and sang in Italian to a marvel, for at Naples and at St. Petersburg I had given her the best music masters, as well as masters for English and German. Moreover she accompanied herself on the piano and the guitar. But that which charmed me most was her happy promise in painting, so that I could not say how happy and proud I was of all the advantages she combined." "Brunette" was pretty and accomplished, but for all that she was a 131 132 VIGEE-LEBRUN spoilt child. She was invited wherever her mother went, and her mother's deUght was to satisfy the girl's fancies. Unfortunately, Julie did not fully return the maternal affection, and while Madame Lebrun was easily influenced by Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle was just as easily influenced by Madame Charrot, the governess who had come with them from Paris, and had been with them ever since. One of the friends who showed a fondness for Julie was the Comtesse Tchernycheff, at whose house the girl was allowed to spend many hours when her mother was elsewhere. There she met M. Nigris, a young man of about thirty, who was secretary to Comte Tchernycheff. He had an attractive manner and a rather romantic appearance, and Julie fell in love with him. The Tchernycheffs, helped by Madame Charrot, intrigued so well to bring about a marriage between the pair that at length, attacked on all sides, Madame Lebrun consented, but not until Julie had become really ill from dread of a refusal. The father's consent was received, after a long delay, which Julie attributed to her mother — unjustly, as Madame Lebrun declares. The fact was, M. Lebrun in Paris had a more promising husband in his mind for his daughter, and did not readily agree to her marrying a penniless foreigner. There is reason to believe, from some remarks of Madame Lebrun herself, and from a letter of Comte Tchernycheff which she gives, that the ancient calumnies against her had been raked up to prejudice her daughter's mind. The wedding-day arrived, a sad festival for Madame Lebrun. She had given Brunette a beautiful trousseau, jewels (including a diamond bracelet bearing a miniature of M, Lebrun), and a handsome dowry. People did not go off for honeymoons in those days, and on the morrow of the wedding the mother went to see her daughter, finding her " calm, and without exaltation over her happiness." A fortnight later she found her less calm, but no more happy. The bridegroom, who was talking to some other visitor, had a bad cold, and had a furred wrap round his neck and shoulders. " I hope you are very happy," said the mother, " now that you have him for a husband ? " The bride's reply was not very encouraging : "I confess that the furred wrap disenchants me ; how do you suppose one can be in love with such a get-up ? " Madame Lebrun took these words very seriously, and regarded them as marking the end of the romance. She adds, however, in one of those footnotes wherein her natural sense of justice sometimes finds expression, that " M. Nigris had a gentle nature and a taking wit" {esprit insinuant). "They lived very well together during some years." AN UNFORTUNATE MARRIAGE I33 The coldness with which Madame Lebrun regarded her son-in-law might conceivably be gauged from one simple fact. She merely calls him "M. Nigris." The "nobiliary particle" (de), which she so freely prefixed to the names of untitled persons of any nationality, without any better warrant than her own fancy for it, was not given to him. The marriage of her daughter almost destroyed Madame' s fondness for St. Petersburg, and she sought change for mind and body by a journey to Moscow, where she spent five months, having a fresh triumph, both professional and social, in the old capital of the Empire. It seems almost superfluous to say that she had to leave her first residence in Moscow on account of an " infernal noise," the trouble on this occasion proceeding from a band of trumpeters, who practised their pieces in the adjoining room ! In the house to which she removed, which was lent to her by the Comtesse Stroganoff, she had an awful night, being nearly suffocated by smoke from a stove of which the chimney was stopped. It may be noted, as showing how lightly her husband regarded his divorce from Vigee- Lebrun, that in this house at Moscow she held an exhibition of pictures by various masters which he had sent to her for that purpose from Paris. Before a fortnight was over she had begun half a dozen portraits, and she was certainly not idle during her stay, but she left no special list of her Moscow works, including them in the St. Petersburg list. The change to Moscow did her no good, and though she was probably never in quite the state of despair and weakness which she described in writing to her son-in-law, declaring that she was so melancholy that the greatest of misanthropes would seem too lively for her, yet she undoubtedly was feeling very poorly at that time. A few days after she had written to M. Nigris about her health, she found herself much better, and in spite of many kindly attempts to keep her at Moscow, and offers to pay her higher prices for her portraits than she received elsewhere, she set out at the beginning of March 1801, learning, when she was half way to St. Petersburg, of the assassination of the Emperor Paul, and finding the capital, when she reached it some days afterwards, " delirious with joy, people singing, dancing, and embracing in the streets." Her stay in this happy capital was not long, but she was able, in spite of her health, which was by no means re-established yet, to make pastel studies from hfe of the Emperor Alexander and his wife, whose portraits she had already painted. The favour with which these sovereigns treated 134 VIGEE-LEBRUN her would, as she says, have ensured her fortune had she been well enough to profit by it. As it was, she was determined to get away from Russia as soon as she could, and with her maid (a married woman) and an old man whom she kindly took as a servant because he wanted to go to Prussia, she set out, " accompanied " by old M. de Riviere, who travelled in another carriage, and who was of very little assistance to her, being so little able to enforce his will over his postillions that they took him nearly all the time by cross roads, zigzagging across the main road to which her own carriage kept. Curiously, the zigzag method seems really to have been the best, for Madame herself says of the route, " I saw from a distance some wolves on the hills, but apparently they were afraid of us, as they always fled on our approach ; so did the poor stags, frightened by M. de Riviere's carriage, which I often saw crossing the road." Passing through Riga again, she hurried on to Mittau, hoping to find there the young Duchesse d'Angouleme, the " Madame Royale " of the picture at Versailles, from whom she had lately received a kindly letter concerning a portra:it of Marie Antoinette; but the Princess had left when the artist ai rived. Again she suffered badly from the state of the route, and once the jolting affected her so much that she fainted. But as she approached Berlin the trouble was lessened, and when, near the end of July (1801), she arrived in the Prussian capital, she was so much better that, in spite of irritating troubles with the customs over her luggage, and the theft by a drunken official of some of the Indian muslin which Madame du Barry had given her, she was well enough a few days after her arrival to go to Potsdam, at the request of Queen Louise, to paint the portrait of that Princess of pathetic history. The Queen showed every possible attention to the artist, and was pleased to be satisfied with the "Sibyl," which was again unrolled. She was not so complimentary to her own offspring as to Madame Lebrun's work. " During one of her sittings the Queen sent for her children, whom, to my great surprise, I found ugly ; in showing them to me, she said, ' They are not good-looking.' I admit I had not the face to contradict her — I contented myself with answering that their faces were very expressive {quails avaient beaucoup de physionomie) ." Thirty-five years later, by the by, when Madame Lebrun was preparing her reminis- cences, she felt that this anecdote might hurt the feelings of the " children," who were now middle-aged, and therefore she added this footnote : " These children, since that time, have much changed to their advantage. The HER WELCOME HOME i35 Princess, who is now Empress of Russia, has greatly improved in appearance." Having made two pastel studies of Queen Louise, and some of other members of the Prussian Royal Family, and having been made a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts, Madame Lebrun, full of foreign honours and enriched by much foreign money well and honourably earned, went on her way to France. She stayed a short time in Dresden to make several copies, already commissioned, of the portrait of the Emperor Alexander of Russia. At Weimar, though she had letters of introduction to the Saxon from the Prussian Court, she was again so upset (figuratively) by bad roads that she was too modest, too timid, and too weary to use them. At Gotha she called on Grimm, who was of much service to her with regard to changing her money and arranging for the rest of her journey ; at Frankfort she was robbed by a servant, and moreover was delayed for six days by the rumour that Bonaparte had been assassinated, which, if true, would have made her stay abroad still longer. She employed these days of waiting in mending her underlinen, work at which she was so unskilled that a new maid whom she engaged after she reached Paris, on seeing the garments thus " mended," exclaimed, " Any one can see that Madame has come from a barbarous country, for these things are cobbled diabolically." Considering that M. Lebrun had secured an act of divorce during the Terror, his conduct on the return of his former wife to Paris was not without comedy. He had the house in the Rue du Gros-Chenet done up for the occasion. Her bedroom was draped with green cashmere, bordered with golden silk embroidery, and the bed was surmounted by a crown of golden stars. There were plenty of flowers about, and aU that was possible had been done to please her. It was all very nice ; and although, she says, " M. Lebrun certainly made me pay very dearly for all that, I was none the less sensible of the trouble he had taken to make my home agreeable." From that day onward, except on the occasion of his death, we hear scarcely anything more about this light-hearted and light-principled man. CHAPTER XXI RETURN TO FRANCE, l802 The artist's return to Paris — Lost friends, but many left — A ball at Madame Recamier's — The desolation of Marly — The fate of Rosalie Bocquet — ^How M. de Verdun escaped the guillotine — Madame Lebrun resumes her old life — Beautiful women of the Revolution — Madame Tallien described WIDE as were the gaps that the Terror had made in Madame Lebrun' s world in Paris, there were still many of her best friends to cheer her — the Brongniarts, the Verduns, Greuze, and M6nageot among them. Josephine Bonaparte came to visit her, and reminded her of dances at which they had met before the Revolution, but of which Madame Lebrun had no recollection. " Madame Bonaparte was very pleasant, and asked me to lunch at the house of the First Consul. As, however, I did not show any great eagerness in the matter, the date of that luncheon was never fixed." The brothers of Bonaparte also came to see Madame Lebrun's pictures, and Lucien was delighted with the famous " Sibyl." The Comedie Frangaise put her upon the free list. The leading actors, furthermore, asked to be allowed to perform a comedy in the gallery in her courtyard, the management of the Opera House proposing to provide a ballet on the occasion. These last offers she declined, sensible though she was of the honour of such a festival, because she did not wish to be " placed in evidence." A ball to which she went at Madame Recamier's (whose acquaintance she had just made) delighted her, all the more as she was with her St. Petersburg friend and patron, the Princess Dolgorouky. " There was a large company, without any confusion ; a great number of pretty women, a very fine house — ^nothing was wanting. As the peace of Amiens had been arranged, one found again in that reunion I know not what air of propriety and of magnificence that the young generation had not known 136 LOST FRIENDS I37 before. It was the first time that young people of twenty years old saw at Paris liveries in the ante-chambers, ambassadors in the drawing-rooms, as well as other distinguished foreigners, richly dressed, and all wearing briUiant orders. Whatever one may say, that sort of luxury is more in keeping with a ball than short jackets and trousers." In fact, the Revolution was over, and there was soon to be a Court again. Gaiety had resumed its sway, but melancholy indeed were the changes that met the sight of the returning exile. The fire of the Revolution had passed, and burnt up a great part of that which, animate or inanimate, had been most pleasant to her eyes. She went again to Marly, where first the Queen of France had taken notice of the artist, both being then in their teens ; and Marly, all but its park, its watering-place for horses, and its farm, had disappeared. The palace, the cascades, the fountains were as if they had never been. " I found but a single stone, which seemed to me to mark the middle of the salon." Marly was but a type of the changes in the world that she had left behind on that dreadful October night, thirteen years before. Among the many old friends who had, to use the awful slang of the Revolution, " looked through the National window " (the guillotine), was her fellow-student in girlhood, Rosalie Bocquet, who might have rivalled Elisabeth Vigee as a portrait-painter had she not almost entirely given up painting after her marriage to M. FUleul. The Bocquets had possessed some influence at Court, and the Queen had appointed this young Madame Filleul concierge of the Chateau of La Muette, a post which gave a home to the newly married pair, a certain income, and various rights and privileges. M. Filleul died in 1788. When Madame Lebrun had told the young widow, the year after, that she was going to leave France, Rosalie had said, " You are wrong to go away ; I shall stay here, for I believe the Revolution will be the cause of happiness." At the beginning of the Terror, Madame Chalgrin, daughter of Joseph Vernet and an inti- mate friend of Rosalie Filleul, came to the Chateau of La Muette, at the invitation of the " concierge," to celebrate very quietly the marriage of her own daughter. On the day after, the revolutionaries came to arrest Madame Filleul and Madame Chalgrin, who, they said, had been guilty of " burning the wax-candles of the nation," and both were guillotined a few days later, the formal charge against Madame Filleul being that she was " a servant of the Court, a friend of the Messalina Antoinette," and that " the ci-devant crapulous Comte d'Artois had shaken hands with her." 138 VIGEE-LEBRUN Another of Madame Lebrun's friends who had said " Why should I have any anxiety ? what harm have I done to any one ? " was M. Boutin, her host of so many pleasant dinners at his house in Montmartre. He stayed in France, and he too " looked through the National window." His crime was that he was rich, and that the new power wanted his money. Of those who had stayed behind at the emigration, and survived to welcome her, none was more pleasant to her heart than Madame de Verdun, her hostess at Colombes, and friend of almost a lifetime. M. de Verdun, like M. Boutin, was guilty of being rich, and was speedily arrested and sent to prison under the Revolution. He owed his survival to the fact that he was not merely a financier, but a landed proprietor who had been kind to his labourers and poor neighbours. They were sufi&ciently grateful to stick by their employer and helper. As soon as the news of his imprison- ment reached Colombes, the peasants gathered together and marched to Paris to demand his release. This prompt action by so many people saved his life, but he was kept in prison until the peasants came again, and showed themselves so absolutely determined, that he was at length set free. His wife, on hearing the good news, was so overcome with joy that she sent for two hackney coaches to fetch her husband from prison, thinking she would get there more quickly with two than with one. Of all the old acquaintances whom Madame found alive in Paris under the Consulate, none was more in the state of finding his " occupation gone " than the Comte d'Espinchal, whose extraordinary capacity for knowing everybody by sight, and everything that anybody was doing before it was done, formed the subject of an earlier page. Vigee-Lebrun, when she first met him again in 1802, said to him, " You must be frightfully ' dis- oriented ' — you know nobody any more in the boxes at the Opera and the Comedie Frangaise." He made no answer, but " raised his eyes to heaven." This strange person died soon after, probably of ennui, for he was not very old. It was said that, before his death, he burned an enormous quantity of notes that he had been accustomed to make every night before going to bed. "1 had," says Madame Lebrun, "heard several people talk of these notes, which perhaps made them anxious. It is certain that they would have furnished enough material for a book which would have been very piquant, but quite as certainly would have been very scandalous." It is a good thing for the reputations of many of the Parisiennes of the days of Louis XVI that those papers were burnt, no doubt, as it is a good thing for the ladies of Versailles that Madame Lebrun herself was WHY HER "SOUVENIRS" ARE DULL 139 not a scandal-monger. She knew all the gossip of Baron de Breteuil, for example, who was at the head of the Government when the Bastille fell. Recalling the last sitting that Marie Antoinette gave her for the big picture at Versailles, Madame says : "I remember that the Baron de Breteuil, then Minister, was present, and that, during the whole time of the sitting, he never ceased to talk scandal about all the women of the Court. He must have supposed that I was rather deaf or a particularly good person, if he did not fear that I should repeat some of his wicked stories to the people most concerned. As a matter of fact, I have never repeated a single one, although I have not forgotten any of them." Here we have the chief reason for the " dullness " of which many readers of Vigee-Lebrun's Souvenirs complain. The Baron de Breteuil himself must have omitted most of these scandals from his memoirs, but she left them all out of hers. There is nothing more creditable in her history than that she kept for ever locked in her memory nearly every tale that could have damaged the reputation of any one of her contem- poraries. This fact alone would be sufficient to establish that, whatever her merits or defects, she was a woman of admirable instincts. When we think of the reminiscences she could have written, and those she did produce, we can measure the detestation in which scandal was held by one who herself had suffered so much from its poison. As soon as she had recovered fiom the immediate shock of finding the Paris of her youth so changed, she began to resume her old way of life. She went out to evening parties, she gave suppers herself, with music as of old. Still looking out with an artist's eye for lovely women, she enjoyed the sight of such beauties as Madame de Canisy, who was " made like a model," Madame de Bassano, who was very proud but very pretty, and Madame Tallien, in whose appearance the artist sought vainly for a single defect. " She was at onca beautiful and pretty; for the regularity of her features did not detract from that which is called the physiognomy. Her smile, her look, had something ravishing in them, and her figure, her arms, her shoulders, were admirable." Madame Lebrun goes on to say that this new acquaintance of hers " joined to her beauty an excellent heart ; it is well known that during the Revolution a crowd of victims, condemned to death, owed their safety to the empire that she had over Tallien, and that such unfortunate people called her notre dame de ban secours." This account of Madame Tallien would alone show how over-favourable 140 VIGEE-LEBRUN is the impression often given by Madame Lebrun through her habit of suppressing all the evil and telling only the good of those who were amiable to herself. Nearly all that she tells us of Madame Tallien is true, for it is certain from many contemporary accounts that this much-married woman was at least as lovely as ever was Lady Hamilton, and far more cultivated in her manners and movements. It is also certain that Madame Tallien secured the release of various prisoners, but it has been lately shown, in a new account of her life and character, that she probably sold her interest at a high price. CHAPTER XXII IN ENGLAND, 1802-5 Why Madame Lebrun came to England — Crossing the Channel — The crowd on Dover jetty — The drive to London — A bad night in a Leicester Square hotel, and the cause of it — The " roc " of Portman Square — The house-troubles of Vig6e-Lebrun — The streets of London in 1802 — First experience of London society — Bored by the lack of conversation — Her own soirees in Maddox Street — The singing of Madame Billington and Madame Grassini — The Prince of Wales's compliment — Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire described — The portrait of the Prince of Wales — Alleged jealousy of English artists — Mrs. Fitzherbert's picture-frame on wheels — The London Sunday — Lady Hamilton's visit — Her famous " attitudes " dis- played in Madame Lebrun's drawing-room — The Chinnery family — Knole and the Duchess of Dorset — Twickenham — The Comte de Vaudreuil's young wife — The Orleans princes. BEING still depressed, and hoping to cheer herself up again by fresh changes of scene and life, Madame Lebrun determined, in the early spring of 1802, to cross the Channel. Some years before, whilst she was in Rome, just after the outbreak of the Revolution, the Paris papers had given as news that she had gone to London, in order, as she says, "to make people think that I had followed M. de Calonne," just as, a year or two earlier still, it had been put about that she had gone to Italy " to rejoin M. de Vaudreuil," her enemies never allowing her to go anywhere unless one of her alleged lovers had led the way. She had never seen London, and curiosity, coupled with the desire for fresh conquests in her profession, was enough to draw her thither. " I did not know a word of English. It is true I took with me an English maid, but this girl had not been much use to me before, and I was obhged to discharge her soon after I reached London, because she did nothing all day but eat bread-and-butter. Happily I also took with me a charming person, to whom misfortune rendered the security of my house, where she lived as my friend, very welcome. This was my good Adelaide, whose attention and advice have always been so useful to me." After crossing the Channel for the first time, Madame was rather frightened, on landing at Dover, to see a crowd of people on the pier. She was set at rest on this matter by 141 142 VIGEE-LEBRUN some more experienced seafarer, who informed her that these people were there merely out of curiosity, to see the passengers land from the packet- boats. That crowd still frequents the harbour at Dover, but the spectacle which attracts it is perhaps less remarkable in our days of turbine steamers and lightning passages than it was in the years when the saiUng-boats, with their stuffy and comfortless cabins, frequently took seven or eight hours to buffet and tack their way across the narrow strait. Madame does not tell us whether or not she was a good sailor. Probably she was, or more probably she had a calm and pleasant voyage, or else she would have recorded the disagreeable incidents. It is surprising that the smells of the bilge-water, the tarry cordage, and the strong tobacco chewed by the crew did not draw from her one single paragraph of disgust. Evening was drawing in when, on an April day, the artist set foot on Kentish ground. She hired a three-horse chaise, and set off as soon as possible, having been warned by some person, kindly or otherwise, that she might very possibly be stopped by highwaymen on that famous Dover road. She had taken the precaution of putting her diamonds in her stockings, and was glad of it when she saw two horsemen approach at a gallop and come up one on each side of the chaise. But they went on without saying or doing anything more alarming ! On arriving that night in London, she went to the Hotel Brunet, in Leicester Square, the position of which hostelry seems to be lost to remembrance. (In passing, it may be noted that the Hotel de Provence, formerly known as Hotel de Sablonniere et de Provence, at the Bear Street corner of the Square, was used by French Smigres during the Revolution, and it was there that Jean Gabriel Peltier, the author or editor of the Dernier Tableau de Paris, published that work in 1792.) Of course Madame Lebrun had a bad night ; it was impossible for her to sleep well in a strange house, noise always attending on her rest in such cases. On this occasion she owed her wakefulness to an old acquaintance, " M. de Parse val de Grandmaison," as she characteristically names him, inserting before the Parseval a " particle " to which he had no title. He had the room above hers, and spent a great part of the night in walking about reciting his own verses in a very penetrating voice. As at Rome, Florence, Moscow, and almost everywhere else, she went from lodging to lodging for some time before she got settled in London. From the hotel in Leicester Square she moved to Beak Street, where the THE "ROC" OF PORTMAN SQUARE 143 badly-played cornets of some cavalry, whose barracks were thereabouts, awoke her whenever she got to sleep. She moved next to a house in Portman Square, whence annoyances both of sound and imagination soon drove her away. These annoyances are so typical of the peculiar kinds of troubles that kept her moving on, that her own description of them must be given. On the first night in Portman Square, she went to bed in a room at the back of the house, where she expected to be free from all disturbing influences of sound or sight. She slept till daybreak, it would seem ; but when the light came there came also screechings which pierced her ears. " I got up, and looked out of the window, when, at the next window to mine, I saw the biggest bird I had ever seen. It was fastened to a large perch. Its look was furious, its beak and tail were of enormous length ; indeed, I can affirm, without any exaggeration, that a big eagle would have looked like a little canary beside it. According to what was told, this horrible creature came from the East Indies. But whatever may have been its original home, I none the less wrote to its mistress to ask her to shift the bird over to the front of the house. That lady replied that it had been put there in the first instance, but that the police had ordered her to remove it because it frightened the passers-by. " Being unable to get rid of the bird, I should perhaps have endured that torment ; but the house had been occupied before me by some Indian envoys, and I was told that these diplomatists had buried two of their slaves in the cellar. These corpses and the bird together were too much for me ; I left Portman Square, and went to live in Maddox Street, in some rooms which were frightfully damp. I stayed on there all the same, being weary of packing and unpacking." This story of why the French artist left Portman Square may help the reader to understand some of the difficulties of writing her biography. However much of her Souvenirs may have been compiled by her friends, from notes of her spoken reminiscences, the passage quoted was surely either penned or dictated by herself. When she tells us, quite seriously, "affirming " the fact, " without any exaggeration," that on a perch in the next window to hers there was a bird beside which a great eagle would have looked like a small canary, we may ask ourselves whether the roc encountered by Sindbad the Sailor had been captured and sold to a lady in London, or, if not, whether Madame Lebrun may have been exaggerating a little, in spite of her affirmation to the contrary. The probability would seem to be that this " monstrous " bird which cried so loudly was a large 144 VIGEE-LEBRUN parrot. An ostrich, a rhea, or an emu sitting on a perch in a window off Portman Square would be an almost incredible phenomenon. Yet what other bird would even remotely comply with Madame' s specifications as to size ? Then, as to the buried slaves, it may be that the unnamed person who came and told her the story of the envoys and their use of the cellar as a sepulchre was, to speak metaphorically, " pulling her leg." However large and fine a town London might be, Madame found it less attractive than Paris, Rome, or Florence, " offering," as she puts it, "less pasture for the curiosity of an artist." In those days there was no National Gallery, no South Kensington Museum, or Tate Gallery, or Wallace Collection, and the British Museum had not got beyond its early Montagu House stage, when the archaeological value of its treasures was out of all proportion to the artistic. As soon as she was settled in Maddox Street, she began to explore the sights of the town. Until she had made her presence felt among the possessors of private collections there were few pictures to be seen, so she went again and again to Westminster Abbey, lingering often and long in the Poets' Corner. There, the memorial to Chatterton made her reflect that the money spent on it would have been better employed in relieving his necessities and saving him from suicide. After the narrow and dirty streets of Paris, few of which in those days had any " side- walks," she admired the comparatively wide and clean thoroughfares of London, with their raised pavements. But she did not admire — save in the older sense of the word^ — the spectacle, not infrequently to be witnessed, of men fighting tiU the blood flowed from their faces. Far from this sight seeming repugnant to those who watched it, they treated the combatants to gin in order to encourage them to further conflict, and to Madame Lebrun, who had travelled so far in Europe, it was a frightful exhibition : " one might beheve oneself in an age of barbarism and extermination." When the arrival of the painter of Marie Antoinette had become known in the world of fashion, invitations came in plenty, and she had the melan- choly satisfaction of seeing for herself what a " rout " was hke. At one of those evening parties an Englishman whom she had known in Italy came up to her, and, " in the midst of the deep silence which always reigns in these assemblies," asked her if such gatherings were not amusing. " What is amusement to you would be boredom to us," was her reply. She could not imagine what pleasure could be derived from stifling in a crowd which was so congested that few of the guests were able to get near EVENINGS IN MADDOX STREET 145 the hostess. Silence seems to have been as much the fashion in those days as is talk at the present time. In the Park the women walked together on one side, " all dressed in white, and their silence, their perfect calm, would make one think they were walking ghosts." The men on the other side were just as solemn. When, now and then, Vigee-Lebrun came behind a lady who, in rare instances, walked arm-in-arm with a man, she amused herself in listening whether they spoke to each other, and she declares that she never heard a word between such a pair. " Never," in common with all such words of unreserved generalisation, is specially to be mistrusted when used by Madame Lebrun. We are not, therefore, to suppose that white was the only wear among the ladies of Mayfair or Bloomsbury in the first years of the nineteenth century, or that, at evening parties or in afternoon promenades, no word was ever spoken except to or by the lady who thus records her impressions of London society. In any case, she took care that silence did not reign at her own soirees. Although her rooms in Maddox Street were damp, they were commodious, and she recalls one specially successful evening, when those famous prime donne, the English soprano Madame Billington and the Italian contralto Madame Grassini, sang duets ; Viotti played the violin ; and the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV) said to his hostess, " Je voltige dans toutes les soirees, mais, ici, je reste." Such a compliment was highly appreciated, we may be sure, by the lady to whom it was uttered. We are not told whether on these occasions Madame Billington tried to sing contralto and Madame Grassini soprano, as they sometimes did to the despair of the director of the Opera-house ! At that time the leader of fashion in London was the Duchess of Devonshire {nee Spencer) — who, by the way, was almost certainly not the model for the portrait attributed to Gainsborough and probably painted by Lawrence, which attained so much notoriety some years ago, and which has given a name to a particular variety of the " Matinee hat." Madame' s account of this famous beauty may be rather distressing to those who admire her from report or from portraits, but her reputation dates, of course, from the days when the Duke fell in love with her youthful figure, rosy cheeks, and the pair of soft eyes of which, in her middle age, one had lost its sight. Her features, says Madame, were very regular, but " she had too high a colour, and though she partly hid her blind eye under a bunch of curls, they could not dissimulate so serious a blemish." She was 10 146 VIGEE-LEBRUN rather tall, of a stoutness which in those times suited well with her age (of forty-five), and " her easy manners were extremely gracious." We get a glimpse of the Duchess as Whig politician, when she points out Sir Francis Burdett to Madame Lebrun at a concert at Devonshire House, and we hear of her support of Fox at the famous Westminster Election. The public clamour in favour of Burdett made the French- woman think that the Revolution had spread from France to England, and the conduct and popularity of the Duchess of Devonshire suggested to her that this social queen was a female equivalent, more or less, of Philippe Egalite. " Not being a politician," she says, " I could not well understand how this great lady, who seemed to be of the popular party, was at the same time in the Prince of Wales' set. The fact is they were closely allied — so much so that she allowed herself to give him lessons. Finding myself one evening, at a party, with the Prince and the Duchess, I reproached the Prince for having made me waste my time by his failure to keep an appointment for a sitting. The Duchess seemed very pleased by my freedom of speech, saying ' You are quite right — princes ought never to break their promises.' " The portrait on Vigee-Lebrun's easel when the Prince of Wales kept her waiting in vain — ^like so many other ladies who were not painters — was that which is reproduced in this volume. It was done about the beginning of 1805, shortly before she returned to Paris. " I painted him," she records, " nearly full length and in uniform. Several English painters were very angry with me, when they heard that I had begun this portrait, and that the Prince of Wales gave me as much time as I needed to finish it, because for some years past they had in vain waited for such a favour. I knew that the Queen said her son paid court to me, and came often to lunch at my house. She repeated a lie, for the Prince never came in the morning except for his sittings." Perhaps he came to the soiries for conversation with a lady who was still handsome, and whose talk, after so much experience of society in so many cities of Europe, was certainly worth listening to. If the Prince " sat " in the mornings, and " paid court " in the evenings, Queen Charlotte's second-hand "lie" was nearly as white as the dresses of the women in Hyde Park. George Prince of Wales was then about forty, but looked older, chiefly, as the painter thought, because he was already too fat, or rather, in more elegant French, avait dejd pris trop d' embonpoint. Thackeray would have enjoyed her description of the Prince, of whom twenty years later he spoke THE PRINCE OF WALES M7 in his famous lecture on George IV. " Tall and well made." she writes, " he had a handsome face ; all his features were noble and regular. He wore a wig most artfully arranged, the hair of which was separated upon the forehead, like that of the Apollo Belvedere, a fashion which suited him admirably. He was good in all bodily exercises, he spoke French very well, and with perfect ease. He was fastidiously elegant, and his magnifi- cence was prodigal, so that at one time, it was said, he owed three hundred thousand pounds, which his father and Parhament at length paid for him. As he was for a long time one of the handsomest men in the United Kingdom, he was idolised by women." As soon as the portrait of the Prince was finished, he gave it to Mrs. Fitzherbert. That lady had it mounted in a frame on wheels, like the big mirrors in milliners' show- rooms, so that she could have it moved from one room to another. The anger of the courtly painters of England at the favour accorded to a French artist by " Prince Florizel " did not stop at talk. One of them pubhshed a book in which he attacked French art in general, and Madame Lebrun's in particular. The nasty bits were, of course, translated to her by friends, and she wrote to the author a long letter in which, not unskilfully or unwisely, she defended her country's painters, who, on the whole, understood the arrangement of draperies, if perhaps nothing else, better than the English did. She also, while admitting her own deficiencies, refused to admit the merit which her EngUsh critic declared to be her only one — patience. That, she said, was unhappily a virtue foreign to her character. At the same time she admitted that she could not easily leave her works, " thinking them never sufficiently finished." Her pictures were not of that sort of which Whistler declared that " a work of art is always finished." Madame Lebrun's portrait of the Prince, who shared with the Comte d'Artois the title " First Gentleman in Europe," was not painted till near the end of the artist's stay in England, and a chance reference to its pro- duction has led us rather far out of the chronological path. She herself, in her Souvenirs, may show an agreeable disregard for the proper sequence of incidents, but one who tries to tell her story, with more regard for accuracy, must not mix up the years quite so freely as she, in old age, naturally and pardonably mixed them. Like so many foreign visitors, up to the present day, Madame Lebrun found the London Sunday " as triste as the climate." She declares that one could not sing or play the piano without running the risk of having 148 VIGEE-LEBRUN the windows broken by the indignant populace. Probably she had not tried the effect of playing and singing the hymns of Dr. Watts, which might have softened the resentment of the people in the street. She turned Sunday to account by making it the only day on which she allowed visitors to see her pictures. Other days, when she was in London, were given up to work. Not all her time, of course, even on weekdays, was spent at the easel. She went to see new friends, and she saw the pictures of many painters of the day, the first whom she visited being Benjamin West, whose powers of composition appeared to her to be very considerable. Of Reynolds, already dead ten years when she went to London, she tells an anecdote in her own praise. " When my portrait of M. de Calonne arrived at the London Gustom-house, Reynolds, having heard in advance of its coming, went to see it, and this is what I was told by some one who was present. After the packing-case had been opened, he looked at the picture for some time, and spoke highly of it, upon which a silly fellow, repeating the stupid calumny about it, said, ' This portrait ought to be good, for Madame Lebrun received eighty thousand francs for it.' ' Well,' answered Reynolds, ' if any one would give me a hundred thousand, I could not do as good a one.' " Possibly such an incident really happened. Anyhow it is quite in accord with many similar stories about portrait-painters. One of the persons with whom Madame renewed acquaintance in London was Lady Hamilton, whose portrait as a Sibyl had been so useful (as a sample of the artist's work) at Vienna and other European cities. In the year after Vig6e-Lebrun's arrival in England Sir William Hamilton died, and we have in the Souvenirs an account of his widow which is so much in keeping with other contemporary evidence that we may accept it as being true in general, if, like others of Madame' s reminiscences, not over-precise in its observance of " the unities." Lady Hamilton came one day to Maddox Street, " wearing the deepest mourning. An immense black veil surrounded her, and she had had her beautiful hair cut short in order to have her head dressed d la Titus, according to the fashion of the day. I found this Andromache huge, for she had become dreadfully stout. She said to me, with tears in her eyes, that she was deeply to be pitied ; that she had lost in Sir William a friend, a father, and that she would never be able to console herself. I admit that her grief made little impression on me ; for I fancied I could see that she was acting a part. How little I deceived myself was shown a few minutes later when, having seen some George, Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV. (The Dowager Countess of Portarlington) THE PRINCE OF WALES, AFTEIIWAI'.DS GEORGE IV, 1816 148] LADY HAMILTON'S "ATTITUDES" 149 pieces of music on my piano, she began to sing one of the airs which she found there. " It is well known that Lord Nelson, when at Naples, had become very much in love with her ; she had continued a very tender correspondence with him ; when I went to see her one morning in London, I found her radiant with happiness ; more than that, she had put a rose in her hair, like Nina [in the French play of that name: v. picture at page 57]. I could not help asking her what this rose implied. ' It means that I have just had a letter from Lord Nelson,' she answered." Most readers will have heard of the " attitudes " of Lady Hamilton, and perhaps have seen the prints illustrating these famous poses. Some may have seen a remarkable work by Gainsborough at Windsor, or his preliminary sketch for the picture, representing a number of nymphs bathing in a stream, each in a different attitude, but for all of which, there is reason to believe, Emma Hart " sat " in those days of her greatest beauty, when she was a chief delight of the eyes of two of the greatest of English painters. The " attitudes " shown in this picture, however, are of physical grace, those shown in Madame Lebrun's drawing-room represented moral emotions. Two of Madame Lebrun's princely acquaintances — the Due de Berry and the Due de Bourbon — were very anxious to see the famous beauty display these " attitudes," which she was rather shy of doing in London. However, at the earnest solicitation of the French artist, Lady Hamilton consented to give her " show " in the Maddox Street drawing-room, and a small party of French people was invited to meet the Princes and to see the performance. " The appointed evening having arrived, I placed in the middle of the room a very large frame, with a screen on either side of it. I had ordered a huge wax candle, which gave a very strong light, and I put it so that, while it could not be seen, its rays fell on Lady Hamilton as one lights up a picture. All the guests having arrived, she took in the frame various attitudes, with truly admirable expressiveness. She had brought with her a little girl of seven or eight years old, who bore a strong resemblance to her. I was even told the child was a daughter of Madame Nelson. She posed this child with her, and reminded me of the fleeing women in Poussin's picture of the ' Rape of the Sabines.' She passed from misery to joy, from joy to terror, so well and so quickly that we were all delighted with her. 150 VIGEE-LEBRUN " I had asked her to stay to supper, and the Due de Bourbon, who sat next to me, drew my attention to the quantity of porter she drank. She was evidently quite accustomed to it, for she was not intoxicated after two or three bottles." Readers who have seen Gillray's satirical drawing (1801) called " Dido in Despair " will be reminded of the enormous bulk that that ruthless caricaturist gives to Lady Hamilton, the flask of maraschino on the dressing- table, and the book called Studies of Academic Attitudes, which lies near the window. The triste climate of London so little suited Madame Lebrun's health that she accepted many invitations to pass weeks and fortnights in the country. One of the first of such visits was at Gillwell, the home of the Chinnery family. Certainly her reception there was flattering to her vanity — more flattering than that prepared by her husband on her return to Paris after the Revolution. The classical porch was adorned with garlands of flowers twined round the columns, garlands were hung on the staircase, and the little marble cupids, which presumably formed part of the permanent decoration, carried their vases full of roses. When the French visitor entered the drawing-room, " two little angels," the son and daughter of Mrs. Chinnery, sang a pretty little song which Viotti, who was staying in the house, had composed for the occasion of his friend's coming. She enjoyed herself greatly at Gillwell, and her love of music was gratified in the evenings by the violin-playing of Viotti, and the amateur but capable performances on the piano of Mrs. Chinnery and her daughter of fourteen. The mother herself was good-looking, as may be seen by her portrait. Another of the country visits was to Knole, where the Duchess of Dorset (widow of John Frederick Sackville, the fourth Duke, and wife of Lord Whitworth) was her hostess. She did not come to Knole quite a stranger, for she had known Lord Whitworth in St. Petersburg, where, during much of the time of her residence in Russia, he had represented his country at the Court of Catherine II. The atmosphere of Knole, so delightful to lovers of the past, did not appeal very strongly to her. Except in a fancy for simplicity of dress, and for her notorious " supper after the manner of the ancients," she was not much addicted to the study of antiquity outside the immediate range of her art. She declares that she should think it unkind to compel anybody to live in so gloomy a house {"on se ferait conscience d'y placer quelqu'un "), A VISIT TO KNOLE 151 a remark which suggests how much the taciturnity of the chatelaine of those days must have affected the spirits of a lively visitor. When the Duchess warned her that there was never any conversation at the dinner- table, Madame Lebrun replied that it was so at her own table, as she had dined alone for years past ! But at Knole this imitation of the monks of the Grande Chartreuse was evidently carried too far for their countrywoman. The Duchess of Dorset maintained almost absolute silence at table, and even when her son, then a boy of about ten, came in for dessert, she scarcely said a word to him — which seemed strange conduct to her guest, who found in it a proof of a saying that the English women only loved their little children, and hardly cared for them when they grew big. The portrait of the Duchess which Madame Lebrun painted, and which hangs to-day in the ball-room at Knole, is a very pleasing example of her work, and the fact that Hoppner's fine portrait of the same lady hangs in the same house helps us to test its value as a likeness. We may stiU believe in her general veracity as a portrait-painter after making the comparison thus offered. Knole, both within and without, was in many ways much as it is to-day in the time when, at the beginning of the last century, Vigee-Lebrun stayed there. The " very beautiful pictures," the " furniture of the Elizabethan age," and the " dressing-table of solid silver," of which she writes, are still there ; and outside in the park the two great trees which " they told me were more than a thousand years old" are yet alive. It is true that one is a beech and the other an oak, whereas Madame calls them both elms, but such is her way. Knole itself she calls " Knowles " ; and to Lord Whitworth's name she can get no nearer than " Wilfort." Small blame attaches to her for such inaccuracies. We laugh sometimes at the forms in which English names appear in French books and newspapers, but it is doubtful whether there is much to choose between ourselves and our neighbours in such little errors. A good deal of her spare time was passed in and about Twickenham, then, as for nearly a century after, the English Bourbonnais, where exiled princes of the royal family of France found homes amid the leafy gardens of the Thames valley. Her friend of so many years, the charming Comte de Vaudreuil, had found there, near to his beloved Comte d'Artois, a home for the young wife whom he had married in England. Madame Lebrun says that this wife was also the niece of the Comte. As a fact, she was the daughter of his first cousin, the Marquis de Vaudreuil. Whilst staying at Twickenham with Madame de Vaudreuil (who had 152 VIGEE-LEBRUN " very beautiful blue eyes, a charming face, and the greatest freshness of complexion "), Vigee-Lebrun painted the portraits of her two little boys. The Comte de Vaudreuil took her to pay a visit to the Due d' Orleans, who, with his two brothers, the Dues de Montpensier and de Beaujolais, was living close by. The Due d' Orleans was Louis Philippe, later on to be the "Bourgeois King" of the French; and the father of these three young men was Philippe Egalit6, who, after assisting to start the Revolu- tion, had himself fallen a victim to the Revolutionary Tribunal in 1793. Their unhappy and admirable mother was wandering in the south of Europe. The Due de Montpensier (then just under thirty, and destined to die at Twickenham in his thirty-second year) had become familiar with all the walks in the neighbourhood, and he was fond of going out to sketch with Madame Lebrun. He it was who took her up Richmond Hill, and showed her the famous view which, not many summers later, when the inhabitants celebrated a birthday of the Prince of Wales, was the subject of a big picture by Turner. In the very year of Vigee-Lebrun' s arrival in London Turner became a Royal Academician. She does not mention him in her Souvenirs, and it is very likely the two artists never met, for Turner's was not at all a familiar figure in the wealthy homes where the French portrait-painter was most likely to be encountered. CHAPTER XXIII ENGLISH FRIENDS Lady Craven, Margravine of Anspach — Evil effects of " cookery and coaches " on the nobility — A trip to the Isle of Wight — Visits to Stowe and Donnington — No talking after dinner at Lord Moira's house — Windsor Park — Hampton Court — Bath and its amusements — Vig6e-Lebrun might have painted Jane Austen — A visit to the Herschells — Recalled to Paris — Difl&culties of getting there — Madame Grassini's forethought AS we have seen, and as is usually the case with portrait-painters, many of Madame Lebrun's sitters became her friends, in whatever country she happened to be. Such an one in England was the Margravine of Anspach, better known, perhaps, to English readers as Lady Craven, one of the most freely " talked-about " women of her period. Born in 1750, a daughter of the fourth Earl of Berkeley, married at seventeen to Mr. (afterwards Lord) Craven, she had separated from her husband (after fourteen years, when seven children had been born of the marriage), taking away with her the third of her sons, Keppel, then an infant. She wandered about Europe, living for some years at the little court of Anspach as the intimate friend of the Margrave, and at length, after the deaths of his wife and of her own husband, married His Serene Highness, who proceeded to sell his territorial rights to the King of Prussia, and came with his new wife to live in England tiU his death in 1806. She had been in Paris in 1785, and probably met Madame Lebrun at that time. These two women had several qualities and tastes in common. Both were attractive and quick-witted, both were very fond of acting themselves and of seeing others act, emd both stored up memories of remarkable people and incidents, for publication in books in the closing years of their lives. They had some strong contrasts in character also. While Madame Lebrun objected greatly to discomfort and to " roughing it " in general, and was not averse from excellent dinners, the Margravine was of opinion that " cookery and coaches" had " reduced the EngUsh nobility to a languid state," and held that "too great indulgence in the Fine Arts" was 153 154 VIGEE-LEBRUN responsible for the waste of " time which ought to be employed in the important duties of life." She was much given to reflection, and in 1790 had published La Philosophe Moderne, having already, four years before, brought out an account of her travels through the Crimea to Constanti- nople, a book which was very popular in its time. It may be mentioned here that, according to her statement, a more famous book on European travel to Constantinople and elsewhere, issued twenty-three years before her own. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters, was not really the work of the avowed author. The Margravine declared that Lady Bute (Lady Mar5^s daughter) told her " that Horace Walpole and two other wits joined to divert themselves at the expense of the credulity of the public by com- posing these letters." The value of this statement may be judged from the fact that it has never been regarded seriously, or as anything but an example of the Margravine's strong imagination, in spite of her defiance of her most bitter enemies to say that she was " ever guilty of a falsehood." Madame Lebrun's first visit to this imaginative lady was at a country- house near London which she calls " Armesmott." It has not required any very exhausting research to discover that this curious-looking word is the nearest that Madame Lebrun could get, relying on her memory after thirty years, to Hammersmith ! At that riverside village, then quite out of town, the Margrave had bought a place which he called " Brandenburgh House," and there many parties for theatricals were given. Such an entertainment was announced for May 23, 1804, in the " Fashionable Arrangements " column of the Morning Post, and Madame Lebrun was no doubt invited on that occasion. Another seat of the Margrave's was Benham House, not far from Newbury, which had been purchased from the Margravine's eldest son. Lord Craven. It was a much finer and more attractive property than that at "Armesmott," and the guests were entertained there in much more spirited fashion than in most English country houses in those days. Madame Lebrun enjoyed herself so much that, going for one week, she remained three. The Margravine's reputation for eccentricity made the artist hesitate about accepting her first invitation to paint her portrait at Brandenburgh House. It was said that she was so excitable that her visitors were roused up at five in the morning, and could scarcely get a minute's peace all day. Madame Lebrun made her visit conditional on being allowed to finish her sleep, and to go for quiet walks alone when so disposed. " The CHARMS OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT i55 excellent woman consented to all, and religiously kept faith with me, to such a point that if, by chance, I encountered her in her grounds, where she often used to work as hard as any gardener, she pretended not to see me, and let me pass without sa5dng a word." The Margravine spent part of the year somewhere on the South Coast, and on one occasion she took her friend across to the Isle of Wight, which Madame Lebrun describes as " elevated upon a rock, and reminding one of Switzerland." The island, she was told, was renowned for the pleasant and quiet manners of its in- habitants, who lived like one family, enjoying perfect peace and happiness. She noticed that all these happy islanders were well dressed, had a kindly appearance, and " did not seem to be tainted by the immoral contagion of the great towns." Apart from the human amenities of the Isle of Wight, Madame found its hills and valleys and shores so ravishing, that she wished she could live there always. It, and Ischia, in the Bay of Naples, were the only islands, she says, that ever gave her such a desire. Having merely landed for a few hours at Ryde or Cowes, as it would seem, Madame had not time or opportunity to observe that a principal industry of the people on the far side of the Isle of Wight in those days was smuggling, or she might have supposed that the gentle manners of these happy islanders were partly due to the frequent intercourse of the men-folk with her own compatriots. It is evident that, whatever may have been the Margravine's eccen- tricities, Madame Lebrun enjoyed herself more at Hammersmith and at Benham than in most of the great houses to which she was invited in this country. She stayed at Stowe with the Marquis and Marchioness of Buckingham, who had shown such generous hospiteJity to the French aristocrats of the emigration, and she duly admired the temples, statues and other works of art within and without that famous house. We have heard how at Knole conversation was prohibited during dinner. At Donnington Castle, the country-house of that highly distin- guished and adventurous soldier Lord Moira, Madame found that no talking was allowed after dinner, which she evidently regarded as a much more severe regulation. The company, when they met together to finish the evening, were collected in a fine gallery, where the ladies sat apart, doing fancy needlework, embroidery or tapestry, without speaking a word. The men, on their side of the room, took up books, and were equally silent. The splendid library contained collections of prints, and Madame' s only resource was to fetch portfolios of these prints and to look through them. 156 VIGEE-LEBRUN taking care to hold her tongue like the rest of the company. One evening, in the midst of this perfect silence, she forgot that there were other people present, and made an exclamation of delight at the sight of a beautiful engraving. Such a breach of propriety " surprised them to the last degree." In spite of this love of holding their tongues, so strange to a lady whose life had been passed in the more lively social circles of the Continent, she did not regard the English as being wanting in conversational charm, and goes so far as to say that she had not met a single dolt during her three years' sojourn in England ! We must remember, in estimating the value of this astonishing tribute, that the lady who offers it could not understand our language, and that in those days nearly all the people who spoke French with facility were well educated according to the standard of the age, and possessed at least the outward graces of social life. At Windsor, the park was the only thing that pleased her eyes ; she does not say whether she saw the inside of the castle, which in those days was perhaps not much less triste than Knole had seemed to her. Fanny Bumey had certainly found life dull enough there ten years earlier. Vig^e-Lebrun was greatly interested in the Raphael cartoons, then at Hampton Court, and also in the great vine. She visited " Tumbridge- Well," where the " assemblies " bored her terribly, and Matlock, whose scenery, according to her favourite comparison, reminded her of Switzerland, of the character of which country she had seen something on her way from France into Italy, though she had not as yet been within its borders. At Brighton she proved that her powers of vision were unusually strong, for she assures us that " you can see the French coast " from there. Her visit to that favourite watering-place (the Prince of Wales had already buUt his soul an oriental dwelling-house there) was at a time when the Martello towers were being erected along the south coast to keep Napoleon out of England, and she recalls that " the (English) generals never ceased reviewing the national guard, which was continually in movement, beating the drum, and making an infernal noise" {bruit d'enfer). At that period the most fashionable place in England, outside the capital, was Bath, and thither, in February 1803, Madame Lebrun went. She had been assured by habitues of the Bath season that there was nowhere in our country where one could have a better time — ^that it was indeed the very monde ou I' on s' amuse if ever such a world existed. On the strength of such assurances, she expected, as she wrote to her brother BAD MANNERS AT BATH i57 in Paris, " to find there the delights of Capua." Alas ! she found nothing much to her taste in the amusements procurable at that famous city, except on the " mountains " surrounding it, which she liked to climb in the mornings. Even that " delight " was usually denied to her, as it was nearly always raining. She thought the principal architectural features of Bath in rather poor taste, but admired the general appearance of the town from a distance, whence, she declares, " the effect is immense." Even in the streets and squares she " fancied herself in a town of the ancient Romans," and whatever the " taste" of the buildings that cover the slopes of Lansdown Hill, she admits that Bath is " undoubtedly the most beautiful town in the kingdom." The air was delicious to her, if the people pleased her not. For the public entertainments the " Upper Room " and the Pump Room were either crowded to suffocation or nearly empty, and the behaviour of some of the company seemed very disagreeable. Of one of the suppers after a concert, for instance, to which Madame went with her friend Madame de Beaurepaire, she writes to Etienne Vig6e : " We took our places next to some very old and very ugly Englishwomen. I reasonably supposed that they were of the number of those who never leave their own provincial district, where they preserve la morgue gothique ; for the grandes dames of London and the Englishwomen who have travelled are agreeable and well-mannered, whilst our neighbours on this occasion, as soon as we were seated, turned their backs on us with a certain air of contempt. We had resigned ourselves to support the disdain of these old women, when an Englishman who knew them came up, and said something very quietly to them, which made them turn towards us at once and show us more civility." It is not difficult to imagine what the magic words were. " That French lady next you is Madame Vigee-Lebrun, the famous portrait-painter," was probably very nearly the remark that turned those heads from one side to another. It must again and always be remembered, in hearing Madame Lebrun's criticisms on her experiences in this country, that she did not know the language. Of course the plays, and routs, and Pump-room life of Bath were dull to her, after her first curiosity of vision had been satisfied. She stayed for three weeks in the town, mostly occupied indoors, waiting for the rain to stop ! The air was autumnal, she never felt cold, and there was foliage on many of the trees, " which prolongs the belle saison, and gives us the illusion of fine weather." In that year, 1803, Jane Austen was at Bath, living with her family 158 VIGEE-LEBRUN in Sydney Place, gathering material for those descriptions of the town and its life which add so much to the attractions of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion. There is no evidence of her absence from Bath in that year, except in the summer, when she seems to have been at Ramsgate; and we may be fairly confident that at one or more of the public gatherings at which the French artist with difficulty restrained her yawns, the English novelist was taking mental notes of the ways of some of the very people who gave so poor an impression of English manners to their foreign observer. Few people in those days knew that Miss Austen was writing fiction, and none of her novels had been published, so that she was not a " cele- brity " in any way. Had she been one, she would probably have declined to be introduced to this distinguished Frenchwoman for the same reason that, years later, she refused an invitation to meet and converse with another distinguished Frenchwoman, a friend of Vigee-Lebrun, Madame de Stael. "To her truly delicate mind," says Miss Austen's brother, "such a display would have given pain instead of pleasure." But what a chance was missed by the guardian angels of literature and of painting when they allowed Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun and Jane Austen to be in the same town together without the French artist painting a portrait of the English novelist ! Such a picture, if as well painted as any of the known works done by Madame Lebrun in England, would have been, for many people, the most valuable production of her brushes and palette. As it is, it does not seem that there was any pictorial result of Vigee-Lebrun's three weeks in the city of Bladud. During a short visit to Warwick Castle, where of course Lord Warwick showed her the famous vase, Madame Lebrun saw upon the piano two little drawings which had a curious history. During her acquaintanceship at Naples with Sir William Hamilton and his beautiful companion she had made some charcoal sketches on the doors of a summer-house which they used. These it was that she now recognised in a drawing-room at Warwick Castle. Her host explained to her that he had bought them at a very high price from Sir William, to whom they had not been sold by the artist. This was quite in accord with Hamilton's conduct, as described several times by Madame Lebrun. He made money by the sale of portraits of his wife whenever a good opportunity occurred. So notorious were his money-making ways that the son of the French ambassador at Naples (a member of the Talleyrand family), hearing Hamilton described as a THE "GEORGIUM SIDUS " i59 protector of the arts, remarked, "Say, rather, that the arts protect him." During her stay in London, Madame went one day, with Prince Bariatinsky and some other friends, to see the elder Herschell. " The doctor received us with the most obliging cordiality ; he was good enough to show us the sun through a smoked glass, pointing out to us the two spots that had been discovered on it, one of which was of considerable extent. Then, in the evening, he showed us the planet which he had discovered, and which bears his name ; we also saw in his house a large map of the moon full of detail, whereon mountains, ravines, and rivers, which make this planet resemble our own world, are shown. Indeed, there was not a moment of ennui all the time we were there ; " and therefore Madame avoided for so many hours that which she dreaded above all else in human experience — being bored ! Probably it really was the " Georgium Sidus " that the astronomer showed through his telescope, and not, as related in a well-known anecdote about a visit of Queen Charlotte to that telescope, an ingenious arrangement of a lamp and a piece of cardboard ! The general sympathy for the Bourbons and their adherents felt by those classes of English society in which she lived during her stay on this side of the Channel was naturally very agreeable to " the painter of Marie Antoinette." It was never more strongly exhibited than on the receipt in London of the news of the killing of the Due d'Enghien, in March 1804. She was at the theatre when this news arrived ; it was soon passed round the house. " All the women who filled the boxes turned their backs to the stage, and the play would not have been finished if immediately after some one had not come to say that the report was unfounded. Every one went back to his seat, and the play was continued to the end ; but on our leaving the theatre, all, alas ! was found to be true. ... I can bear witness to the effect which this assassination produced upon all the English people ; the horror which it inspired was general." Many of the French exiles made part of Madame' s social existence whilst she was here, and from English acquaintances, who often became friends, she received more invitations than she could possibly accept. Altogether, in spite of our fogs, which, she says, prevented her from ever having a good view of London from Hampstead or Richmond Hills, she enjoyed herself so much that she would have stayed longer but for letters which told her that her daughter had arrived in Paris, and had been i6o VIGEE-LEBRUN allowed by M. Lebrun to become intimate with some persons whose society was not at all suitable for a young woman. From the little we know of Julie Nigris she was capable of choosing her friends without any help from her father or mother, and it is possible that Madame' s long cessation of all relations with Monsieur may have made her a little unjust to his paternal sensibility and prudence in this particular. Napoleon had shown himself so disagreeable with regard to the release of English travellers unfortunate enough to be in France when the Peace of Amiens was broken, in 1803, that one of Madame' s English acquaintances, perhaps half seriously, declared that she ought now to be retained as a hostage ! As it was, she had some trouble about her passport, though the French Foreign Office, of which Talleyrand was then the chief, does not seem to have been as much against her return as she supposed. At length, in the summer of 1805, she took her passage in a Rotterdam packet, the Channel routes being practically closed to travellers at that time, when the long war between England and France was already two years old. The hours of departure for the Continental packets in those days were so uncertain, owing to dependence on wind as well as tide, that it was needful to stay somewhere close to the vessel, if not to go aboard of it, hours, and sometimes days, before the voyage began. Madame Grassini, who had made several voyages between England and the Continent, showed herself thoughtful for her French friend at this time. When Madame Lebrun was to leave Maddox Street for wherever below London Bridge the ship lay, and the post-chaise was actually at the door, the young Italian prima donna arrived. Madame Lebrun supposed that her friend had come to wish her good-bye, but it was really to see her comfort- ably on her way. Madame Grassini made the departing traveller come in her own carriage, which was half-filled with pillows and packages of provisions. When Madame Lebrun expressed her surprise at these acces- sories, her friend said, out of the fullness of experience, " You do not know, then, that you are going to the most detestable inn in the world, where you may have to stay for a whole week or more if the wind is unfavourable, and I am going to stay there with you." We need not wonder when Madame says : "I cannot express how much I was touched by this mark of interest. This lovely wom^n left the pleasures of London, and her friends (to say nothing of the crowd of adorers always about her there), simply to keep me company." The Signora Grassini had been reaping one of her many fine harvests THE OPERA AND THE THEATRE i6i during that season of Opera at the King's Theatre in London. Her chief triumphs had been on successive Saturday nights in the once popular opera of Gl' Orrazzi e Curiazzi. The chief feature of the performance was a duet between Grassini and Braham, in which these two young singers (they were both thirty-two) " brought down the house." Grassini's exceptional charm, both physical and social, made her, apart from her beautiful voice and dramatic ability, welcome wherever she appeared, and Madame Lebrun might fairly regard the incident recalled above as a notable example of real friendship towards a fellow artist in a different field. The London which Madame Lebrun (the only French artist of dis- tinction who visited England during the Revolution) now left, never to return, was, so far as she was concerned, a well-to-do, busy place, whose inhabitants were mainly occupied with routs, balls, concerts, plays, and operas. The "West End" spread far into Bloomsbury then, and Belgravia was still in the country. The " talk of the town " in that season had been the performances of Master Betty, " the Infant Roscius," that remarkable boy of thirteen who was for a time a formidable rival to the full-grown actors, headed by Mrs. Siddons, whose work that year was much interfered with by the rheumatism from which she suffered so severely. Mrs. Siddons had been friendly to Madame Lebrun, who recalls the beauty of her voice, as well as her splendid talent as an actress. The two women, by the way, were born in the same year. Of the English friends whom Vig^e-Lebrun now left behind her. Lady Mary Bentinck (who at her house in Piccadilly risked the stones of the Puritans by giving Sunday evening concerts and supper parties) seems to have been one of the most intimate, and an Irish friend, whom Madame was frequently to meet later in Paris, was Lord Trimlestown, a connoisseur in art and literature. II CHAPTER XXIV PARIS AGAIN, 1805 The new regime — Mother and daughter — Julie and her husband — Madame Lebrun resumes her musical evenings — Catalani — Lafont — Tableaux-vivants — " Only handsome men and pretty women " take part — Innocent diversions — Mademoiselle Duchesnois and Mademoiselle Georges — The portrait of Caroline Murat — Napoleon cuts down the price — A troublesome sitter — The punctuality of " real princesses " MADAME LEBRUN had left Paris under the Consulate ; she returned under the Empire. Bonaparte, as Baron de Frenilly said, had " set out by way of the Rue Saint Honore as First Consul, and returned as Emperor by the Boulevards, the side-walks of which were very prettily illuminated. ... The procession was a mere masquerade, in which all the participants had donned their costumes for trial, and for which no one had yet studied a role. . . . This saturnalia was a subject for either laughter or tears, according to individual taste and character." We may be sure that in the eyes of Madame Lebrun, the spectacle of any one but a Bourbon wearing an Imperial Crown in France would have been but a sorry farce. The pleasure of meeting Julie again, after several years' separation, was very great for Madame Lebrun, in spite of all that had happened to estrange the mother and child, and there was no longer any cause to be jealous of M. Nigris. He had brought his young wife to Paris at this time, where he had been entrusted with the task of engaging artistes for the Imperial Theatre at St. Petersburg. When he returned home, a few months later, he left her behind, to her mother's great satis- faction, for there had long ceased to be any question of love between the married pair — ^if, indeed, it had survived the honeymoon. If the last friend to say adieu to Madame Lebrun in London had been the young and lovely Italian singer Grassini, the first new acquaintance that she made in Paris on her return from England was the younger and not much less beautiful Italian singer Catalani, then only twenty years 162 TABLEAUX-VIVANTS AGAIN 163 old, and destined to make a rather deeper mark in musical history than Grassini, although, according to Madame Lebrun, " she had not the expression which charmed in Madame Grassini ; she delighted after the manner of the nightingale." True to her instincts of hostess and music-lover, Madame Lebrun seized so good an opportunity for re-starting her musical evenings, and Madame Catalani was ready to fall in with her new friend's wishes, and to sing at these pleasant soirSes, thereby ensuring their success. In the old days of the Rue du Gros-Chenet the music had been chiefly instrumental, but Viotti, the first violin of Madame Lebrun' s concerts before the Revolu- tion, had not yet settled again in Paris, and Lafont (a distinguished pupil of Kreutzer), who came to the " evenings " later on, was not available at the start. So for the time being vocal music held the field, with Catalani as the principal singer. But Madame Lebrun and her friends, old 01 new, could not sing or listen to singing all the time, and so, to vary the pleasure, she remembered the success of the tableaux-vivants at St. Petersburg. Having provided a transparent gauze curtain, she brought out her box of costumes and, with the help of some of her guests, presented various charming pictures to the rest of the company. She tells us that she took care that only " handsome men and pretty women " should take part in these tableaux. If she managed to draw so fine a line between the plain and the beautiful without offending some of the spectators she must indeed have been endowed with a rare discretion. Another evening was enlivened in a manner that is not unknown in Paris or London in our own days. Madame drew upon a screen several heads of historic personages, men or women, cutting holes where the faces ought to be, and leaving who would among her guests to fill the gaps with their own faces. Hubert Robert, who still, at seventy-two, was as keen on such games as any schoolboy, made everybody laugh consumedly by appearing as Ninon de I'Enclos. In recalling these innocent diversions Madame feels that serious people will regard them as puerile in the age of Louis Philippe and William IV, when " people pass their evenings in talking politics or playing cards." " The fact is,' ' she adds, with a touch of pity for the degenerates of those later days, " that some of us had not yet lost the habit of amusing ourselves, and that we amused ourselves very well ; after all, such pleasures were quite as enjoyable as the cards in the salons of Paris and the stuffy routs in the drawing-rooms of London." i64 VIGEE-LEBRUN We know of one young lady at least who, if she took part in those tableaux -vivants, was the exception who tried the rule as to beauty. It was Mademoiselle Duchesnois. This young woman, who, in spite of the rivalry of Mademoiselle Georges, achieved high rank as a tragic actress, was a pupil in declamation of Etienne Vigee, and he used to bring her to his sister's house to recite in the evenings. Madame gives a circum- stantial account of the debut of Mademoiselle Duchesnois at the Theatre Frangais, the general accuracy of which may be accepted, though she places the event after her own return from England, whereas it took place in the year that she went there. Both Mademoiselle Duchesnois, then twenty-five, and Mademoiselle Georges, who was about nine years younger, came out at the Comedie Fran9aise in the same year (1802), the elder debutante as Phedre, the younger as Clytemnestra. Mademoiselle Du- chesnois had the greater talent and was very plain. Mademoiselle Georges had beauty and less ability as an actress. Madame Lebrun describes her own efforts, crowned with success, to make influence for her brother's pupil through the aid of Madame de Montessor, who was in favour with Bonaparte. By these means an official " order " was procured for the appearance of the young actress at the State Theatre. Madame' s reference to the personal appearance of the two young actresses is as follows : " The fact is that Mademoiselle Duchesnois lacked a good deal on the score of prettiness. . . . On the day of her debut I advised her, as an artist, how to be dressed, and how to have her hair done, for it was her face especially that was unattractive." As for her rival. Made- moiselle Georges was " the loveliest creature that has ever been seen on the stage." Although Madame' s memory failed her when she supposed that the first appearance of her protegde Catherine Rafin (Duchesnois) took place after the return of the painter from England, there is no reason to doubt that it was very soon after that return that Napoleon said at the Tuileries to the Comte de Segur, whose wife repeated the words to the subject thereof, " Madame Lebrun went to England to see her friends." The point of the remark was, of course, that " her friends" were the nobles of the emigration, the enemies of the " Corsican upstart." Not long after Bonaparte had made this remark about a woman who, unlike her friend Madame de Stael, was not of sufficient political importance to be worried by the new power in France, she was commanded by the Emperor to paint a portrait of his sister Caroline, the wife of Joachim A " REAL PRINCESS " ? 165 Murat. The price she was promised was only eighteen hundred francs — less than half her usual charge for portraits of the same size. Rather naively, the artist says : " This sum of money was all the more moderate from the fact that, in order to satisfy myself in the composition of the picture, I painted at the side of Madame Murat her little girl, who was very pretty, and that without raising the price." The production of this picture was attended by many difficulties. " It would be impossible to describe all the little annoyances, all the worries I had to endure whilst I made that portrait. To begin with, at the first sitting I saw Madame Murat arrive with two maids, who were to dress her hair whilst I painted. However, on my saying that I could not possibly catch her likeness under such conditions, she consented to send her two women away. After- wards, she invariably failed to keep the appointments she gave me, so that, in my anxiety to complete the picture, she obliged me to spend almost all the summer in Paris, more often than not waiting for her in vain, which put me out of patience to a degree I could not describe. More- over, the intervals between the sittings were so long, that she changed her way of doing her hair between one sitting and the next. During the earlier days, for example, she wore curls hanging on her cheeks, and I painted her as I saw her before me ; but some while after, that style having ceased to be the fashion, she came with her hair arranged entirely differently, so that I had to scratch out the curls I had painted upon the side of the face ; and I also had to efface the string of pearls which she had worn as a fillet, in order to replace them by cameos. It was just the same sort of thing with her clothes. The dress in which I had painted her at first was rather open, as they were worn just then, and ornamented with a spreading embroidery. That fashion having changed, I was obliged to narrow the opening of the dress and begin the embroidery over again, as it was much too extensive. At length, all the trouble that Madame Murat gave me ended by ruffling my temper so much that one day, when she was in my studio, I said to M. Denon [then Director-General of Museums and Art-galleries] loud enough to be heard by her : ' I have painted real princesses who have never worried me, and have never kept me waiting.' The truth is that Madame Murat was quite unaware that punctuality is the politeness of kings, as was so well said by Louis XIV, who, surely, was not a parvenu." When at length she had got rid of Madame Murat, Vigee-Lebrun resumed the peaceful life which, she declares, had become her pleasant i66 VIGEE-LEBRUN habit in these years of middle age (she was just fifty), though it is true she was not long content to live quietly at home. " My taste for travelling was not yet satisfied : I had not yet seen Switzerland, and I was burning with the desire to contemplate that grand and beautiful country," of which,' as we know, various places had already " reminded her." iz;.sr>-5a».'Ui*-;<'*?. rfi J-: .- * ... . i *C; ; CHAPTER XXV VISIT TO SWITZERLAND, 1808 A tour in Switzerland — Rousseau's Island — ^Madame Lebrun's trouble with foreign names — Descriptions of Swiss scenery — " A thousand piquant anecdotes," and none recalled — Climbing the Wunschenstein — A dog which wept at the sunrise — A visit to Coppet — Madame de Stael at home — Amateur theatricals — Portrait of Madame de Stael as " Corinne " — The shepherds' festival HER yearning to see Switzerland was at length to be gratified. In 1808 Madame Lebrun set out, with her faithM Adelaide, for Basle, and spent many months in the gratification of her eyes among Swiss mountains and valleys and lakes, producing about one hundred drawings in pastel, with no great artistic success, but with considerable personal pleasure. The record of this agreeable time is contained in nine letters addressed to the Comtesse Vincent Potocka, of which the writer had kept copies. Shortly after leaving Basle, on the road along the side of a precipice, the horse which drew her carriage became violently excited, his harness being too tightly buckled, and but for the help of a passing peasant the vehicle and its occupants would have been in imminent danger of going over the precipice. This experience so frightened the travellers that they walked most of the way to Bienne. From Bienne they made a trip to the Isle Saint-Pierre, famous by its association with Rousseau, for whose writings, in spite of her fidelity to the Bourbons, Vigee-Lebrun had a considerable admiration — so much so that she was rather disgusted to find that the house he had occupied on the island had been turned into a tavern. The gentle reveries over Jean-Jacques and Julie (from whom, maybe, Julie Lebrun derived one of her names) afford one of several proofs of the inconsistency — ^it was that rather than catholicity — of Madame Lebrun's political ideas. It is true she was not a politician, in that she knew very little about the past, or of contemporary politics, outside her own personal experience. But such political faith as she possessed was centred in a conviction, which was never shaken, that the Bourbons were the only fit rulers of her country, and that all who did or said anything 167 i68 VIGEE-LEBRUN against their characters or interests were scoundrels. Yet, holding such prejudices, she nevertheless feels it a profanation that a home of Rousseau, who had done so much to undermine the Bourbon constitution, should be used as a wine-shop. The explanation probably is, that she was unaware how much his writings had contributed to the adversities of her dear Princes of the Bourbon blood. Madame went on to Berne, where the French Ambassador, General Vial, showed her much courtesy, and took her for delightful drives in the environs. In the course of her wanderings in Switzerland she saw Thun, Lauter- brunnen and the Staubbach Cascade (which, ignoring the derivation, she calls Schaubach, making a " dust-stream," as this fall is named on account of the cloud of spray into which it is beaten as it dashes on the rock, into a "show-stream"). Her account of the valley of Lauterbrunnen (here also she makes the name absurd by lopping off the final syllable) is charm- ing, the contrast she draws between the place and some of its occupants being in her best vein as a descriptive artist. " The valley of Lauterbrun is so rugged and so sombre that I could not bring myself to believe it was inhabited. It is shut in on all sides by mountains so high that the sun only lights it up completely at midday, so that the mornings are gloomy, and, as soon as the sun sets, the night comes there. This valley, therefore, is the realm of black shadows for three-parts of the time. Judge, then, what a delightful surprise it was for us to come upon a group of young girls as pretty as angels ; their complexions were of milk and roses ; an air of innocence added to their beauty. They brought us some fine and excellent cherries. In a place so triste, so wild, how could we doubt that these young shepherdesses, with the fruit that they carried, had come down to us from the heavens ? The scene was for me as some fantasy of the Arabian Nights." So while Wordsworth regarded the Staubbach as " sky- born," and Byron saw " the many hues of heaven " in its waters, Vigee- Lebrun felt that the children of the valley were sky-born also, and that the hues of heaven were in the colours of their cheeks and of the cherries that they bore. At Schaffhausen (the Schaffouse of our traveller) Madame made a mistake as to descriptive nouns which she actually discovered and acknow- ledged ! Seeing some vines on the slopes near the falls of the Rhine, she asked the burgomaster, to whom she had an introduction, and who was showing her the glories of his domain, to send her some of the wine pro- MOUNTAINEERING 169 duced in his own vineyard. " He replied, with a Uttle embarrassment, that the carriage of the wine would cost more than the wine itself was worth. I assured him that I had drunk some of it at the inn, and that it was excellent. ' Monsieur is right, however,' said Adelaide ; ' the wine you drank at the inn is of the cote of the Rhine.' I saw my mistake : I had confused the cote and the chute (fall), and I was ashamed of my mistake." In the neighbourhood of Zurich, Madame Lebrun took a furnished villa, and found in her landlord another agreeable general, whom she had previously known in Paris before, and in Naples during the Revo- lution — the General Baron de Salis, who, with his family, lived in another house near the lake. His kindness added considerably to her enjoyment. She was treated by this old soldier (he was eighty-one) and by the family as if she were one of their near relatives. In spite of the infirmities of age, the Baron de Salis was always lively and witty. " He told me a thousand piquant anecdotes." Unfortunately, out of all the thousand she does not recall one for the entertainment either of the Comtesse Potocka, to whom she was writing, or of ourselves. It is most dis- appointing, and reminds us of the many novels and plays in which we are told how brilliant is the conversation of Mr. This or Mrs. That, without ever hearing them utter a word that could be cited in evidence of their wit. We must hope, for the credit of the old General and of the lady who enjoyed his conversation, that the anecdotes were not too " piquant " for reproduction, as those told by such old compaigners occasionally are. " I pay little attention to the towns, it is nature to which I give all my thoughts," wrote Madame from Solothurn, and most of her letters from Switzerland bear out her claim to be fonder of scenery than of streets. One long walk up the Wunschenstein she made, starting from her inn at Solothurn with a carriage and four horses, a driver, a guide, and Adelaide — the object to be reached being a chalet on a grassy slope, where a herd of cows were having their summer pasture. The landlord of her inn had assured her, and she was innocent enough to believe him, that there was a splendid road all the way ; but after three-quarters of an hour's drive the road became a mere bed of rough stones, and she preferred to walk. " My guide could not help talking of my courage ; he was immensely surprised at my long walk, which lasted from four o'clock in the afternoon till half-past eight ; I had climbed three and a half leagues. During the 170 VIGEE-LEBRUN first two hours the heat was terrific, but the ardours of the sun once over, the more I climbed the stronger I felt. The truth is, that the views which I was enjoying were so charming as to make me forget my fatigue. I saw five or six huge forests, one after the other, descending before my eyes ; the Canton of Solothurn appeared no more than a plain, the town and the villages were like little dots. The beautiful line of glaciers which bounded the horizon became more and more brilliant in colour in the glow of the setting sun ; the other mountains were iridescent, golden lines and rainbow hues spread over the left of the mountain on which I was moving ; the sun went down behind the summit. ... At my feet I saw wild valleys surrounded by dark pine-trees. As the light failed, and the shadows extended, the different sights took a severe character, as much by their forms as by the long sUence which harmonises so well with the fall of the day. I can tell you that I have rejoiced with all my soul at that scene at once so solemn and so melancholy." It is clear that Madame, in spite of her long climb, was able to reap her reward ; and when a radiant moon came up, and lighted her to the hut for which she had set out, and where she was to pass the night, nothing was wanting, for the moment, to her perfect enjoyment. " The delicious air, the scent of the grass on which I trod, gave me true happiness ; if I had had some friends, I think that I should never have descended. The cows remain on those heights during the whole summer ; the sweet grass is their food, and gives its perfume to their milk." Alas ! some of this very milk brings us from the heavenly joys of our mountaineer to some very earthly sorrows. " The milk formed my only supper, for the chicken they gave me at the chalet was hard and dry. I was to get up before three in the morning to go one more league in order to see the sunrise from the top of a mountain. I could not sleep on account of the fleas, and I sat on a chair waiting impatiently for the signal to start." Madame' s description of sunrise is as enthusiastic as of the sunset of the previous evening, and a fellow spectator was a dog of such rare sensibility to the wonders of nature that " motionless upon his feet, he watched the rising sun, and wept in face of that glorious scene." Do not let us smile too freely at this picture of Le chien qui pleure. According to a high authority on metaphysics, a dog might feel a certain pleasure in such a lovely view. "It is through sight and hearing," says Lord Haldane, in his Gifford Lectures of 1903-4, " that we perceive beautiful objects, and through these senses almost exclusively. This fact seems to THE DOG THAT WEPT 171 indicate that it is only for a reflecting mind that what is beautiful exists. For a dog or a horse it is there, at the most, only in a very slight degree." So that even so modern a philosopher as Lord Haldane, while he would probably demur to the conclusion that the tears of the dog on the Jura were caused by sentimental emotion, would not deny that, " in a very slight degree," the animal from which Madame Lebrun parted with so much regret did appreciate the beauty of that Alpine sunrise. It may be that the cause of his tears was the intensity of the sun's rays, which, according to Madame, are "a. thousand times more radiant upon the mountains than in the plains." Alpinists may laugh at Madame Lebrun' s " highest peaks of the Jura," whereon cows browse tranquilly on the rich herbage, but a hundred years ago mountains were stiU more provocative of dread than of pleasure to most travellers, and her ascent of the slopes of the Wunschenstein was really, for the period, no bad performance for a middle-aged woman. " That excursion," she wrote to her friend, " will always remain in my memory. Why were you not with me, my dear Comtesse ! That is always my refrain." The next letter from Switzerland leaves Madame at Vevey, thinking again of Rousseau and of Julie. Both that author and his creations were in her mind as she enjoyed a moonlight tour on the lake. " My Adelaide being too tired to go with me, I set off alone with the fat innkeeper ; he was not Saint-Preux, I was not Julie, none the less I was happy. My boat was the only one to be seen ; the vast silence all around me was not disturbed except by the light noise made by the oars." From Vevey at one end of Lake Leman to Coppet at the other was an inevitable voyage for Madame Lebrun, seeing that at Coppet, in that autumn of 1808, was established the irrepressible and brilUant Madame de Stael, then recently exiled from France by Napoleon on account of the political allusions in her novel Corinne, which had appeared in the previous year. The pmperor himself, by the way, was supposed to have written the review of the novel for the Moniteur. The week which the artist spent at Coppet was a memorable one in the life even of a woman who had enjoyed such exceptional opportunities for meeting with notable people. The house was always full of guests, and among those who were there during her visit were Benjamin Constant, whose close friendship with Madame de Stael is historic, and Madame Recamier. Napoleon's bete noire was no ordinary hostess. The visitors 172 VIGEE-LEBRUN were left to amuse themselves as they liked best till the evening, when, after dinner, she made her first appearance in the general company. " You could see her thus walking about the drawing-room, holding a sprig of foliage. While she talked, she shook that little branch, and spoke with an animation which was peculiar to herself. It was impossible to interrupt her ; at such moments she gave me the impression of an improvisatrice." On one evening at least Madame de Stael had to abandon this kind of " conversation.' ' Some amateur theatricals were given, and Simiramis was the drama boldly selected. Madame de Stael herself took the part of Azema, in which " she had some fine moments, but her playing was very uneven," while Madame Recamier was overcome by stage-fright in the title-role ! The men were no better. " I have always observed," says Madame Lebrun, " that amateurs ought only to try comedies and pro- verbs, never tragedies," and her observation will be generally endorsed. The mornings of that week at Coppet were partly taken up with the earlier stages of the portrait of Madame de Stael, whom Vigee-Lebrun chose to represent as Corinne, seated, with a lyre in her hands, upon a rock, as Corinne sat when she sang her improvised verses at Cape Miseno. The sittings for the portrait were of a remarkable character. " Madame de Stael," says the artist, " was not pretty, but the animation of her face took the place of beauty. In order that she might sustain the expression that I wished to give to her face, I begged her to recite to me some tragic verses, to which I hardly listened, so much was I occupied in trying to represent her with an inspired air. When she had finished her tirades, I said to her, ' Go on reciting ' ; she replied, ' But you don't listen to me,' and I responded, ' Go on, all the same.' Understanding at length my intention, she continued to declaim passages from Corneille and from Racine." It may be added here that it was ten months before the completed portrait arrived from Paris, where it was finished without sittings, and that Madame de Stael seems to have been pleased with what was undoubtedly a flattering representation of a plain woman. She at once sent a cheque, apparently for a thousand ecus (about £200) ; but her affairs at that moment requiring, as she had previously written to the artist's daughter " des menagements de fortune," the cheque was made payable for a date more than six weeks later than its despatch. After leaving Coppet, Madame Lebrun paid a visit to Ferney, and here, as at the Isle Saint-Pierre, found how little reverence was yet paid 172 VIGEE4.EBRUN were left to amuse themselves as they liked best till the evening, when, after ^nner. she made hev first appearance in the general company. "You could see her thus walking about the drawmg-room, holding a sprig of foliage '^Tiilc she talked, she sh.:-nk that little branch, and spoke with an animation which was p. culiar to herself, it was impossible to mterrupt her • at such moments she gave me the impression of an improvisatnce ' On one evening at least Madame de Sta6l had to abandon this kind of " conversation." Some amateur theatricals were given, and Simramis was the drama boldly selected. Madame de Stael her.slf took the part of Az6ma. in which " she had some fine moments, but her playing was very une> V," wi.ilr' Madame R^camier was overcome by stage-fright m the title-role ! The men were no better. " I have always observed," says Madame Lebrun, " that amateurs ought only to try comedies and fro- verh-^ tiever tragedies," and her observation viU be generally ftndorscd. The mornings of that week at Coppet were partly taken up with the earlnr stages of the portrait of Madame de Stael, whom Vig^e Labrun cho-.e to represent as Corinne, seated, with a lyre in her hand*, ^.fn-n .t r- 1 ^ .,,-.„ ■,.-,<.;.,-..- ;irv,-..-.ised *--r5(-s at Cape M.t»&«o. rock, as Coxnuv :■ ■.«•■ n •:- i"' S./orri r/ \ lilrp-^V ^u/Tu 1/ !?,, . The sittings for the ^•■■■. ■■- ■■■■- •>! •' '-'' "---'^t''' -*-j--' - de Staa" sa>=. the artist, " was not pretty, but Hid animaticM of \i« t»€* took . ^ e place of b. ..uty. In order that she might sustain the expre**. ^n that I ^^•ished to give to her face, I begg.d her to recite to me some xr%p verses to winch I hardly listened, so much was I occupied m trying ^ represent her with an inspired air. When she had finished her tnai - I said to bet, ' Go on reciting ' ; she replied, ' But you don't listen t* me.' and I re^|x.r,ded, ' Go on, all the same.' Understand! a;.: at length r ': ij.tentljn. she continued to declaim passages from Corneille and f; »^ It may be added here that it was ten months !>ef..n^ the com]A^\^i portrait arrived from Paris, where it was hnished without srting^, r*nd ttet MadH.ue de Sta€l seems to ha-e been pleased wiih what h.- aMlo«i>tedly a flattering representation of a plain woman. Slie at nn. . sent a chcqti.: apparently for a thousanfl 6cus (about £200) ; but her .ifi.urs at tha t m<4iic..: requiring as she had previously written to the artist's daughter ' d^», menagem* nis de fortune." the cheque was ra-ide payable for a date m.,.r» th-'iTi sue weeks later than its despatch. After leaving Copper Madame L#«run paid a visit to Ferney, and here as at ihe Isle Saint-Pierre, found hc' little reverence was yet paid A FETE AT INTERLAKEN i73 to the scenes associated with the prophets of the Revolution. While Rousseau's island house was now a cabaret, Voltaire's house was in such a filthy state that she could not believe it had been swept out since he had left it on his last journey to triumph and death in Paris. Taking everywhere her box of pastels, the painter now revisited many of the lovely scenes she had lately enjoyed in Switzerland. The drawings she made were not very successful, and are for the most part lost to the world of art, which puts a very small price on them when they come to light in sale-rooms. For example, two sketches representing the Lakes of Thun and Lucerne were sold together in 1898 for ten francs. In one instance she herself admits a complete failure. Mont Blanc at sunset, bathed in gold and opal, was her conqueror. " I seized my pastels ; but alas ! impossible : there was never palette or colours that could render those glorious tints." There is, however, one of her Swiss pictures which, as late as 1899, fetched a thousand francs in Paris. It is a " View from Interlaken during a cantonal fete," is of considerable size, and is painted in oil colours. The origin of this work — which has been in several famous collections — is fully described by the artist in the last of the letters to Madame Potocka. The actual spot was Unterseen (Undersee, as she calls it), and the spectacle represented was the annual fete of the shepherds. The artist, when she took her seat upon one of the benches set out for spectators, was glad to find herself next to Madame de Stael, who had come from Coppet. Hardly were they settled in their places than " We heard some sacred music perfectly chanted by young shepherd- esses. It was followed by the famous song of the Swiss herdsmen. The shepherdesses were preceded by the Bailie and the magistrates. Then came peasants of the various cantons, all in different costumes ; white- haired men carried the banners and the halberds of each valley. They were dressed in the costumes of five centuries ago, of the days of the Conjuration of Rutti [Declaration of Swiss Independence, 1307]. Those old times were represented by the venerable old men. Madame de Stael and I were so moved, so overcome by that solemn procession, that rustic music, that we pressed each others' hands without being able to utter a single word, but our eyes were filled with tears. Never shall I forget that moment of reciprocal emotion. After that procession, the sports began. Twelve mountaineers and men of the valley hurled enormous stones, weighing eighty pounds, from above their shoulders with in- credible force. The wtestling followed, in which the competitors showed 174 VIGEE-LEBRUN astonishing strength and agility. When the sports were over, the BaiUe gave away the prizes. Patriotic hymns were again chanted, and the song of the herdsmen was sung. Then the crowd broke up, and on every side there were to be seen groups of people who sang, or danced, or waltzed, or ate. Several marquees had been set up, with tables, where many visitors had sat down to dinner. The peasants did their cooking in the open air. It was the most varied, the most lively coup d'ceil that I have ever seen." In a footnote to her letter, as printed, the writer adds : " After the fete Madame de Stael strolled about with the Due de Montmorency; as for me, I stayed on the meadow to paint the place, with the groups of people. The Comte de Gramont held my box of pastels. The general view of that fete is painted in oil-colours. The Prince de Talleyrand is now the owner of the picture." CHAPTER X:XVI THE RESTORATION Madame Lebrun buys a house at Louveciennes — Death of her husband — His debts — The Prussians at Louveciennes — Alarming experience of Madame Lebrun — The two returns of the Bourbons — Louis XVIII is gracious to the painter of Marie Antoinette — Princesse Natalie Kourakin in Paris — Her friendship with Madame Lebrun — Death of Julie Nigris — Mother and daughter. A FTER her delightful tour in Switzerland, Vigee-Lebrun found that /-\^ Paris in summer was no longer pleasant to her, and in 1810 she bought at Louveciennes, near the Pavilion du Barry, the house wherein so much of her remaining life was to be spent. The panorama of the Seine, the woods of Marly, the " delicious market-gardens, so well cultivated that one might fancy oneself in the Land of Promise," these attractions which decided her to fix a home on that spot, are to be found there now. The death of her husband — or ex-husband — in 1813 did not greatly trouble her repose ; how should it ? He had for many years been almost a cipher in her life, but it is not surprising to find that he died greatly in debt to her, for she was generous in helping him even after he had divorced her in 1794. The list of his debts filed after his death includes an " obligation" to his one-time wife of 104,000 francs and a few centimes. He died owing also 10,038 francs to another picture dealer, and 10,360 francs to an architect. During the year after her husband's death Madame suffered a very distressing experience. On the last night of March, 1814, after the sur- render of Paris to the Allies, Louveciennes was pillaged by the Prussian soldiers, who had come into France to restore the Bourbons to the throne of their ancestors. " It was eleven o'clock at night, and I had just gone to bed, when 17s 176 VIGEE-LEBRUN Joseph, my servant, who was a Swiss, and spoke German, came into my room, followed by three soldiers of horrible appearance, who, sword in hand, came up to my bed. Joseph shrieked to them that I was Swiss and ill ; but, without answering him, they began by taking my gold snuff-box, which was on a table near my pillow. Then they felt to ascertain if I had not hidden any money under my blanket, from which one of them coolly cut a piece with his sword. Another of them, who seemed to be French, or at any rate who spoke our language perfectly, said to him, ' Give her back her box,' but, far from obeying that invitation, they went to my writing- table, took everything they could find there, and pillaged my wardrobes also. At last, after having made me pass four hours in the most frightful terror, these dreadful people left my house." She herself also left it next morning, and went to lodge in one of the houses just above the Seine, where she found that some other ladies had already sought a refuge. The place was a mere cottage. The lodgers dined together, and lay at night six in a room, where sleep was almost impossible. However, all must have been forgiven to the pillaging Prussians when, on April 12, she had the immense pleasure of seeing the Comte d'Artois enter Paris, the precursor of his brother Louis XVIII. " It is impossible," she says, " for me to describe the delightful sensations that I experienced on that day; I wept tears of joy, of happiness." Life in Paris was also made happier for Madame Lebrun now by the return of the Comte de Vaudreuil, who had followed the Comte d'Artois from England. He had lost nearly all his property, but the Bourbons did not leave him without means of subsistence, and gave him rooms in the Louvre, where he entertained his friends. The Comtesse Potocka, in describing a party she had attended at Vigee-Lebrun's house in those days, says : " Every one is amused to see M. de Vaudreuil doing the honours as if we were back twenty-five years ago. They appear to be very happy together, in spite of the lapse of time ; they have found each other again like the handsome Cleon and the beautiful Javotte." The happiness was soon to be broken, when, just a year later, the Bourbons went off again at the beginning of the Hundred Days. July 1815 came, and with it the Bourbons once more, and all the returned emigrants, many of them old friends and acquaintances of Madame Lebrun, resumed, as far as their finances allowed, the social pleasures that they had first left behind them at the Revolution. A FRIENDSHIP RENEWED 177 The " painter of Marie Antoinette " was received at the Tuileries with marked distinction by Louis XVIII, and painted several new portraits of members of the Royal Family. The big picture of Marie Antoinette and her children was once more hung on the wall at Versailles, from which it had been taken down by Napoleon's orders, though the custodians had made a good many francs by showing it unofficially to visitors who cared to see it. During her residence in St. Petersburg Madame Lebrun had, as we have seen already, been on very friendly terms with the Princess Natalie Kourakin, to whom many letters quoted in earlier chapters were addressed. When, in 1816, the Russian lady came to Paris, the friendship was speedily renewed. " What pleasure have I not felt this morning," wrote the Princess in her diary on October 26, " at seeing Madame Lebrun again ! When she came into my drawing-room she pressed my hand and, at the same time, showed me my letters and a flower I had sent her years ago from Russia. How one's heart rejoices in finding again a heart which cherishes it!" Almost every day these two women, the Russian and the French, were together, often several times. They would " drop in " on each other for a few minutes, in going or coming on the business of social pleasure ; they treated each other to theatres and concerts, and went to parties together. The only cloud of which we hear, in this private Franco-Russian alliance, was caused by the failure of the Princess to visit her friend at Louveciennes in the summer of 1817. For this omission " Madame Lebrun was furious." But the fury soon changed into forgiveness. In the following year it seemed for a moment as if Madame Lebrun might have a dangerous rival in the affections of her dear Natalie. Some time in June the Princess met Madame Recamier, who had returned to Paris from the exile to which Napoleon had condemned her on account of her friendship with Madame de Stael. " Madame Recamier and I were like sisters together," writes the Princess, concerning that particular after- noon, " and we promised ourselves to see one another often." Nothing came, apparently, of this sudden discovery of sisterly love, and the more substantially founded friendship with the much older Frenchwoman was in no way disturbed. If the death of M. Lebrun had not been more than a temporary grief to the woman who had been his wife, the death of their daughter, in 1819, 12 178 VIGEE-LEBRUN gave her intense sorrow— none the less, perhaps even the more, because of the coldness that had existed between them since Julie's marriage in St. Petersburg, about twenty years before. The mother and daughter had never again been on quite the old footing of perfect confidence and affection, but they had seen each other constantly in Paris and elsewhere after Julie, separated in her turn from her husband, had settled there in 1805 ; and Madame Lebrun found a good deal of new happiness in the presence and society of her daughter. " Whether it was my fault or not," writes the mother, " if her empire over my heart was great, I had none over hers, and at times she made me shed some bitter tears. ... I had the disappointment of not being able to persuade her to live with me, because she persisted in associating with several people whom I could not have in the house," people more after the taste of the father who had gone than of the mother who remained. That mother was not with Julie at the last hour. " The moment I heaird that she was suffering I hurried to her ; but her disease advanced quickly ; I cannot express what I felt when I lost all hope of saving her. When I went to see her, for the last time, alas ! and my eyes fixed themselves upon that pretty face, so terribly changed, I became ill. Madame de Noisville, my old friend, who had come with me, came to drag me away from that bed of sorrow ; she held me up, for my legs would no longer support me, and she took me home. Next day, I had no longer a child ! Madame de Verdun came to tell me, and strove in vain to appease my despair, for the faults of the poor child towards me were wiped out, and I saw her again, I see her now, as she was in her childhood. . . . Alas, she was so young ! Ought she not to have survived me ? " CHAPTER XXVII AUTUMN AND WINTER Aj^visit to Bordeaux — Chateau of Mereville — Sham rocks and other " embellishments " of the gardens — Tours — The monastery of Marmoutier — Vandalic iron-founders — The hotel at Bordeaux — Disadvantages and advantages of a top-room — 'The fascination of the harbour — Madame Lebrun at sixty-five — " Settles down " in country and town for the rest of her life — The rivalry of her devoted nieces — A happy and uneventful old age — She prepares her souvenirs — Death of Madame Lebrun — Her will — Where her ashes lie — The sentinel above her grave THE deaths of her daughter and also of her brother Etienne, within the year, upset Madame Lebrun' s health so much that her friends advised her to try once more her usual remedy — travel and change of scene. She took the advice, and chose Bordeaux for an object, the town itself being unknown to her, and most of the route also. Very early on the journey she left her carriage in order to visit the chateau of Mereville, the seat of M. de Laborde, son of a great financier, and brother of the rather eccentric and very beautiful Madame d'AngivUler. Madame Lebrun's account of the place affords sufficient evidence that, however simple her taste in costume, some of her ideas of the embellishment of Nature were not at all superior, or inferior, to those of the landscape-gardeners who laid out the grounds of the Trianon. Millions of francs had been spent on this " truly enchanting resort of Mereville, where there was not a corner in which art had not come to add to the beauties of nature." Even the rocks were sham, or at least brought from elsewhere. These rocks, " which are immense and must have cost a fortune, the cascades, the temples, the pavilions, all is in its place and contributes to the charm of the view . . . One of the temples, called the Temple of the Sibyl, is an exact copy of that at Tivoli, but restored throughout with perfect taste and care. On another spot, close to the river, is a mill and several little houses like Swiss chalets. . . . Indeed, it would take too long to enumerate all the things that make the park at M6reville so delightful a place, which in my opinion 179 i8o VIGEE-LEBRUN surpasses anything of the kind that one can find in England. This park was designed in great part by Hubert Robert." But Madame Lebrun had a real love for the picturesque, and the " nobles debris " of castles along the banks of the Loire delighted her eyes, to which Chambord appeared " a fairy-castle so romantic, that one could never see anything which so much impresses the imagination." Tours has happily changed in one respec^ — ^it has changed in many — since she was there in 1820. She declares that there was a disgusting smell in every street, and that in " the best hotel," where she stayed, — the trees of the present Boulevard Beranger were young in those day§ — sweet- smelling herbs and toilet vinegar could not overcome the unpleasantness, which drove her away after two days, during which she found time to visit the cathedral, the picture gallery, and the ruins of that great monastery of Marmoutier, familiar to readers of Balzac's early work. She found this famous relic of the middle ages in process of demolition ! "An infernal band of iron-founders was destro5dng all these beautiful things. A Dutch mercantile company wanted to buy the monastery to make it into a factory. They offered 300,000 francs, which was refused; and later on the villainous iron-founders had it for 20,000, on condition that this noble building should be entirely pulled down ! The Vandals them- selves could not have done worse ! Ah well, all along my route I heard things of that sort." By Poitiers and Angouleme, the traveller arrived at Bordeaux. She does not forget to record that from the suburbs of Paris to the suburbs of Bordeaux the road is " like an alley in a garden, and it is so well inade that one feels no fatigue." The road is good enough now, perhaps, but the motor-cars, over a considerable part of it, would interfere sadly with Madame Lebrun' s pleasure in her gently-rolling carriage, could she make the journey again in the same manner. At Bordeaux, this staunch adherent of the aristocracy benefited by its overthrow, for she stayed at a charming hotel which, before the Revolu- tion, had been the residence of a noble. It was on the quay, and, she writes: "I cannot express my ecstasy, my ravishment at the sight of the magnificent picture which met my eyes when I opened my window ; I believed I was in a beautiful dream. So many vessels in harbour, a thou- sand boats and lighters which come and go in every direction, while the ships lie motionless ; the silence which reigns over that immense mass of water, all concurs to give the idea of a fairy-picture. Although I stayed THE CHARM OF BORDEAUX i8i nearly a week, and by night and day enjoyed that sight, I could never get tired of it, above all by moonlight ; you see there upon the hills some little lights in the houses, and all becomes magical. The pleasure that I tasted at my window wouldT alone have repaid me for the trouble of coming to Bordeaux." She had only one acquaintance in the town— the Comte de Tournon- Simiane, prefet of the department of the Gironde, who was himself a bit of an artist. But she went out little, it seems ; and one reason why she spent so much time at her window was that her room was very high up, in days when the advertised merits of a provincial hotel never included " lift to every floor "; — in spite of the fact that lifts were known before the Revolution, much as railways were known in the days of George III. It would need no more than the above account of the view from a hotel window at Bordeaux to prove that Madame Lebrun did not belong to the nil admirari class, and was not afraid to express her feelings for the beautiful. A curious phonetic error in her account of her visit to Bordeaux might be adduced as evidence that she dictated this part of her Souvenirs to an absent-minded amanuensis. The hostelry where she stayed is there called "I'autel Fumel" (Fumel was the name of its former owner, the nobleman) . It is remarkable that such an obvious slip of somebody' s should have persisted in editions published in our own days. After this visit to Bordeaux, Madame Lebrun, being now sixty-five years old, felt disposed for a permanently settled life, and determined that henceforth her painting, always her favourite occupation, should be her principal relaxation. She was no longer able to produce the charming portraits of five-and- twenty years before, but she enjoyed painting pictures, generally pastels or water-colours, which had little value for sale, but much for her own pleasure. She also found a grateful occupation in the instruction of her niece Eugenie Lebrun, who under the aunt's eye made quite a success as a portrait-painter on her own account. Madame had saved enough money during her progress through Europe, notably in Russia, to enable her to live in great comfort at Louveciennes, and to spend several months of each year in Paris. This niece, E^genie, who was soon to marry Monsieur Tripier Lefranc, and Caroline, "Madame " de Riviere, her other niece, were, one or both, her almost constant companions. The last twenty years of her life passed in the quiet enjoyment of good health, agreeable society, and keen pleasure i82 VIGEE-LEBRUN in art and nature* She went to see her friends, and they came to her "evenings" still in Paris, or to stay with her in her pleasant country- house. When she was verging on eighty she followed the mode among survivors of the Revolution by prepeiring (at the suggestion of some literary friends, among whom Aim6 Martin seems to have been the chief instigator) her reminiscences for publication. In part the volumes which appeared in 1836-7 are filled — as already mentioned — ^with letters to the Princesse Natalie Kourakin and the Comtesse Vincent Potocka, and for the rest they were mostly dictated, or compiled by others from notes of her talk. Happily she seems to have had no idea of the jealousy with which Caroline de Riviere regarded Eugenie Lefranc, especially with reference to her (Madame Lebrun's) inheritance. An intimate friend of Eugenie's was Madame de Joinville, who, writing on February 26, 1842 (about a month before Madame Lebrun's death), says to Madame Lefranc : " I hope that your little boy at least, if he has a good heart, will give you a little more consolation than you have had from your aunt, whose age, and the efforts of memory that her literary work has necessitated, have drained her energy and her intellectual resources. I have always supposed that her fortune amounted to much more than 300,000 francs (;£i2,ooo) ; apparently she had considerable life-annuities, for her ex- penditure, and her manner of living, especially during (the past) six months, gave the impression that she had an income of 25 or 30 thousand livres (;£i,ooo to £1,400) a year. I had some apprehensions also on the subject of Madame de Riviere. Observer, by character, of the moral inductions which a study of the inward disposition presents, I have noticed in her the manifestation of love of money, carried to a passion. I saw her, in the first days of the Revolution of 1830, arrive at her aunt's house, crimson with anger, and uttering cries of despair . . . because she had heard that her pension had been stopped by the new Government." Referring afterwards to this same incident, this profound detective of the human heart, Madame de Joinville, writes to Eugenie Lefranc : "An incident that I have told you about in an earlier letter had shown me the kernel of the character of that nfild and pleasant face. Lavater himself would have been deceived; but for me, steeped in the physiology of Dr. Gall— that is to say, of his theory of the plurality of the organs, or of the theory of conductors, in the brain, of innate dispositions — it was only necessary to see her enter her aunt's DEATH OF VIGEE-LEBRUN 183 house, crimson with anger, as a lioness from whom one has taken her cubs." One can imagine the works of Lavater and Gall lying handy for reference on Madame de Joinville's writing-table. Whatever the personal relations of her nieces, who ultimately went to law over her money, no fear of such a calamity troubled Madame Lebrun's last days. Her death was a quiet and happy close to a Ufe which, in spite of the mistake of her marriage, the miseries of the Revolution and her daughter's estrangement, had been as happy as is vouchsafed to more than a small proportion of humanity. On March 29, 1842, she had a few friends to dinner at her rooms in the Rue Saint-Lazare in Paris. After they had gone she went to bed, looking forward to seeing other friends on the morrow, and in the early hours of that morrow she died, as such old people commonly do, from the stopping of a heart which is tired of its work. " I desire to be buried in the Calvary," she had said in her will of 1829. But the Calvary was closed soon after, and in 1831 she said in a new will (specially addressing her niece Eugenie, the residuary legatee), " As it is no longer possible for me to be buried in the Calvary, I desire that she will choose a place for me in the cemetery at Lucienne, and that my only monument may be a column with a pedestal on which she will have engraved in bas-relief a palette with paint-brushes, and the words ' Here at last I rest' {Id enfin je repose), and below that my names, Elisabeth Louise Vig6e-Lebrun. The little monument will be surrounded with green trees, and guarded by a bronze railing. I wish to have a very simple funeral, and that the poor of the neighbourhood shall be given a sum of two hundred francs, to be divided among them by my niece and the Cur6 of Lucienne." The " new" cemetery at Louveciennes (where Elisabeth Vig6e-Lebrun's dust lies, beneath a memorial not precisely in accordance with her wish, even as to her names), is, in one respect, unlike any other burial-place I know. It is inside a fortification, earthworks having been thrown up round its walls, not to protect the bones of departed villagers, but to command the valley of the Seine. On the green embankment of the fort a sentry in blue and scarlet, leaning upon his rifle, looks out over the fields and hills, the market gardens, and the graves. There are woods, and many scattered trees in the immediate neighbourhood, but in that tiny cemetery the " green trees " that she desired are but shrubs as yet, and the sun beats down upon the stones and the grass. i84 VIGEE-LEBRUN In spite of the adjoining battery, there is at most times Httle of sound there but for the hum of insects in summer or the twittering of birds. The greatest disturbance of the peace in which " the painter of Marie Antoinette " rests among her peasant neighbours is at those regular intervals when a word of command, followed by a clatter of arms, comes from the other side of the rampart, whereon the silent sentry awaits the changing of the guard. CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS (Unless otherwise stated, the sales mentioned took place in Paris.) Adelaide, Madame. Daughter of Louis XV. Painted at Rome, 1791. Born in 1732, Madame Adelaide, like her sister Victoire, lived a Ufe little remark- able until the Revolution, except that she was largely instrumental in the recall of Maurepas to Court and influence in 1774. During their flight from France to Italy in 1791, the two sisters were several times stopped, and were only able to leave the country by the express consent of the National Assembly. They lived first in Rome and then in Naples, fleeing to Trieste when the French invaded Italy, and dying in that city, Adelaide in 1800 and Victoire in the previous year. Aguesseau, Madame. With her dog. 1768-1772. ? Christie's, 1887: "A Lady with a Dog." 36 X 28. Bought in at ;£i68. ? Wife of Henri, Comte d' Aguesseau, Avocat, Academician, Deputy of the nobles to the States-General, Judge and Senator under Napoleon, Peer of France under Louis XVIII. See " Lady with a Dog." Aguesseau, Madame de Fresne d'. 1789. AiLLY. See Dailly. Alban, Madame de Saint. 1781. , The same. 1789. Albrizzi, Signora Isabella Marini, n&e Teotochi, afterwards Contessa Albrizzi. Venice, 1792. Bust. Red dress, cut low. Dark hair, bound with red and white fillet. 18 J x 13. (It has apparently been cut down since 1826, when it was measured as 19I x 13 J.) Signed and dated, with the addition " pour son ami Denon," who engraved the portrait. The writing was scratched on the dress in the left-hand bottom comer after the paint was set. Denon sale, 1826, 260 fr. Bardini sale, Christie's, June 1899, £620, (Hodgkins). 1913, Hodgkins. Alexander I, Tsar of Russia. Pastel. St. Petersburg, ? 1801. Paris, Exhibition of French Art under Louis XIV and Louis XV, 1888, Collection of M. Moreau-Chaslon. Madame Lebrun says she painted a pastel (head and shoulders) in 1801, on which the Dresden pictures (see below) were based. Presumed portrait of the same. Pastel. Paris, Exposition Retrospective Feminine, 1908, Collection of Monsieur G. Camentron. Three portraits of the same. Bust (after the pastel portrait). Dresden. Alexandrina, The Grand-Duchess. See Helena and Alexandrina. American, An (A Uttle boy). 1779. American Lady. See Lady, An American. Amphion. See Lubomirski. 185 i86 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Andlau, Genevieve Adelaide, fiee Helvetius, Comtesse d'. Bust. Kerchief round head and tied under chin. Paris, Exhibition des Alsaciens-Lorrains, Palais Bourbon, 1874. Exhibition of National Portraits, Trocadero, 1878, Collection of Marquis de Mun. Comte Albert de Mun, 1913. ? Daughter of the celebrated Femier-Greneral Helvetius, the friend of many eminent authors and the author of the book De I'Esprit (1758), which was condemned by the Sorbonne. The same. " Avec les mains." Paris, 1802-1805. Son of the above. Paris, 1802-1805. Another son of the Comtesse d'Andlau. Paris, 1802-1805. Andlau, Stanislas d'. Paris, Exhibition of Portraits of Women and Children. Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 1897, Collection of Comtesse de Chanaleilles. Probably one of the above sons of Comtesse d'Andlau. Angeley, Comtesse de Saint- Jean d'. Sale, Paris, Jan. 21, 1884. 1,950 fr. Angerville, Mile. de. Couteaux Sale, 1863. 127 fr. An actress of the Theatre Fran9ais. Angiviller, Charles Claude la Billarderie, Comte d'. 1788. Director-general of buildings, gardens, manufactures and Academies under Louis XVI. A friend and protector of men of letters. His property was confiscated in 1791. He emigrated, and died in 1810 at Altona. Angouleme, Marie Therese Charlotte de France, Duchesse d'. Known as "Madame Royale." Dressed as a milk-girl. Low-necked dress. Roses and lilac in lap. Wearing a hat. Jules Duclos Sale, Paris, 1878, 2,420 frs. " Madame Royale," born in 1778, was the eldest child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Imprisoned with her parents in the Temple, she was exchanged, in 1795, by the Convention, for the Repubhcan Commissaries whom Dumouriez had given up to Austria. In 1799 she married her cousin, the Due d' Angouleme. She died in 1851, at Frohsdorf, in Austria. , The same. (For the Duchesse de Polignac.) 1787. One of these pictures (possibly they are identical) was in the Exhibition of National Portraits, Paris, 1878, being lent by Monsieur J. B. Chazaud. , The same, with her brother the Dauphin Louis-Joseph (q.v.). Anne, The Grand-Duchess. J-length. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. The same, ^-length. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. Anspach, The Meirgravine of. f-length. London, 1802-1805. EUzabeth, born in 1750, daughter of the 4th Earl of Berkeley, married at seven- teen to Mr. Craven, who soon afterwards succeeded to the Peerage as 6th Baron Craven ; separated from him in 1781, after bearing seven children in fourteen years. After his death she married, in 1791, the Margrave of Anspach, who sold his terri- tories to Prussia and settled with his wife in England. She was the author of some plays, some satires, and of a volume of Travels, as well as of Memoirs, published in 1826, two years before her death. In this last work she refers to the above portrait, saying : " Even Madame Lebrun, who painted a three-quarter length of me, has madte an arm and hand out of all proportion to the chest and shoulders." ? Antraigues, Comte d'. Drawing. J. B. Lebrun. Sale, 1814. 30 fr. 50. (Entered in catalogue of that sale as " Comte d'Entrague.") If, as seems probable, this was Emmanuel de Launay, Comte d' Antraigues, it represents a notable figure of the revolutionary period. Born in 1755 (the same year as the artist herself) he declared for the Revolution in 1788. Then he was CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 187 elected to the States-General, and in 1790, having become Royalist, he emigrated, and devoted himself to the Royalist propaganda. He was successful in gaining the support of Pichegni for the Bourbons. In 1812 he and his wife, the former Madame Saint-Huberti of the Opera (see Index) were assassinated in London by a servant, who is supposed to have sold his master's political secrets. Apraxine, Catherine Vladimirovna, nee Princesse Galitzin. Head and shoulders. Signed 1796, St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Alexandrina Mikhailovna Apraxine. Aremberg, Princesse d'. 1776. Wife of Louis, Prince d' Aremberg, Grand Bailly of Hainault. Armaille, Marquis d'. 1778. Artois, Marie-Th6r6se de Savoie, Comtesse d'. 1783. White muslin dress, blue sash. Oval, 27J X 21 J. Christie's, Feb. 1913. 200 gns. Wife of the Comte d' Artois, afterwards Charles X. , The same, probably a twin picture. 1783. Assistant, An (Commis) of Mademoiselle Pigale, Marchande de Modes to the Queen. 1768-1772. AuGEARD, Madame d'. 1775. Oval, 29I x 23I. Looking up to right, open corsage, bunch of roses in bodice; right hand placed below left breast. Collections of M. Louis de Silvestre and the Comte de Raffignac. Wildenstein, 1914. AuMONT, Madame d'. See Piennes, Duchesse de. B , La Comtesse de. Oval, 3of x 23! . Gasquet Sale, Paris, 1888. 2,200 fr. Bacchante, A. Sitting, life-size, f-length. Salon, 1785. Baillot, Mademoiselle. 1773. Bandelaire, Monsieur. 1768-1772. The same. Bust. Pastel. 1768-1772. Bandelaire, Madame. 1768-1772. Wife of the above. Bandelaire, Mademoiselle. 1768-1772. Daughter of the above M. and Madame Bandelaire. Banker, A. 1776. Bariatinsky, Prince. London, 1802-1805. Bariatinsky, Prince Ivan Ivanovitch. Signed. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Prince Alexandre Vladomirovitch Bariatinsky. The same. Same exhibition. Same collection. Barry, Comte Jean du. 1773. The brother-in-law of the mistress of Louis XV. Barry, Marie Jeanne Gomard Vaubernier, Comtesse du. f-length. White peignoir bound at waist by mauve ribbon, straw hat trimmed with flowers and a grey feather. 1787. Painted for the Due de Brissac. Belonged (1793) to the Due de Rohan-Chabot. Rohan- Chabot Sale, 1807. 400 livres. Paris, Exhibition of Marie Antoinette and her Time, Galerie Sedelmeyer, 1894, Collection of Due de Rohan. Exhibition Retrospective Feminine, 1908, same collection. Exhibition of One Hundred Portraits of Women, 1909, same collection. 1746-1793. Daughter of a clerk of the Octroi service. Married, 1769, to Comte Guillaume du Barry and presented at Court in that year, becoming about that time mistress of Louis XV, over whom she exercised immense influence until his death in 1774, after which she retired to Louveciennes, and lived there as the mistress of i88 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS the Due de Brissac, Governor of Paris. She escaped to England in 1792, but foolishly returned, and, being betrayed by her Asiatic servant, Zamar, was guillotined, Dec. 8, 1793. Barry, Comtesse du. The same. Morning dress, straw hat with flowers. Hubert Robert sale, 1809. 302 fr. The same. 1787. Standing. White satin dress. Holds a coronet, and is leaning on a pedestal. Painted for the Due de Brissac. Madame Lebrun, after the Revolution, was vexed to find that the face in this portrait had been tinted, as if rouged, since she had last seen the picture. Madame du Barry, says the artist, did not use rouge. The same. Commenced Sept. 1789. Finished after the painter's return in 1802. Madame du Barry is shown seated under a tree, her head resting on her left hand, while the right hand holds a lily and a rose. Simply-made yellow dress, with open neck and sleeves fastened by gold buttons from shoulder to wrist. A white veil on her head. Curly hair. Eyes half closed. Tripier Le Franc sale, 1883. 3,520 fr. Collection of the Baron Fould-Springer, 1912. The same. 1789. Another version of the last ; same pose and similar head-dress, but dark sleeveless dress with short-sleeved white under-bodice. The right hand holding a limp-backed book instead of flowers. Bibliotheque de la Ville de Versailles. This picture is not well authenticated as the work of Madame Lebrun. The same (?). Holding a lily and a rose. Talleyrand sale, 1847. 3°° ^'^• Beaugoin, Madame de. 1777. Beaujon, Nicholas. Banker to the Court, Receiver- General at Rouen. 1784. 1718-1799. His later life is illustrated in the painter's Souvenirs. He founded a hospital in Paris, stiU existing, and called by his name. The same. 1785. The same. (For his hospital.) 1785. At present (1914) there is a sculptured bust of M. Beaujon at " his hospital," but this picture is not there. Beaumont, Comtesse de. 1788. Belgarde, Madame de. 1774. Br. (Bi;LiER ?), Mademoiselle. Dated 1785. Paris, Exhibition des Alsaciens-Lorrains, Palais Bourbon, 1874, Collection of M. Rothan. Belozersky, Anna Grigorievna Kozitzky, Princesse Belosselsky — .signed. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Comte A. V. Orloff-Davidoff. Benevento. See Talleyrand, Charles Maurice. Beon, Comtesse de. Salon, 1787. f-length. Oval. Claret-coloured dress with slashed sleeves, over white muslin bodice, cut low ; yellow sash, hair bound with mauve ribbon. Gold chain with small Maltese cross. 35 x 27J. Sale, Christie's, June 7, 1912. ;£i,627 los. (Thrift). Mr. William McKay, 1913. Wife of Franfois, Comte de Beon, an officer of the King's body-guard. She herself was a lady-in-waiting to Madame Adelaide, aunt of Louis XVI. The same. 1787. Probably a twin picture with the above. ? Bering, Mrs. London, 1802-1805. Berkeley, Lady. 1776. Berry, Charles Ferdinand d'Artois, Due de. As a child. Paris, Exhibition des Alsaciens- Lorrains, Palais Bourbon, 1874. Collection of M. Rondeau. 1778-1820. 2nd son of the Comte d'Artois (afterwards Charles X). Married CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 189 in England, during the emigration, a Miss Brown, by whom he had two daughters. Louis XVIII insisted on this marriage being annulled, and in 1816 the Due married the Princess Caroline of Naples, by whom he had one daughter. He was assassinated on leaving the Opera in Paris, Feb. 13, 1820, by Louvel. Berry, Princess Caroline of Naples, Duchesse de. Wife of the last named. Salon, 1824. Red velvet dress. The same. Blue velvet dress. Of these two portraits Madame Lebrun says in her Souvenirs, " I do not know what has become of them." BiBiKOFF, Alexandre Alexandrovitch. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of M. Ivan ApoUonovitch Bibikoff. BisTRi. See Bystry. Blache, Comtesse de la. Paris, Exhibition des Alsaciens-Lorrains, Palais-Bourbon, 1874, and Exhibition of National Portraits, Trocadero, 1878, Collection of Comte d'Hausson- ville. Blache, Vicomte de la. 1768-1772. Blache, Vicomtesse de la. 1768-1772. Boisjelin, Vicomte de. 1774. BoNNEUiL, Madame de. 1773. The same. 1773 The same. 1773. The beauty of this lady was very attractive to Elizabeth Vig^e's eye, and, as we see, she painted three portr?iits of her in one year. BoRELLY, Monsieur de. 1774. Boy. See American. " Boy in Red." 25 x 204. Wallace Gallery. The Catalogue of the Wallace Collection (1913) says, " This is probably the same picture that was exhibited as ' Young Nobleman ' at the Bethnal Green Loan Exhibition, 1872-1875." Braonne, Comtesse de. |-length. Vienna, 1792-1794. Brente, Madame de. 1776. Briche, Madame de la. 1788. Paris, Universal Exhibition. Exhibition (Retrospective) of the Town of Paris, igoo. Collection of Duchesse de Noailles. Briche, Mademoiselle de la. (A child.) 1786. Salon, 1787. Brie, Comte de. 1774. This man, according to the Souvenirs, persecuted Vigee with his dishonourable proposals before her marriage, and afterwards by spreading scandalous lies about her, until M. Lebrun complained to the police, and the nuisance was stopped. Brie, Mademoiselle de Saint. 1774. Brissac, Louis Hercule Timoldon, Due de Coss4, afterwards Due de. 1778. 1734-1792. Captain of the Cent-Suisses and Governor of Paris. He braved the Revolution as Commandant of the King's Constitutional Guard. Accused of treason by the Jacobins, he was arrested at Orleans. Being brought towards Paris, he and some fellow prisoners were murdered by ruffians in the Rue de I'Orangerie at Versailles. (Sept. 1792.) The same. In Court dress (habit de ceremonie). Pastel. Salon de la Correspondance, 1783. Bristol, Frederick Augustus, fourth Earl of. Bishop of Derry. f-length. 49! x 39I. Seated to right, face to spectator, clean shaven, grey-brown hair, bluish eyes. Black IQO CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS dergyman's coat, knee breeches and silk stockings. Left elbow rests on a balustrade, over which can be seen Vesuvius in eruption, and through the pillars of which a town is visible. Naples, 1790. Marquis of Bristol. London. See Index. Bristol, Earl'of, Bishop of Derry. The same. |-length. 50 x 40. Seated, profile to right. Purple coat, black apron, knee-breeches and silk stockings. Left elbow rests on arm of chair, head supported on left hand. Episcopal ring on third finger of right hand. Bust of Maecenas on pillar to right. View of mountains in background. Italy, 1790. Sir Henry Bruce, Bt., Downhill, Londonderry. Brongniart, Mademoiselle Alexandrine Emilie. Daughter of M. Alexandre Brongniart, " Architect du Roi." At eight years of age. On wood. 25^ x 20|. Curly hair bound with silk kerchief knotted over forehead. Spotted gauze fichu. White dress. She is taking balls of wool from a green silk bag on the table. Salon, 1789. Exhibition of Arts " au d^but du Sificle," Paris, 1891, Collection of Baron J. Pichon. Baron Pichon sale, 1897. 20,000 fr. ? Bought by the Brongniart family. A child of the architect Brongniart. 1778. Another child of the architect. 1778. " Le Petit Brongniart," (presumably one of the architect's family). 1788. Bruyere, Jean de la. Author of the Caracttres. 1775. Done from an old engraving, and presented to the Academy, as described on pp. 14, 15 of this book. 1645 ?-i696. BuQUOi, Comtesse. Sister of the Prince de Paar. Vienna, 1792-1794. ? Byron, George Gordon Noel, Lord. The poet, as a youth of 14-17. London, 1802-1805. Madame Lebrun gives " Lord Byron " in her English list, but it seems probable that she has confused some other name with that of the poet. Nothing is known by his family at the present day of such a portrait. Bystry, Comte. A Polish nobleman. Vienna, 1792 (see Index). Comtesse. Wife of the above. Vienna, 1792. These two portraits were formerly in the collection of Count Siemontkowsky, Chateau de Koustyn, Valonie, Russia. Caderousse, Marie-Gabrielle de Sinety, Duchesse de Gramont-. Salon, 1785. A brunette. To right, nearly full face. Large straw hat over lawn scarf which falls from back of head over the shoulders. Black velvet bodice with sleeves to elbow ; red skirt. She holds a basket of grapes, which stands on a table. Open air. Marquis de Sin6ty. A miniature, taken from this picture by Villers, signed and dated 1795, is in the Pierpont Morgan Collection. The same. (Wildenstein.) Cailleau or Caillot, Joseph. To below the knees. 36^ x 28^. In Les Deux Chasseurs et la Laitilre. Fowling-piece in hand, game bag slung at his side. Salon, 1787. J. B. Lebrun (after death) sale, 1814. Boitelle sale, 1874. Boitelle sale, 1891. 510 fr, (Haro). 1732-1816. Distinguished actor and singer, of the Com^die Italienne and the Op^ra Comique. He retired from the stage at forty. A child of Joseph Cailleau. 1787. — — Another child of Joseph Cailleau. 1787. Calonne, Charles Alexandre de, Contr61eur des Finances. |-length. Seated at writing- table. Full face. Black satin coat and knee-breeches. He wears a ribbon and order. 1785. An engraving by De Br6a was published in London in 1802. 1734-1802. Minister of Louis XVI (1783-1787). After his fall from office CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 191 he lived for some time in London ; there became the agent of the Bourbon party of Coblentz, in whose interests he spent the greater part of his fortune. In 1802 he returned to France, where he died in October of that year. Calonne, Charles Alexandre de. The same. Bust, almost a duplicate of the head and shoulders of the above. 1785. Oval. Exhibition of Marie- Antoinette and her time, Galerie Sedelmeyer, Paris, 1894, Collection de M. Jacques Doucet. Doucet sale, 1912, 19,000 fr. One of the above portraits of Calonne, apparently, was sold at the Baron Charles de V6ze sale in 1855 for 79 fr. Carignan, Princesse de. 1785. The Carignans are a branch of the house of Savoy, from which the present Italian dynasty is descended. The Princess de Lamballe {q.v.) was a Carignan. Carreau, Mademoiselle Julie. 1775. Afterwards the wife of Talma, the tragedian. Cases, Comtesse de Las. Painted from memory. Probably wife of the Comte de Las Cases, so closely connected with the later career of Napoleon. Catalani, Madame (Ang^Uque). Singing, standing by a piano, looking up. Paris, signed, 1806. 47f X ssj. Low-necked white muslin dress. Diadem on curly brown hair. The music of Semiramis is open on the piano. Talleyrand sale, 1847, 100 fr. Muhl- bacher sale, 1907, 10,000 fr. 1782-1849. Bom at Sinigaglia. Immensely successful as an opera singer in her native Italy, and in Paris, London, and elsewhere. Madame Lebrun writes : " I made the portrait of that charming woman, wishing to keep it in my own house, where it still hangs as a pendant to that of Madame Grassini." Catherine II, Empress of Russia. — 1729-1796. The Empress Catherine, who died less than fifteen months after the arrival of the painter in St. Petersburg, received her with distinction, but never gave her a sitting. It would seem that the Empress was not satisfied with Madame Lebrun's picture of her grandchildren, the Archduchesses Alexandrina and Helena, declaring that she had made them " look like ninnies." Caze, Monsieur. 1775. Chalgrin, Madame. 1789. Daughter of Joseph Vemet {q.v.) and wife of a distinguished architect, Jean Franfois Chalgrin. Was guillotined during the Terror, with her friend Madame Filleul (q.v.). Chastellux, Fran9ois-Jean, Marquis de. 1789. Painted from memory, the year after his death. 1734-1788. Madame Lebrun calls him " Comte de Chastellux," but there can be little doubt of his identity. Chatenay, Comtesse de. Oval. Salon, 1785. Paris, Exposition Retrospective Feminine, 1908, Collection of Monsieur Feral. Madame de (The elder). 1787. Chatre, Madame de la. 1789. ? Wife of Qaude-Louis, Due de la Chatre, deput6 to the States-General, after- wards Bourbon agent in London, and (under the Restoration) French ambassador there. Chaulnes, Duchessede. 1781. Wife of Marie- Joseph-Louis, Due de Chaulnes, who left the army in order to devote himself to natural science. It was he who had such a violent quarrel with 192 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Beaumarchais that the two men were shut up in different strong lodgings to cool their tempers, the Due at Vincennes and the dramatist at Fort I'Eveque. Child, A. Bust. Paris, Exhibition of Portraits of Women and Children, Ecole des Beaux Arts, 1897, Collection of Madame Edouard Andre. Child, Portrait of a. Sale, May 13, 1892. 655 fr. Chinnery, Mrs. Low-necked red dress, edged with gold embroidery. Lawn veil falling over either ear. Necklace of two strings. She is holding open, on a cushion, a volume of the Letters of Madame de Genlis. Signed " L. E. Vigee-Lebrun." England, 1802. 35 X 27. Sedelmeyer. One of the hostesses of Madame Lebrun in this country. The artist's welcome at Mrs. Chinnery's house is described in her Souvenirs, and is mentioned in this volume. A child of. England, 1802-1804. Another child of. England, 1802-1804. Probably these two children are the girl and boy the artist speaks of as " two little angels." Choiseul, Marquis de. 1768-1772. {See Index.) Choisy, Mademoiselle de. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. Mademoiselle de. Sister of the above. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794, Chouart, Marquis de. 1776. Christine de Naples, Princesse. Daughter of Ferdinand IV, King of Naples. Prado, Madrid. Coetlosquet, General Comte de. Salon, 1824. CoLOGAND, Comte de. 1775. Cologand, Comtesse de. 1775. Comte, M. Le. Dans son Cabinet. Exhibition of the Academic of Saint- Luc. 1774. CoNSTANS, Madame. Bust. Paris, 1806. CONTAT, Mademoiselle, of the Comedie Fran^aise. ^-length. To right. Oval, on wood. 30I X 24I. Flowing hair, red dress, white kerchief knotted round head. The head only is finished, the hands scarcely indicated. D'Armaill6 sale, 1890. 1,750 fr. (Benard). ? CORDAY, Charlotte. Lecurieux sale, 1862. 440 fr. 1768-1793. If this picture is really intended to represent the girl who killed Marat, it must have been done from other portraits, or from imagination, as Madame Lebrun had left Paris some years before Mademoiselle Corday d'Armont came from Caen. Cossi, Marquis de. 1778. ? Either the Due de Coss6, afterwards Due de Brissac (q.v.), or his son. Comte de. Salon de la Correspondance, 1781. ? A son of the Due de Cossd, afterwards Brissac (q.v.). Mademoiselle de. 1775. ? A daughter of the Due de Cossd, afterwards Brissac. Courlande, Prince Biron de. In hunting dress. London, 1802-1805. CouRViLLE, Madame de. 1775. Craon, Princesse de. 1776. Craven, Elizabeth, Lady. See Anspach. Craven, the Hon. Keppel Richard. Third son of sixth Baron Craven and his wife (after- wards Margravine of Anspach). Painted in England about 1803. 1779-1851. CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 193 CRtVECCEUR, Marquis de. 1777. Crouy, Princesse de. 1781. The family of Crouy (or Croy), spread over Western Europe, supplied an extra- ordinary number of Ministers, diplomatists, cardinals, bishops, generals, and other distinguished persons to several of the great Powers. Crussol, The Bailli de. Paris, Exhibition of Eighteenth-Century Art, Galerie George Petit, 1883-1884, Collection of Duchesse d'Uz^s. Exhibition of French Art under Louis XIV and Louis XV, 1888. Exposition Retrospective Fdminine, 1908, Collection of the Due d'Uzes. It was almost certainly this portrait, painted in 1788 or 1789, for which Madame Lebrun received the hundred louis with which to start for Italy in October 1789. The family of Uzds is descended from the " Sires " de Crussol. The same. Head and shoulders. Large. Paris. Painted after the Revolution. Baronne de. Salon, 1785. Seated on couch ; looking over her left shoulder. She wears a big hat ; hair loose down back ; holds a book of music. Now in Museum of Toulouse. Engraved by A. Belzers, whose version was reproduced in colours in the Connoisseur, Christmas 1913. Cupid. Asleep under a rose-bush, watched by two nymphs. 1789. (For M. le Pelletier de Mortfontaine.) CzARTORYSKA, Prfucess Isabella, nee Comtesse Fleming, wife of the Prince Adam Casimir. With dog. She wears a round cap. Reading music at a piano. Vienna, 1792-1794. Galerie Czartoryski. 1743-1835. Known as an accomplished student of art and literature, and as a collector. Her collection of Polish historical souvenirs, formed at Pulawy, her husband's family seat, was confiscated in 1832 by the Emperor Nicholas I. The same. Attributed to Madame Lebrun. Czartoryski, Prince. Vienna, 1792-1794. ? Adam Casimir, 1734-1823. Polish noble who became Field-Marshal in the Austrian army, or his son, Adam Georges. The same. In a mantle. Vienna, 1792-1794. Dailly, Monsieur. 1778. ? d'Ailly. Madame. 1778. ? d'AiUy. Damerval, Madame. 1774. Dancing Girl. Full-length. White dress, red scarf. Exhibited at Burlington House, 1879, Sir Edward Sullivan's Collection. Dartois, Mademoiselle. 1777. The same. 1777. Daudelot, Madame. 1786. Dauphin, The, Louis Joseph, eldest son of Louis XVI. 1783. 1781-1789. The (Louis Joseph) and his sister, " Madame Royale," holding a bird's nest, in a garden. Salon, 1785. Now at Versailles. Engraved by Blot. The. Louis Charles, second son of Louis XVI. Salon, 1789. Painted for the Duchesse de Polignac. 1785-1795. At first known as Due de Normandie, he became Dauphin on his brother's death in 1789. He is believed to have died in the Temple on June 8, 1795. 13 194 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Davaray, Madame. 1786. Davidoff, Madame n6e de Gramont. Salon, 1824. Degeraudot, Madame. 1778. De la Warr, Lady Elizabeth Sackville, afterwards Countess. 1802-1804. Daughter of the third Duke of Dorset and his Duchess {q.v.). Delille, L'Abb6 Jacques. Painted from memory. 1738-1813. His translation of the Georgics (1769) brought him into notice, and five years later he became a member of the Academy. His benefice of Saint-S6verin, given him by the Comte d'Artois, brought him 30,000 fr. per annum. He lost his fortune at the Revolution, and narrowly escaped in the Terror. Refusing to compose a hymn for the fete of the Supreme Being in 1795, he removed to Basle. Returned to Paris under the Consulate, where he resumed work as Professor of Latin Poetry at the College de France. DeUlle was one of the brightest spirits in Paris social life, and was always a general favourite. Demidoff, Madame, nie Strogonoff. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801, Denis, Madame. 1775. The niece of Voltaire. — Monsieur de Saint-. 1776. Deplan, Madame. 1775. Dervisch Khan, Mahomet. Full-length. Standing, in Oriental costume, scimetar in right hand. 88| x 59J. Ambassador from Tippoo-Sahib, Sultan of Mysore. Salon, 1789. J. B. Lebrun (after his death) sale, 1814. 112 fr. (Constantin). Collection of Lord Trimlestown. Madame Cottin sale, 1872. M. Marnier LapostoUe, 1908. Sent to France in 1787, with Usman Khan {q.v.), to seek the help of Louis XVI against the English. Both envoys were decapitated on their return because their mission had failed. Desmarets, Monsieur. 1774. Devaron, Mademoiselle. 1781. Diana. Bust. Salon de la Correspondance, 1783. DiCBRiE, Madame. 1779. Dietrichstein, Comte. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. Comtesse. Wife of above. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. Dillon, Miss. London, 1802-1805. DiTTE, Madame. Paris. After the Revolution. DoA2AN, Madame. Paris, Exhibition of French Art under Louis XIV and Louis XV, 1888, Collection of Baron de Bully. DoLGOROUKY, Priuccsse Catherine-F^odorovna, n&e Princesse Bariatinsky. Signed. St. Petersburg, 1795-1800, Looking up to right. Seated by a table, holding an open music-book. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Comte A V. Orloft-Davidoff. Prince P. Dolgorouky, 1913. The intimate friend of the Princess Natalie Kourakin, and a friend of the painter also. The same. Presumed portrait of. Oval, 32^ x 25^. Half-length. Full-face, walking in a wind, which blows her hair about. She is wrapped in a shawl under which shekeeps her hands. Collection of Prince Lubomirsky. Beurnonville sale, 1881. 4,700 fr. DoMNiVAL, Monsieur de. 1778. DoMNiVAL, Madame. 1778. DoRioN, Mademoiselle. 1768-1772. ? The same. 1789. CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 195 Dorothea, Princess of Wurtemberg, Empress of Russia, second wife of the Emperor Paul I. ? Painted at Vienna, 1793-1794. Hoced6 sale, 1854. DoRSEN, Comte de. (Fils.) 1779. Dorset, Arabella Diana, third Duchess of. England. 1802-1804. Nearly full face. Velvet dress with high waist and V-shaped bodice, white under-bodice with lace ruffle. Lord Sackville, Knole. Daughter of Sir John Cope, Bt. Some time after the Duke's death (1799) she married Sir A. Whitworth, formerly British Ambassador at St. Petersburg, who was given an earldom and became Earl Whitworth. Ducluzel, Monsieur. 1775. Madame. 1779. ' The same. 1779. DuGAZON, Jean Baptiste Henri Gourgault, known as. Oval, 8x6. Marquise du Plessis BelliSre sale, 1897. 995 fr. 1743-1809. Comedian. During the Revolution he was aide-de-camp to Santerre. The above miniature represents him in the r61e of " Unique," in a burlesque called Syncope, given at the Court on Jan. 31, 1786. Louise Rosalie Lef^vre, Madame, actress of the Comddie Frangaise, as Nina, " at the moment when she thinks she hears Germeuil." (The play was Nina, ou la Folle par Amour. Salon, 1787. 57^ X 45I. Seated under a tree ; flowers in right hand, roses in hair. White musUn dress, light violet waistband. De Salverte sale, 1887. 24,000 fr. (C. de Pourtalfe.) Paris, Exhibition of One Hundred Portraits of Women, 1909. Collection of the Comtesse E. de Pourtal^. In possession of the family of the Com- tesse, 1914. 1755-1821. Married Jean B. H. Dugazon, the comedian (q.v.), but divorced. After years of success in the parts of jetmes amoureuses and soubrettes, she had to take the parts of elderly women, on account of her increasing stoutness, and made another lasting success. Several other artists painted her in the same scene. The same. In the same character. 31 J x 25. Dark bodice, crimson skirt, white muslin fichu, blue riband round hair. She is cutting a rose from a plant on a table. Christie's, May 22, 1914, 400 gs. (Coureau). ? The same. Marille (2nd) sale. 1857. 93 ^■ DuMESNiL. Recteur de I'Acaddmie de Saint-Luc, Paris. Exhibition of that Society, 1774- DuMOLEY, Monsieur (Junior). 1781. Mademoiselle de. 1781. Madame. 1788. DuPETiTOiRE, Mademoiselle. 1773. ? Dupetit-Thouars. If so, possibly a sister of the brothers Louis and Aristide, who sailed in 1792 on the fruitless search for La P6rouse. DuTHE, Mademoiselle. 1789. One knee rests on a blue sofa, whereon are some books. She has a picture in her hands. 28I x 23!. Sale, 1845, 61 fr. Sale, 1857, 55o fr. Raguse sale, 1857, 587 fr. Boitelle sale, 1891. 3,050 fr. (Brame). Paris, Exhibition of Portraits of Women and Children, l^cole des Beaux-Arts, 1897, Collection of M. Bardac. A beautiful courtesan. Madame Lebrun says in one of her letters to Princess Kourakin : " Vous ne sauriez avoir une id6e, ch^re amie, de ce qu'6taient les fenunes entretenues k I'^poque dont je vous parle. Mademoiselle Duthe, par exemple, a mang6 des milUons." 196 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS DuTHE, Mile. Round picture. She is wearing a. straw hat. Tuffiakin sale, 1843. 61 fr. DuvERNAis, Madame. 1789. E , the Young Comte d'. Comte d'Espignac sale, 1868. 5,100 fr. Elisabeth Alexievna. Wife of Alexander I, Emperor of Russia. J-length, standing, arms resting on a cushion. Hair loose over shoulders, curls over ears. Thin necklace three times round neck. Musee, MontpeUier. The same. Diadem and veil on head. Talleyrand sale, 1847. 113 fr. The same. To waist. Poppy-coloured dress, trimmed with embroidery, and with gold waistband. Gauze veil over shoulders. Oval, 26 x 2if . Dubreuil sale, 1821, 280. fr. The same, as Grand Duchess. Pastel. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905. Palace of Gatchina. The same. Same exhibition. Signed. Grand Palais, Tsarko-Selo. The same. Standing. Hermitage. Galerie RomanofE. The same. Full-length. Arranging flowers in a basket. St. Petersburg, 1793-1801. The same. J-length replica of above. The same. Another J-length replica. The same. Bust, showing one hand. The same. Bust, showing one hand. All painted at St. Petersburg, 1793-1801. Elisabeth de France, Madame. " En berg^re." Straw hat, green bodice laced, red skirt, holding a bunch of flowers, 1782. Paris, Exhibition of Marie-Antoinette and her time, Galerie Sedelmeyer, 1894, Collection of Comte des Cars. 1764-1794. Philippine Marie Hdldne de France, known as " Madame EUza- beth." Sister of Louis XVI. Guillotined. The same. Replica of same. The same. 1783. ^length. Oval, 31^ x 24!. Low-cut white dress, blue sash, wreath of roses round head. Marquis du Blaisel sale, 1870, 1,560 fr. Marquis de Blaisel sale, 1873, 4,100 fr. Exhibition of National Portraits, Trocadero, Paris, 1878. Portalier sale, Nice, 1880, 6,100 fr. Secretan sale, 1890, ? 6,100 fr. Grafton Fair Women Exhibition, 1894. Price sale, Christie's, 1893 (C. Davis), £525. Sold in June 1895, £620, The same. 1783. To waist. Full face. Straw hat trimmed with flowers. Low- necked dress of violet silk. 29J x 23^. Comte J. de Bryas sale, 1898, 14,200 fr. (Lowengard.) The same. J-length. Cambric cap with blue ribbon, white dress and blue sash. Attributed to Vigee-Lebrun, but of doubtful authenticity both as to artist and subject. See Parme, Duchesse de. Entrague, Comte d'. See Antraigues. EscARS, Baron d'. (A child.) 1788. Espagnac, Baron (Fils). A child. 23J x 21. Salon, 1787. Comte d'Espagnac sale, 1866, 3,350 fr. Exposition Retrospective de Tableau de Maitres, May 1866, M. Dugied. Esterhazy, Princesse d'. Vienna, 1792-1794. Full-length. Seated on rocks at the edge of the sea. Esthal, La Baronne. 1768-1772. A child of the Baronne. 1768-1772. — - Another child of the Baronne. 1768-1772. CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 197 F , La Mar^chale. 6of x 54! . In a wood near a spring. White satin, low-necked dress, with hlac waistband. Straw hat with hlac strings, white feathers. Sale, March 13, 1893. Fargue, Madame de la. 1777. Feisthamel, Baron de. Painting a picture. Paris. After the Revolution. Ferronnays, L. de Lostanges, Marquise de la. 24J x 20. White dress edged with fur ; blue ribbon tying her curled hair. Comtesse de la Ferronnays sale, Paris, 1897, 5,800 fr. Ferte, Mademoiselle de. 1779. Fevre, Monsieur le. The artist's step-father. Wearing dressing-gown and nightcap, 1768-1772. Fezensac, Anne-Pierre, Marquis de Montesquiou-. 1779. 1739-1798. Equerry to the Comte d'Artois. Soldier, D6put6 of the nobles to the States-General. Commander of the Army of the Midi in 1792, and conquered Savoy. Author of essays on finance, verses, and memoirs. The Marquise. Wife of the above. 1779. Baron de Montesquiou-. 1782. ? Son of the Marquis. Baronne de Montesquiou-. 1780. Wife of the above. ? Married in 1780, at fifteen years of age. Louise Letellier de Montmirail, Comtesse de Montesquiou-. Governess of the King of Rome. Montesquiou-Fezensac sale, 1872. 12,050 fr. Exhibition of the Alsaciens- Lorrains, 1874, Collection of the Vicomtesse de Cessac, Filorier, Madame. 1778. FiNNEL, Monsieur le. 1777. Fleury, Andrd Hercule, Cardinal de. 1775. Done from an old engraving, and presented to the Academy. 1653-1743. Fodi, Madame de, 1785. FoissY, Madame de. 1778. ? Fossy (q.v.). Fontaine, Monsieur de la. 1773. ? From an engraving of Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695), author of the Fables and the Conies. Fossy, Madame de. 1768-1772. (A boy). 1768-1772. FouGERAiT, Madame de. 1775. FouLQUiER, Madame. 1780. FouRNiER, M. Conseiller de I'Academie de Saint-Luc. 1774. FoUQUET, Mademoiselle. (A child). 1786. Francis, Hereditary Prince of Naples. Afterwards King. As a boy. Naples, c. 1790. Frederica Charlotte (H.R.H.), Duchess of York. J-length. She is wearing a lace collarette on an open bodice. Turban with metal ornament in front, and feather. Engraving by Meyer (puMished by Fisher, Feb. 24, 1827) in B.M. Fries, Maurice, Comte de. Pastel. Vienna, 1792-1794. A young man. Engraved by Jean Keller. See Haugwitz. Mademoiselle la Comtesse de. Oval, ^length. As Sappho, holding a lyre and singing. Vienna, 1793-1794. Duveen Exhibition, London, 1906. Formerly in the Tatlet Collection. Exhibited at Bagatelle, 1911. igS CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Galitzin, Princesse Alexandrina Petrovna, nh Protassof. With her nephew, Prince Vassilt- chikoff. Signed, St. Petersburg. 1793-1801. St. Petersburg, Exposition Airtistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Prince Ivan Ilarianovitch Vassiltchikoff. Princesse Anna Alexandrovna, n&& Princesse Grouzinsky. Leaning on a cushion. Aigrette and feather in head-dress. Signed. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Elizabeth Alexievna Narych- kine. In same collection, 1913. In her first marriage Madame de Litzyne. Princesse Eudoxia Ivanovna, n& Ismailoff. Signed. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Marie Pavlovna Rodzianko. Princesse Louise. Vienna, 1792-1794 Princesse Michel, Bust. Large. St Petersburg, 1795-1801. Princesse Bauris (? Boris), Nearly full-length. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. Ganiselot, Mademoiselle de. 1775. Genlis, F^licitd Stephanie, nee Ducrest, Comtesse de. Marcille sale, 1857. 1746-1830. The celebrated author, and governess to the children of Philippe Egalit^. Genty, Madame. 1780. Geoffr^, Comte de. 1773. ■ The same (?) 4 Replicas of the above portrait. 1773. Gerac, Marquise de. 1775. Girl, A, carrying basket of flowers. Sale, Jan. 25, 1878, 1,000 fr. Portrait of a. Pastel. Hulot sale. 1892, 1,000 fr. Head of a. Drawing. Signed. Louvre. A. Drawing in black chalk. Signed and dated 1785. iif x 8|. J. B. Lebrun sale, 1814, 14 fr. (Paillet.) A young. Bust. Head on one side, with finger to mouth. A sketch. Oval, 47f X 34J. 1799. Citoyen Cochu sale, 26 livres 5 sols. A peasant. Pembroke sale, 1862, 230 fr. A young, at a piano. Violet dress. White hat with feathers. 1845. De C5T)ien:e sale, 410 fr. A young. Discovered writing. A young. " Effray6e d'etre surprise en chemise et se cachant la gorge." ? Sale . . . January 1857, ^^ " La Surprise." A young. " Respirant une rose." ^-length. Pastel 1781. Salon de la Corre- spondance, 1781. A young. Preparing to paint a picture. Paris, Exposition Retrospective Feminine, 1908, Murray Scott Collection. A young. In black shawl. 39^ x 31J. Christie's 1910. ;^I47. (Glen,) A young. Yellow dress, red shawl. " Portrait in an oval." On wood. Comte Vincent Potocki sale, 1820. 9 fr. A young. zl\ x 17I. Powdered hair, Dugl6rd sale, 1853. 41 fr. A young. Oval, 32J x 25J. Beurnonville sale, 1881. 4,700 fr. A young. Directoire period. Meynier Saint-Fal said, i860. A young. Oval. Powdered hair. Wagnier de Labarthe sale, 1857. A young. Paris, Exposition des Alsaciens-Lorrains, 1874, Collection de M. Barre. A young. Pencil drawing. Oval, 7^ x 6. ^-length. Full face, head leaning to CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 199 left. Hair curled, and hanging over back of neck. Large fichu. Beurdeley sale, 1905. 7,050 fr. Girl, A young. Red chalk. 6 x 9 J. Standing, seen from behind. Low-necked dress with short sleeves ; head turned three-parts to left ; small cap. ChenneviSres sale, 1898. 1,000 fr. (Dubois.) Dubois sale, 1901. 780 fr. A young. A drawing in Indian ink. J-length. Oval. 9x8. Flowers in her light hair. Baron Schwiter sale, 1883. A young. Head. Stump-drawing and red chalk. 14J x 11. Alfred Sensier sale, 1877. A young. Bust. Stump-drawing and red chalk. Palla sale, 1873. A young. Red chalk. Seen from behind. Peasant dress. Baron V. Denon sale, 1826. 32 fr. " With two pen-and-ink sketches by Watteau " ! A young. 9J x 7I. Declou sale, 1898. 3,050 fr. A young. 17^ x 14^. Blonde. Black mantilla on head, and falUng over bosom, which is partly exposed. Duchesse de Berry sale, 1865. 1,800 fr. — — A young. Oval, 8i x 7. Full face. Head and shoulders. Light, curling hair, bound with blue ribbon. White dress edged with gold lace. B6raudidre sale, 1885. 620 fr. (Feral.) A young. Oval, 31^ x 24^. To left, ^-length. Seated in armchair. Her arm supported on a ruby velvet cushion. She holds a small book. Necirly full-face. Hair curled and powdered. White dress, muslin fichu edged with lace. De Salverte sale, 1887. 8,000 fr. (Gouin. A young. Oval, 9I X 7I. Seated, leaning on a table, with a pencil-holder in her hand. Decloux sale, 1898. 3,050 fr. (Comte de Bad.) A, Picking roses. Gasquet sale, Paris, 1888. 850 fr. A young. Wreath in hair. Oval, 21 x 17^. Christie's, 1911. £99 15s. (Thorne.) A. Standing. Back view. Sanguine. Marquis de ChenneviSres sale, 1898. 5| x 9I, 1,000 fr. Girls, Two young. Oval, 30 x 24J. " The Two Sisters." One brunette, the other blonde ; standing, with arms intertwined, ^-lengths. White musUn, low-necked dresses, embroidered. The brunette has a waistband of yellow silk, the blonde a blue drapery with yellow embroidery over her right arm. Christie's (Schwabacher sale), 1906, {fiz- (McLean.) Sedelmeyer sale, 1907, 11,000 fr. GiROUX, th^ Abb6. 1774. GiVRis, Mademoiselle de. 1775. GoBAN, Monsieur. 1775. GoLOVKiN, Prince Theodore Gravilovitch. Signed. St. Petersburg, 1797. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905. University of KiefE. GoLOViN, Comtesse. Showing one hand. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. GoNTAULT, Comtesse de. 1774. Gordon, Lady Georgiana. London, 1802-1805. GouRBiLLON, Madame de. Full face, wearing a bonnet. Canvas, backed with wood, i8i x 13. Signed and dated, Turin, 1792. Paris, Exhibition of Marie-Antoinette and her time, Galerie Sedelmeyer, 1894, Collection of M. Giacomelli. Giacomelli sale, 1905. 23,000 fr. (Ed. Veil-Picard.) Afterwards Lady-in- Waiting to Louise de Savoie, wife of Louis XVIII. A son of the above, c. 1792. Gramont. See Caderousse-Gramont. Grange, Madame de la. 1774. 200 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Grassini, Giuseppa. London, 1502-1805. As " Zaire," in the title-role of Peter von Winter's opera. Red tunic without sleeves, over a dress of muslin flowered with roses ; waistband with gold buckles. Paris, Exhibition of National Portraits, Trocadero, 1878. Mus6e de Rouen. Engraved by S. W. Reynolds. 1773-1850. One of the most successful prime donne of her time. The same. Small copy of above. London, 1802-1805. The same, ^-length. 31I x 24I. Dark yellow dress, red mantle, diadem of pearls and feathers, cameo on waistband. Bequeathed by the painter to the Academy of Vaucluse. Exhibition of National Portraits, 1878. Musde Calvet, Avignon. The same. Bust. London, 1802-1805. The same. J-length. Paris, after the Revolution. The same, f-length. Paris, after the Revolution. The same. Showing one hand. |-length. Paris, after the Revolution. Greek Woman, A. Pastel. Oval. Bust. Hair falling over breast, half-covered by a white drapery. J. B. Lebrun sale, 1778. Grenonville, Mademoiselle de. Bust. Paris, after the Revolution, Gretry, Andr6 Ernest Modeste. Oval, ^-length. Full face. Salon, 1785. Versailles. Engraved by L. J. Cathelin, 1786. 1741-1813. Composer and musician. Grollier, Marquis de. 1788. The same. 1789. Marquise de. Painting flowers. Paris, after the Revolution. Gros, Antoine Jean, Baron. As a child. 1776. 1771-1833. Painter. GuiCHE, Aglae de Polignac, Duchesse de. ? Vienna, 1792-1794. Full face. Bust. Loose hair caught up by a blue ribbon. Red dress in antique fashion. Paris, Exhibition of Marie-Antoinette and her Time, Galerie Sedelmeyer, 1894, Collection of Due de Gramont. 1768-1803. Daughter of Due et Duchesse de Polignac {q.v.). The same. Two portraits. 1783. The same. Life size. J-length. Pastel. Oval. Dated 1784. 31^ x 2i|. Peasant costume Low-necked red bodice, bare arms, hands crossed on bosom, holding gauze fichu Light hair, curled ; lace cap with blue ribbon. Comte de V (? Vau- dreuil) sale, 1881. 16,000 fr., (Comtesse de Montesquiou). Montesquiou-Fezensac sale, 1872. The same. Holding a garland. 1787. The same. 1789. Pastel. 31! x 2if . Comte de Vaudreuil sale, Paris, 1881, 1500 fr. The same. Another pastel. 1789. The same. Salon, 1824. The same. Same period. GuiCHE, Marie Jeanne de Clermont-Montoison, Marquise de la. Salon, 1783. " En jar- diniere." Paris, Exhibition des Alsaciens-Lorrains, Palais Bourbon, 1874, Collection of Marquis de la Guiche. Exhibition of National Portraits, Trocadero, 1878, same collection. Exhibition of Portraits of Women and Children, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 1897, Collection of Marquise de la Guiche. The same. " En laitiere," 1788. Open air. Seated. Low-necked, laced bodice, plain skirt ; blue corn-flowers in right hand, left arm resting on a milk-pitcher. Marquis de la Guiche. GuiSFORD, Lady (? Gaisford). Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 201 Hamilton, Lady. As the Persian Sibyl. Rome, 1792. 53I x 39!. Seated, face looking up ; left hand extended, right hand holds a tablet, stylus, and parchment. Red robe, light green turban, brown drapery over knees. Sale, 1865. 5,000 fr. Paris, Exhibition of one hundred Portraits of Women, 1909, Collection of the Comtesse E. de Pourtales. Duchesse de Berry sale, 1865. 5,000 fr. (De Pourtales.) 1761 ?-i8i5. The favourite model of Romney, The same. Head. As a Sibyl, Naples, 1790, Study for the head of the last-named picture. The same. As a Bacchante. Naples, 1790. 4 ft. 7 x 5 ft. 3. Reclining beneath a vine, near the sea. Bare arms resting on leopard skin which lies on a rock. Wine-cup in left hand. Very long hair falling over shoulders. Loose white robe. Rock to right. Purchased from Sir William Hamilton by Mr. WiUiam Chamberlayne. Grafton Gallery, Romney Exhibition, 1900. Mr. Tankerville Chamberlayne, Cranbury Park. This picture was at one time in Romney's studio, and that painter expressed a high opinion of it. After being engraved it was reduced in size. Above are its pre- sent dimensions. An enamel by H. Bone, said to represent Vigee-Lebrun's " Portrait of Lady Hamilton as Ariadne " and left by Sir Wm. Hamilton to Nelson, was sold at Lord Northwick's sale, in 1859, for £735 (Marquis of Hertford). Nelson bought a portrait of Lady Hamilton, apparently by Vig6e-Lebrun, in 1801 {See Dr. Pettigrews book). Sir William Hamilton grumbled at "Emma" for being covered with a " tiger's " skin in the picture. The same. As a Bacchante, dancing, with a tambourine. 52I x 41J. Flowing hair, nude arms, vine leaves on head. In background to left, Vesuvius in eruption. Tripier Le Franc sale, Paris, 1883. 1,150 fr. Now in possession of Sir W. H. Lever, in the Hulme Hall at Port Svmlight. There is a mezzotint by J. B. Pratt. Harcourt, Comtesse d'. 1774. Hardik, Mademoiselle la Comtesse Th6rese de. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. Harrach, Comtesse d'. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. The same. Small pastel drawing. Vienna, 1793- 1794. Harvelay, Madame d'. 1781. Wife of the Keeper of the Royal Treasury, and afterwards wife of Calonne (q.v.). Haugwitz, Sophie, Comtesse de, nee de Fries, As a Muse, wearing a red robe. Vienna, 1793-1794. Engraved by Jean Keller. Head, A. Leaning to one side. Painted for the Due de Cosse. 1779. Study of a. 1781. For M. le Pelletier de Mortefontaine. For M. Proult. 1781. A small. Bologna, c. 1792. For the Institute of Bologna. A. Painted at Parma, c. 1792. For the Academy of Parma. A. Pastel sketch. Haupmann sale, Paris, 1897. 250 fr. Study of a. 24 x 20. Baron Mourre sale, 1892. 1,250 fr. Heads, Three studies of. 1781. For the Due de Coss6. Helena and Alexandrina Pavlona, Grand-Duchesses. Holding a medallion of the Empress Catherine, at which they are looking. Signed. St. Petersburg, 1796. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905. Palace of Gatchina. (Engraved 1799.) Hennet, Madame. 28f x 23. Black hair, blue eyes, light brown low-necked dress, with embroidered edging. Red shawl over right shoulder and left arm. Comte C sale, April 30, 1898, 550 fr. Comte A. de Ganay sale, 1903, 4,700 fr. 202 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Hermine, M. de Saint-. 1785. Hubert, Monsieur Saint-. 1777. Innocence taking refuge in the arms of Justice. Pastel. 1779. Mus^e d'Angers. Engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi. Interlaken, View from, during a Cantonal fete. 33J x 44J. Talleyrand, Valen^ay, Sagan sale, 1899, 1,000 fr. Fete des Bergers at Unterseen, described in the Artist's Souvenirs, and in the present volume. ISOUPOFF, Princesse. £-length. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. Prince. Son of the above. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. Daughter of the Princesse. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. J AFFRAY, Marquise de. Standing, playing a harp. ? Christie's, 1874, as " A Lady singing with a Harp." £30 8s. Exhibited at Guildhall, 1902, as " Madame Roland " {q.v.). David H. King, Jr. sale. New York, 1905. (M. Wildenstein.) Jaucourt, Marquise de. Wife of Amail Francois Marquis de Jaucourt, 1757-1852, who served under Louis XVI, was imprisoned in 1792, and released through the influence of Madame de Stael. He served also under Napoleon and under Louis XVIII. He was a Pro- testant. Jeune, M. le. 1787. Joseph II, Emperor of Austria. Oval, 28 x 22J. Bust. Full face. Blue coat, white striped waistcoat and white neckcloth. Cross and ribbon of an order. Beraudi&:e sale, 1885, 500 fr. The brother of Marie Antoinette. JuMiLHAC, Madame de. 1775. Juno coming to borrow the girdle of Venus. 19 x 14I. Salon, 1783. Bought in that year by the Comte d'Artois for 15,000 fr. Venus, crowned with roses, is seated on a cloud. Cupid plays with the girdle which Venus unlooses ; Juno stands before her. Sketch for the above. 1781. The picture itself, or the preliminary sketch, was sold for 375 fr. at the E. Vincent sale in 1872. Kalitcheff, Madame. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. Kaquenet, Mademoiselle de. Vienna, 1792-1794. Kasiskv, Mademoiselle, Sister of Princesse Belosselsky-Belozersky (q.v.). St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. KiNSKA, Comtesse. f-length. Vienna, 1792-1794. The same. Bust. Vienna, 1792-1794. Nee Comtesse de Dietrichstein. KoTCHOUBEY, Princcsse Marie Vassilievna, nee Vassiltchikoff. Engaged in drawing. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905. Collection of Marie Alexandrovna Vassiltchikoff. KouRAKiN, Prince Alexandre Borisovitch. Bust. Signed. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Prince Theodore Alexievitch Kourakin. Engraved. 1752-1818. Educated as companion in studies with Paul I, he was his Chief Minister throughout his reign, and became Vice-Ghancellor at the opening of the CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 203 reign of Alexander I. He negotiated the Peace of Tilsit (1807), and was Russian Ambassador in Paris 1808-1812. KouRAKiN (continued) The same. Bust. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. Prince Alexis. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. Princesse. Wife of the above. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. Nathalie, Princesse Kourakin, an intimate friend of the painter. Madame Lebrun addressed to her a series of letters which form the opening part of the Souvenirs. KouTOUZOFF, Princesse Catherine Ilyinichna Golenitchiff, nee Bibikoff. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Nicolas Nicolaevitch Toutchkoff. Wife of the celebrated Field-Marshal KoutousofE, Prince of Smolensk, who pur- sued the Grand Army of Napoleon so vigorously during the retreat from Moscow, 1812. Laborde, Madame de. 1774 or 1773. On wood. 41 x 32. White spotted muslin dress, small claret-coloured jacket. Muslin toque. Her waistband fastened with a medallion as buckle. Seated on a divan, her elbow on a green velvet cushion. Lyne Stephens sale, Christie's, 1895. £2,362 los. (Agnew.) Exhibited at Burlington House, 1896 (No. 53) as "Portrait of the Painter," and at the Guildhall, 1898, as "Portrait of a Lady," J. P. Morgan Collection. Rosalie, wife of Jean Joseph, Marquis de Laborde (1724-1794) ; Banker to the Court ; a generous philanthropist. He was guillotined by sentence of the Revolu- tionary Tribunal. Mademoiselle de. 1781. Daughter of the Marquis de Laborde and his wife (q.v.). ? Afterwards wife of Comte Angiviller {q.v.). The same. 1781. Lady, Portrait of a. Full face, large hat " k la paysanne." Oval. Paris, Exhibition of Marie Antoinette and her Time,Galerie Sedelmeyer, 1894, Collection of Monsieur J.Doucet. Portrait of a (Madame la Baronne de ■). Wife of an Intendant of Louis XVI. Oval, 22| X i8|. Gasquetisale, 1888. 2,400 fr. Portrait of a. Bust. 22| x 18J. Gasquet sale. 1888* 950 fr. Portrait of a, of the Court of Louis XVI. Pastel. Painted in 1793. Sale C , Feb. 2, 1884. 100 fr. Portrait of a. 31I x 24!. Sale, May 3, 1897. 6,300 fr. See Man, same sale, size, and price. Portrait of a, of the time of Louis XVI. Oval, 31J x 24I. Marquis du Blaisel sale, 1870. 1,550 fr. Cf. Oval picture of Madame Elizabeth de France. 1783. An Irish. London, 1802-1805. Portrait of a. In a pink shawl. Oval, 274 x 22^, Christie's, 1909. £57 15s. Portrait 9f a. Painting a picture. Paris, Exhibition of Portraits of Women and Children, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 1897, Collection of Monsieur G6rome. Portrait of a. In crimson cloak. 25 x 21. Christie's, 1906. 440 gns. (Dowdeswell.) Portrait of a. Low-necked dress. Muslin kerchief over shoulders. Flower in bosom. Bows of ribbon at elbows. Sale, Nov. 27, 1906. Print in B.M. • Portrait of a. In grey. Oval, 27 x 20J. Christie's, 1907. £131 5s. (S. I. Smith.) Portrait of a. In white muslin dress. 30I x 24. Christie's, 1909. 900 gns. (Sabin.) 204 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Lady, Portrait of a. Full face, curled hair, white peignoir, wide-brimmed hat trimmed with blue ribbon. Paris, Exhibition of Marie Antoinette and her time, Galerie Sedelmeyer, 1894, Collection of Monsieur Mannheim. Portrait of a. A drawing. Comte C sale, Dec. 17, 1900, 800 fr. Portrait of a. 23^ x 18^. Pierard de Valen^ay sale, Brussels, 1899. 3,200 fr. Portrait of a. Pastel. 20 x 17I. Madame Gauchez sale, 1892. 280 fr. Portrait of a. Sale, Jan. 21, 1884. 130 fr. Portrait of a. Sale, 1880. 11,000 fr. Portrait of a. Standing, ^-length. Left arm rests on a table. Pearl earrings. Rose in hair, which is bound by a fillet. Op^n corsage. Curls over shoulders. Double row of pearls round fore-arm. Collection Edgar de Stern. (Wildenstein.) Portrait of a. Sale, 1878. 2,400 fr. Portrait of a. Blue dress, powdered hair. Oval, 30 x 234. Christie's, 1906. £100. (Reford.) A German. Dresden. Portrait of a. Seated. |-length. 35I x 28^. Classical dress, left shoulder, arm, and breast bare. Pearl earrings. Bracelets. Cupid is holding the ends of her girdle, while she holds his bow in her right hand and his quiver in her left. From the Doisteau collection. {See plate facing p. 26.) Portrait of a. Seated, ^-length, 32 X 25^. Dated 1810. Right elbow resting on the arm of a walnut-wood armchair, upholstered in green velvet. Robe of red velvet with narrow sleeves, trimmed with fur, opening in V-shape on breast. Necklace of three rows of coral beads. Black hair, in which are a coral comb and a long gold pin, Sedelmeyer sale, 1907. 7,500 fr. Portrait of a. 1780. Given to the (French) State by M. Charles Riviere, 1914. Portrait of a. 39^ x 31^. Seated in an Empire chair. She is seen to below the knees. Costume of white muslin, with low-necked bodice, and short sleeves of accordion pleating ; waistband of old gold satin. Light chestnut hair through which is passed a ribbon of dark yellow silk. Cream-coloured scarf. Cornflowers in her hand. Landscape back- ground. Sedelmeyer sale, 1907. 5,900 fr. (Dufayel.) Black and white chalk stump-drawing of a. Seated on a little knoll, receiving the caresses of her children, one of which is at the breast. De Boissieu sale, 1821. Black and white chalk drawing of a. Sitting asleep, with a book in her hand. J. B. Lebrun sale, 1814. 14 fr. (Paillet.) Portrait of a. Thibaudeau sale, 1857. 410 fr. An American. 1773. Portrait of a. 19! x 14J. De Torcy sale, 1857. 60 fr. An American. (" Very pretty," writes the artist.) London, 1802-1:805. Portrait of a. Dated 1782. Standing in a garden ; left arm rests on a balustrade. Powdered hair, some tresses falling over bosom. Flowers and white feathers as headr dress. Dress of white satin and lace, with pink waistband. Pembroke sale, 1862. 2,200 fr. (Lord Hertford.) Portrait of a. (" Whose name I forget," writes the artist.) Berlin, 1801. Portrait of a. With a young girl. Small sketch. White satin dress, straw hat. She is in a garden, with her hand on the shoulder of the girl, who holds some flowers. Villot (ist) sale, 1864. 62 fr. Portrait of a. i8| x 13! . Alexandre Dumas sale, 1892. 3,200 fr. Portrait of a. On a divan. Salon, 1791. 41 x 32. ■ Sale, May 11, 1895. £2,362 lOS. CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 205 Lady, Portrait of a. With a dog. Oval, 36 x 28. Sale, June 18, 1887. £168. See Aguesseau, Madame. ? The same picture. A. With a little boy. Pastel. Signed and dated 1777. 37J X 43!. She is seated by a dressing-table, on which are a mirror, scent bottle, powder puff, etc. She wears a white satin low-necked dress ; powdered hair with curls falling over shoulders. Boy in light blue silk stands at her knee to left. Hodgkins, 1913. See Montville, Madame. Lafond, Madame. Salon, 1824. ? Lafont. Madame Lebrun gives a Madame Lafont (possibly the wife of her friend Charles Lafont,' the violinist, 1781-1839) among her sitters after the Revolution, Lafontaine. See Fontaine. Lagrange, Madame de. Salon, 1787. Lamballe, Marie ThdrSse Louise, Princesse (and Duchesse) de. 1781. 1748-1792. The friend of Marie Antoinette ; brutally murdered Sept. 3, 1792. The same. 2 replicas. 1781. The same. Presumed portrait of. Straw hat. Prince Tuffeakin sale, 1845. 100 fr. The same. De Plinval sale, 1858. 250 fr. Presumably one of the portraits entered above. But which ? Presumed portrait of. Lamoignon, Madame de. 1776. ? Wife of Chrdtien Francois de (1735-1789), Garde des Sceaux, 1787. Lamoignon, Mademoiselle. 1778. ? Daughter of the above. Lande, La Baronne de. 1774. Landky, M. de. 1781. Lange, M. de. 1777. Lange, Mademoiselle. As " Vanity." Meynier Saint-Fal sale. i860. Langeas, Comte de. 1775. Langeron, Comte de. Wearing several orders. Talleyrand sale, 1847. 60 fr. Lastic, Monsieur de. 1779. Madame de (wife of the above). 1779. Lauterbrunnen, The Valley of. Landscape. Cottin sale, 1872. Lavigne, Mademoiselle. 1783. Lebrun, Madame Vigee-, the artist herself, in her youth. Bust. Thin dress, her hair escaping from beneath a straw hat trimmed with flowers. Oval drawing. Collection of M. L. Godard. The same as a young girl. 23^ x 19. White dress, dark mantle. Black hat with feather. Large drop earrings. (Sedelmeyer.) The same at the age of twenty-one. 22f x 19^. Full-length. White muslin dress with a scarf round her body and a cherry-coloured bow at the corsage. Small cape, and black hat with feathers. Exhibition for the " Caisse de Secours des Artistes," Paris, i860. Collection of M. Jacques Reiset. Jacques Reiset sale, 1870. 28,500 fr. (Comte H. Greffulhe.) Paris, Exhibition des Alsaciens-Lorrains, Palais Bourbon, 1874, Collection of Comte H. Greffulhe. Exhibition of One Hundred Portraits of Women. 1909, same collection. The same. Life size, to waist. Tulle cap, with blue ribbon, black velvet dress, fichu, 25I X 21. E. Vincent sale, 1872. 710 fr. The same. C. Maralle (2nd) sale. 130 fr. D'Arboville. The same. Aguado, Marquis de Las Marismas sale, 1843. 2o6 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Lebrun (continued). The same. Challoner sale, London, 1896. 28,000 fr. The same. Holding a palette. Christie's (Fitzherbert), Dec. 12, 1896, £1,134. (Evans.) The same as a girl (? aged 17). Palette in left hand. Scarf wound in curly hair. Hair loose down back and over shoulders. Full face ; paint-brush in right hand, Murray Scott collection, 1911. The same, as a young girl painting a picture, f-length. 31^ x 25|. (Sedelmeyer.) The same. Head. 1778. The same. 1781. The same. Looking in a mirror before her easel, with paint-brush in her hand. 31 X 24J. Boittelle sale, 1866. 1,000 fr. The same. 1782. Salon de la Correspondance. On wood. The " Chapeau de Paille " portrait, painted after seeing the famous " reflected light " portrait of Rubens (now in the National Gallery, London), ^-length, standing ; holding palette and brushes in left hand ; straw hat with feather and flowers ; open corsage, edged with white muslin frill. High-waisted, pinkish-grey- coloured dress, black scarf over both arms. Open- air background of blue sky and purple clouds. The left elbow rests on a table. Signed and dated, 1782. zy^ x 27^. (Baron Maurice de Rothschild, Paris.) Replica of above, on canvas. 37J x 27}. National Gallery, London. Purchased from Mr. S. T. Smith, 1897. The expression of the face perhaps a little less serious than in the above signed portrait. The same. Vienna, 1902. |-length to right. Black academical gown with red band edged with gold. White kerchief turban. 21^ x i6f . Painted for Comte and Com- tesse Bystry. From the Collection of Count Valentin Siemontkowsky, Chateau of Koustyn, Volonie, Russia. National Loan Exhibition, London, 1913-1914, (Otto Gutekunst, Esq.) The artist met the Comte and Comtesse Bystry first at Milan, and accompanied them to Vienna. The same. 1800. Seated to right, working with a crayon in right hand, holding brushes in left. High-waisted dress and high lawn neckcloth close under chin. Ex- position Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, St. Petersburg, 1905. Council Chamber of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg. The same. Head and shoulders. Nearly full face. Hair lightly powdered, curls on shoulders. Large black hat with black feathers. Black silk " mantelet," white muslin corsage with pleated collarette, bow of red ribbon at waist. Pearl drops in ears. 25i X 20J, 1907, G, Muhlborcher sale, 23,000 fr. (Wildenstein.) The same. Bust. In left top corner the words " Virginia {sic) Lebrun, Pitt." Scarf bound round head and tied above left temple ; loose curly hair to shoulder and on fore- head. Lawn neckcloth tied with loose bow. Rome, Academy of Saint Luke. The same. Another version of the above portrait. 23^ x 19J, 1907, Charles Sedel- meyer sale, 45,000 fr. (Cognac.) The same. Head, Wearing wreath of roses. Collection Munier-Jolain, The same, with her daughter. 50 x 38, Christie's, Norman Forbes Robertson sale. May 19, 1911, £441, (Gilbert.) The same. F'our portraits. Paris, after the Revolution, These four pictures were painted " for my friends." The same. White dress, red ribbon at neck. Vicomte de S. P sale, Jan. 22 1872. 5,550 fr. CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 207 Lebrun (continued) The same. Three portraits London, 1802-1805. Herself and her daughter. Sale, Christie's, 1911, 420 gns. Gilbert. The same, with her child on her lap. 394 x 33^. The mother in white bodice, violet sleeves and sash, yellow satin skirt, muslin scarf twisted in her hair, with effect of a turban. Child in white. Salon, 1787. Louvre. Given by Madame Tripier Lefranc. the artist's niece. Engraved by Avril. The same. Embracing her daughter. 51J x 37. The mother is seated, the child standing. The former wears a white robe, which leaves the right shoulder and arm bare ; red sash, red fillet in hair. The child is dressed in blue. Painted for the Comte d'Angiviller, 1788. Laborde sale, 1789, sold in one lot with portrait of Hubert Robert (q.v.), 18,000 fr. (The Comtesse d'Angiviller was by birth a Laborde.) Louvre. Embracing her daughter. Oval, 8 x 10. Signed and dated, " Elizabeth Le Browne (sic), September 1801." The mother seated on a mahogany chair, over which is thrown a salmon-coloured mantle, embroidered in blue. She wears a dress of dark blue. The child, on her mother's knee, is wrapped in a white drapery. To the left a column, from which hangs a green curtain. Pierpont Morgan Collection. Reproduced in Dr. Williamson's catalogue. The same, seated. (Painting a portrait of Marie Antoinette). Palette and brushes in left hand. Dark dress, red sash tied with large bow, white kerchief as turban. Painted at Rome, c. 1790, for the Uffizi Gallery of Florence. Engraved by P. Audouin, of Viennaj after a drawing of Wicar. Etched by Denon, with Raphael's head instead of Marie Antoinette's on the easel. Replica of above picture, painted at Naples, 1791, for the Earl of Bristol, Bishop of Derry. Signed and dated. Marquis of Bristol, Ickworth, Bury St. Edmunds. The same. Pastel. ? 1789. Bust. Straw hat with feathers. She holds a palette Paris, Exhibition of Arts, " au d6but du siScle," 1891, Collection of M. de Saint- Gilles. The same. Drawing in black chalk. Oval, iif x 9J. Dated 1799. Seated, to left ; arms crossed tmder black shawl. Sale . , . March 13, 1893. 350 fr. The same. Drawing in black, white, and red chalks. Daigremont sale, 1866. Due de Feltre sale, 1867. The same. " For the town of Saint-Petersburg. Intended to serve for the making of a medal, on which would be shown my portrait and that of Angelica Kauffmann." Paris, after the Revolution. Ponce Denis Ecouchard, Poet. Black and white chalk on blue paper. J, B. Lebrun sale, 1814. 30 fr. 50. 1729-1807. See Index. Le Comte. See Comte, Lenormand, Madame (or Mademoiselle). Sitting, elbow resting on a cushion. Holding a pamphlet. Muslin dress, with sash. The artist states that in 1774 and 1777 she painted Madame Le Normand, Lespare, Mademoiselle. 1768-1772. Lessout, Madame. 1780, Lichtenstein, Princesse. Full-length. Vienna, 1792-1794. The same. Full-length. As Iris, in the clouds. Wife of Jean N^pomucdne Joseph, Prince de Lichtenstein (1760-1836), dis- tinguished soldier. Lavice {Revue des Musics d'Allemagne, 1867) mentions two portraits by the artist as being in the Lichtenstein Gallery at Vienna. LiivRE, Madame la Pr^sidente de. 1778. 2o8 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS LiNOWSKA, Princesse de. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. LiTTA, The Bailli. Grand Master of the Order of Malta. Naples, c, 1790. Paris, Ex- hibition of French Art under Louis XIV and Louis XV, 1888, Collection of her Imperial Highness the Princess Mathilde. The Bailli Litta was dispensed from the vows of the Order of Malta by the Pope, in order that he might marry the Comtesse Skavronska, widow of the Russian Ambassador at Naples. The Comte. St. Petersburg, 1793-1801. ? The above Bailli. - — Catherine Vassilevna, nee Englelhardt. In her first marriage Comtesse Skavronska. f-length. To waist. Full face, leaning on a cushion to left. Cream-coloured dress ; beige scarf with black border ; two rows of pearls round neck ; open bodice. Book in right hand, on lap. Naples, 1790. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et His- torique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Prince Felix Felixovitch Youssoupoff. 1912, Collection of Princesse Youssoupoff. A niece of Potemkin ; wife of the Russian Ambassador at Naples. After his death she married the Bailli Litta [v. supra). The same, ^length. Arms resting on cushion. Full face. Naples, 1790. The same. Bust. Naples, c. 1790. 2i|xi7f. The same. Similar to the Naples f-length. St. Petersburg. Signed and dated 1798. (Sedelmeyer.) The same. A repUca of the Naples ^length. The same. |-length. Naples, c. 1790. Seated. Right hand on knee, left arm resting on cushion. She regcurds a miniature, held in left hand. Muslin turban, open-necked dress. Pearl necklace of three rows ; pearl drop earrings. Paris, Musde Jacquemart Andr^, 1914. Engraved by Morghen in 1791. A portrait of "La Princesse Litta" was exhibited at Bagatelle in 1909. LivOY, Monsieur de. 1775. Lorraine, Princesse Charles de. 55I x 49I. Seated. Full face. Her elbow rests on a rock, near a cascade. Curly hair bound by a blue ribbon. Open corsage, with a fichu. Grey dress with yellow waistband ; red shawl. Comte Mniszech sale, 1902, 14,000 fr. (Gardner.) Louis XVI. Bust. 3i|X24f. Purple coat with gold embroidery. Three-cornered hat under left arm. Wearing the Order of the Saint-Esprit, the Cross of St. Louis, and the Order of the Golden Fleece. Exhibition of Marie-Antoinette and her Time, Galerie Sedelmeyer, 1894, Collection of Comtesse G. de Clermont-Tonnerre. Clermont- Tonnerre sale, 1900, The same. 31^ x 24!. Comte de C sale, Paris, 1900. ? The same. As a child. Prousteau de Montlouis sale, 1851, 275 fr. The same. Bust. From Collection of Due de Caraman, sold with portrait of Marie Antoinette. Tardieu sale, 1841, 261 fr. the two pictures. XVIII. See Provence, Comte de. Louis Joseph. See Dauphin. Louise Auguste Wilhelmine Amelie, Queen of Prussia. Pastel. Berlin, 1801. The same. Pastel. Berlin, 1801. The same. Bust. Large picture from a study made at Beriin. Paris, after the Revolution. 1776-1810. Wife of Frederic William III of Prussia. Famous for her share in the struggle with Napoleon. CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 209 LuBOMiRSKi, Prince Henri. As Cupid, holding a crown of myrtle and laurel Salon, 1789. The same. As Amphion, playing a Ij^e, with naiads listening. Vienna, 1792. Prince de TaUeyrajid sale, 1847. 420 fr. The ndads were said to be Madcime (Duchesse) de Polignac, Madame (Duchesse) de Guiche, and Mademoiselle Julie Lebrun, the painter's daughter. Lucerne, Lake of. G. MaUet sale, 1898 ; sold in one lot with Thun, Lake of (?.».). 10 fr, M playing on the lyre. Exhibition of tihe Acaddmie de Saint-Luc. 1774. Mailly, Mardchale de. 1783. Maingat, Madame. 1774. Maintenon, Madame de. 52 x 40. Christie's, 191 1, £34 12s. (Cohen.) ? One of Madame Lebrun's studies from old prints and pictures. Malateste, Claudine de. Woman of between forty and fifty. Bow above waist ; small ribbon round neck ; hat at back of brushed-up hair. Nearly full face. Malo, Monsieur de Saint. 1774. Man, Portrait of a. 31I x 24I. Sale, May 3, 1897, 6,300 fr. See Lady, portrait of a. Same sale, size and price. Man, An old, with his grandson, " effet d'incendie." Man, Portrait of a. David sale, Brussels, 1898. 2,350 fr. Marie Antoinette. Large portrait. 1779. Full length, standing in a room at Versailles. Light blue satin dress, huge panier, elaborate tucks, frills, gold fringe and tassels. Low neck. Blue headdress with feathers. Court train of blue velvet with gold fleur-de-lis. Table with red cloth to right, whereon is a vase of flowers, and a crown on a blue cushion with gold fleur-de-lis. Pearl necklace. Sent to the Empress Maria Theresa, Hofbxirg, Vienna. The same. Fotir replicas of above. 1779-1780. (One a present from Marie Antoinette to the Empress of Russia ; one for the French queen herself, and two for M. and Madame de Vergennes, he being the Foreign Minister of Louis XVI at that time.) The picture now at Versailles, and another belonging to the French National Collection, are pre- sumably two of these four. Neither of these has the necklace shown in the original painting. The same. Standing. To waist. Curled hair. Velvet toque with white feathers. Ruby-coloured low-necked dress, edged with fur. Madame Tripier-Lefranc sale, 1883. 3,500 fr. The same. Bust. 1779 Six " bustes " (two originals and four repUcas) of the Queen were done in this year, according to the artist. The same. Bust. Red velvet corsage trimmed with fur. Red toque with white feathers and aigrette. 31^ x 24I. Comtesse de Clermont-Tonnerre sale, 1900, No. 2. 13,300 fr. The same. Bust. (Collection of Due de Caraman) Tardieu sale, 1841, (with portrait of Louis XVI.) 261 fr. The same. A portrait, " for Monsieur de Sartines." 1779. The same. Blue dress and hat. 45 x 34^. Christie's, 1900, £152 5s. Bought in. The same. Velvet dress trimmed with fur. Low-cut cofsage. Powdered hair. Red toque with white feathers. Exposition de la Caisse de Secours des Artistes, Paris, i860. Collection of M. Tripier Lefranc. Tripier Lefranc sale, 1883. 3,500 fr. The same. 1778. f-length. Seated, nearly full-face. Waved hair brushed back from forehead. Ruby velvet coatee edged with fur. Lace fichu. Large white toque, 14 210 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Hands resting on cushion, the right hand holding a book in which the thumb " keeps the place." 36^ x 29I. From the collection of Prince de BaufEremont. (M. Wilden- stein.) A note by the artist to this prince runs thus : " Je vous remercie bien, mon prince, de m'avoir fait voir le portrait que j'ai fait de Sa Majesty la Reine en 1778. J'ai iti heureuse de le savoir entre vos mains et de la destination que vous lui donn6e. Notre auguste princesse verra ce portrait qui lui retracerait la beaute et la bonte de notre auguste et infortunde Reine. Je suis doublement heureuse, mon prince, puisque cette occasion m'offre de renouveler les bons sentiments que vous savez si bien inspirer sous tous les rapports." This note apparently refers to one of two pictures separately entered as " copy of a portrait of the Queen " in Madame Lebrun's list for 1778, one of them having been painted •' for M. Bocquet." In 1783 she enters four portraits of " the Queen in a velvet dress," and " four copies of the same," so that she appears to have produced eight similar portraits, as well as one of the Queen " avec un chapeau," and two " en grand habit." Marie Antoinette (continued) The same, 1783. Almost the twin picture of the above. Presumably one of the portraits mentioned in the foregoing entry. Collection of Baron Edouard de Rothschild. The same. Dress of ruby velvet, trimmed with gold lace on the breast and with fur. Corsage of white satin. On the head a gauze scarf and white feathers, the end of the scarf faUing on the right shoulder. 25J x 2o|. De Villars sale, 1868, 940 fr. The same, ^length. Turning to right. Full face. White peignoir. Paris, Ex- hibition of Marie-Antoinette and her Time. Galerie Sedelmeyer, 1894, Collection of Comtesse de Biron. Universal Exhibition (Exposition Retrospective de la Ville de Paris), 1900, same collection. The same. Nearly full face. To waist. Blond hair, powdered, with white feathers Red velvet dress trimmed with fur. Oval, 25J x 21J. Beraudi^re sale, 1882. 1,205 fr- The same, signed and dated. Salon, 1787. With the Due de Normandie (on her knees), the Dauphin, and Madame Royale. The Queen wears a dress of red velvet, trimmed with fur. Toque of red velvet, with feathers and fur. One of the galleries of Versailles seen through an opening to left. Engraved by Nargeot. The large picture, showing an empty cradle, now at Versailles. A replica, be- longing to the Baronne James de Rothschild, was shown at the Exposition Retro- spective Feminine, 1908. The same. 1788. Life size, seated with elbow resting on a red velvet cushion placed on a table, whereon is a royal crown resting on a blue velvet cushion, a crystal v£ise containing flowers, and a spray of lilac. A book in left hand. Hair powdered. She is wearing a large toque of blue silk with an aigrette and plumes, and a blue velvet dress edged with brown fur over a skirt of white silk trimmed with fur. io6i x 75. Paris, Kraemer sale. May 5, 1913. 198,000 fr. (Hodgkins.) The same. 1788. Almost identical with the above. The Queen is here wearing a necklace of four rows of pearls, and there are slight differences in the toque, etc. Versailles. Engraved by Schinker. The same. Seated. In red dress. 50 x 40. Christie's, 1900, £73 los. (Grego.) Christie's, 1902, £84. (S. T. Smith.) The same, ^length. Standing to right. White muslin dress cut low at neck. Straw hat with feathers and blue ribbons. Tying some roses together with a ribbon. Salon, 1783. Grand-Ducal Palace, Darmstadt. This is almost certainly the portrait " en gaulle," which caused so much excite- CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 211 ment by its unconventional costume (for a Queen of France) that it was withdrawn from the Salon. Marie Antoinette {continued) The same. ? Three replicas of the foregoing picture. 1783. The artist appears to have painted at least half a dozen examples of this picture. The same. " With a rose." 1783. Low-necked dress of blue silk, gauze headdress with feathers. The Queen is walking in a garden, tying some roses with a ribbon. Rose bush (red blooms) to right, tree trunk to left. Versailles. Same pose and expression as in the above portrait " en gaulle." — — The same. Paris, Exhibition " des Alsaciens-Lorrains," 1874, Collection of Marquis de Biencourt. The same. A sketch. Paris, Exhibition "des Alsaciens-Lorrains," 1874, Collection of Madame Flury-Herard. The same. Medallion portrait reproduced in magazine of Societe de Protection des Alsaciens, etc., 1874. The same. • Sketch of head of, with powdered hair, plainly arranged and brushed up high ofE the forehead. The same. Apotheosis of. The Queen is seen, in a long robe, ascending towards the heavens, where two angels (her children who had died) and Louis XVI (with wings, emerging from the clouds) attend her. Given by the artist to Madame de Chateau- briand's Saint Theresa Home for Infirm Priests. Marie Caroline, Queen of Naples (wife of Ferdinand IV), sister of Marie-Antoinette, queen of France. Naples, c. 1790. Prado, Madrid. 1752-1814. Marie Christine, Princesse. Daughter of Ferdinand IV of Naples, afterwards queen of Sardinia. Naples, c. 1790. Marie Fedorovna (Dorothea), Princess of Wurtemberg, wife of Paul I, Emperor of Russia. Full-length. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905. Winter Palace, St. Petersburg. Marie Louise, Princesse (daughter of Ferdinand IV, King of Naples). Afterwards Grand Duchess of Tuscany. Naples, c. 1790. Marie THERfesE, Princesse (daughter of Ferdinand IV of Naples). Afterwards Empress of Germany (as wife of Francis II). Naples, c. 1790. ? Christie's, 1913, as " Marie Th^r^se of Savoy." Marie Therese Charlotte de France. See Angouleme, Duchesse d'. Mathews, Mrs. Charles. See Vestris. Mayer, Madame de. Vienna, 1792-1794. Mazarin, Duchesse de. 1780. Menageot, Franfois Guillaume. Painter. A sketch. Oval. J-length. Silk coat, flowered waistcoat. Tripier-Lefranc sale, 1883. no fr. ? Versailles. 1744-1816. Born in London. Pupil of Boucher and Vien. Director of the French Academy at Rome, 1787-1793. One of his best-known pictures was " The Death of Leonardo da Vinci." Madame. A drawing in black, white, and red chalks. Oval, 8J x 6f . ^length. Wreath of roses on brown curling hair. Beurdeley sale, 1905. 3,500 fr. (Cognac.) Menchikoff, Princesse Catherine Nicolaevna, nie Princesse Galitzin. At the piano, with her little son at her knees. Signed, St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Prince Nicolas Nicolaevitch Gagarin. M^eaut, Monsieur. 1774. 212 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Merveilleuse, Une. In Directoire costume. Boyana sale, 1882. 100 fr. MoMANViLLE, Monsieur de. 1774. MoNG^, Madame. 1775. — — The same. 1778, The same. 1779. MoNTAUDRAN, Madame de. 1780. MoNTBARREY, Alexandre Marie Lienor de Saint-Mauris, Prince de. 1776, 1732-1796. French Minister of War, 1777-1780. Emigrd in 1791. His memoirs were published in 1827. The same. 1779. MoNTBARREY, Princessc de. 1776. Wife of the above. MoNTEMEY, Marquise de. 1778. MoNTESQUiou. See Fezensac. MoNTESSON, Charlotte Jeanne B^raud de la Haye de Riou, Marquise de. 1779. 1737-1806. Married first to the Marquis de Montesson, who died in 1769 ; secondly (morganatically) in 1773 to the Due d'Orldans (1725-1785). MoNTLEGitxs, Madame de. 1777. MONTMORiN, Madame de. 1776. ? Wife of Armand, Comte de Montmorin-Saint-H^rem, Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1787, and again 1789-1791. He was massacred September 1792. Mademoiselle de. 1776. ? Daughter of the above. MoNTOisoN, Marie Jeanne de Clermont-. MoNTViLLE, Monsiem- de. 1775. Madame de, with her child. 1775. Wife of the above. ? Whether this entry may not refer to the pastel of a " Lady with a Little Boy" {q.v.), signed and dated 1777. The artist was so often inaccurate that the entry in her list of pictures might be two years out. MoRETON, Madame de. 1781. Replica of same picture. 1781. MoRTEMART, Mile. de. Comte de M sale, 1875. 1,175 fr. MousAT, Monsieur. 1768-1772. Mademoiselle. 1768-1772. Mdrat, Marie Annonciade Caroline Bonaparte, Queen of Naples. Full length, with her daughter beside her. Paris, after the Revolution. 1782-1839. Third sister of Napoleon. Married, 1800, Joachim Murat^ after- wards King of Naples. The same. Pastel. Sale, March 1895. 80 fr. MusiQUE, La. Exhibition of the Acad6mie de Saint-Luc, 1774. Nassau, Charles Henri Nicolas Othon, Prince de Nassau-Siegen, generally called Prince de Nassau. 1776. 1743-1809. Traveller and soldier. Entered the French army, and accompanied Bougainville on his famous voyage. The same. Full length. 1789. NiGRis, Jeanne Julie Louise. The painter's daughter, as a child, regarding herself in a mirror. Profile. Salon, 1787. M. F6ral. Etched in 1787 by the Comte de Paroy " i I'eau-forte et au lavis," and shown CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 213 in Martini's engraving of the Salon of 1787. 1780-1819. Accompanied her mother in her travels through Italy and Austria to St. Petersburg. There, in 1800, she married M. Nigris, secretary to Comte TchemychefE, in circumstances described in the present book. Nigris (contintied) The same, Jeanne Julie Louise. Profile. 1787. The same. Reading the Bible. 1787. The same. Small oval. 1789. The same. Head of, wearing wreath. Museum of Bologna. The same. As a bather. Vienna. 179a. Madame Lebrun says it was painted " pour la Reine," (presumably Marie Antoi- nette). 1793. The same. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection Capitoline-Semenovna Klotchkoff. The same. Salon, 1798. J-length. 31^ x 27I. Open air. Walking from left to right. Arms crossed under a violet scarf which covers her shoulders. Straw hat with purple feathers, held on the head by a scarf of white gauze. A muslin frill round neck. Dress of green silk. Brown hair, hanging loose down the back, and curls on the temples. Kraemer sale, 1913. 47,300 fr. (Hodgkins.) The same. Pastel sketch. Sale, March 11, 1895. 130 fr. The same. Bust. Oval, 17! x 14J. Short hair. White dress. Tripier-Lefranc sale, 1883. The same. Pastel. Oval. Tabourier sale, 1898. 3,800 fr. ? 17 x 13. R. Vaile sale, 1903. £99 15s. (Wildenstein.) The same. (Presumed portrait of). Pastel. 17! x 13I. Bust, full-face. Black hair, crimped. Red dress with Uttle white collarette. Hulot sale, 1892. 1,000 fr. The same (Presumed portrait of). Pastel. Bust, 17 x i2f. Blue low-necked dress. Light hair, curled over the forehead and ears. E. Warneck sale, 1905. 650 fr. One of these two " presumed " portraits giving black hair to its subject and the other Ught hair, it is unUkely that both presumptions are correct. Julie was rather dark than fair, though her nickname, " Brunette," had as much to do with her parentage as with her colouring. See also Lebrun, Madame, for the " Mother and Child " pictures. NOLSTEiN, Madame de. 1777. NORMAND, Madame le. 1774. See Lenormand. The same. 1777. NoRMANDiE, Due de. Afterwards Louis XVIII. 1787. The same. Standing. 1789. For the Duchesse de PoUgnac. Nurse, The (Nourrice), of the Dauphin. Sale, Jan. 22, 1859. Oglovi, Monsieur. 1777. Perhaps some British visitor to Paris named Ogilvie. Opotchinine, Daria Mikhailovna, nSe Princesse Koutouzoff. Signed. St. Petersburg, 1801. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Nicolcis Nicolaevitch Toutchkoff. Orglande, Comtesse d'. Daughter of Comtesse d'Andlau. " Avec les Mains." Paris, after the Revolution, 214 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Orleans, Louis Philippe, Due d'. 1779. 1725-1785. Distinguished soldier. Noted also as a friend of men of letters, and for his liberality. Secretly married in 1773 to Madame de Montesson (q.v.). Louise Marie Adelaide de Bourbon-Penthievre, Duchesse de Chartres, afterwards Duchesse d'. 1778. 1753-1821. The wife (1769) of Philippe Egalit4, and mother of King Louis Phihppe. The same. Salon of 1789. 39I x 32!. Life size. Seated on red couch. Head sup- ported on left arm, which rests on a red velvet cushion. Right hand lies on right knee. A medallion on the waistband with the word " Amiti^." Gauze toque. Pale blue bodice over muslin dress. Her fair hair falls over the left shoulder to below the waist. ? Bought by Brongniart, architect, Didot sale, 1825. ? H. Howard sale, Paris, 1898 725 fr. The same. Two examples of the above (1789) portrait, both now at Versailles. The same. Pastel replica of the same portrait. E. M. Hodgkins. The same. Bagatelle, 1911. Paisiello, Giovanni. Composing music. Naples, c. 1790. Salon, 1791. 1741-1816. Composer. Paix (La) Ramenant I'Abondance. 1780. Salon, 1783. "Abundance" represented by a blonde, in golden-yellow robe ; the right shoulder, arm, and breast uncovered ; roses in hair ; " horn of plenty " in right hand ; wheat and poppies in left. " Peace " is a brunette, in violet robe bound with gold braid at the neck ; green cloak flying in the wind. She rests her right hand, which holds a sprig of myrtle or bay, on the right shoulder of Abundance. Louvre. Engraved by Pierre Viel, 1789. Lucie Hall, daughter of P. A. Hall, the Swedish miniature painter, sat for " Abundance " and her sister Adele for " Peace." Palerme, Madame de. 1779. Palfi, Comtesse de. Vienna, 1792-1794. Parceval. See Percival, Parme, Elisabeth, Duchesse de, eldest daughter of Louis XV. Pastel. 24^ x 2o|. De- spinoy sale, 1850 (Madame de Polignac), Dumas fils sale, 1865. loi fr. If authentic, this portrait must have been done from pictorial sources, this Duchesse de Parme having died in 1759. At Versailles there is (or was) a portrait formerly called " Madame Elisabeth de France," and attributed to Madame Lebrun, of which the face (except for the eyes) has considerable resemblance to Nattier's portrait of the Duchesse. Paris, Madame. 1773. Pays, Madame de Saint-. 1773. Peinture, La. Exhibition of Acad^mie de Saint-Luc, Paris, 1774. Perceval, Lady. Pastel. i8| x 14I. Dated 1804. Bust. Light hair bound with black velvet ribbon, edged with pearls. Low-necked black dress; lace collarette. Comte de Vaudreuil sale, Paris, 1881. 2,600 fr. Perregaux, Madame. Signed and dated 1789. Panel, 37I x 30 J. Leaning on a balustrade. She is drawing back a curtain. Hat with feather. Sale, 1862. 3,720 fr. Bethna Green, 1872-1875. Wallace Gallery. Wife of the banker Perregaux. Pernon, Monsieur. 1773. Perrin, Monsieur. 1773. CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 215 Peerin, Madame. 1777. Pezay, Caroline de Murat, Marquise de. Paris, Exposition Retrospective Feminine, 1908, Collection of Madame Charles Fauqueux. The same. With the Marquise de Roug^ and the latter's two children. 1787, Picture, A small. Vienna, 1793-1794. For the Comte de Wilscheck. PiENNES, M^lanie de Rochechoiiart, Marquise d'Aumont, Duchesse de. Oval. 28 J x 22^. Signed and dated 1789. White dress, trimmed with gold braid ; green and yellow sash ; white and gold kerchief binding her curly hair. Collection of Alfred Montgomery. Mrs. Finch sale, Christie's, July 5, 1907. ^^2,520, (Asher Wertheimer.) National Loan Collection, 1913-14, (Adolph Hirsch, Esq.) PiGALE, Mademoiselle. 1768-1772. Marchande de Modes to Queen Marie Antoinette. Pitt, Miss. Daughter of Lord Camelford. Painted at Rome, c. 1790. A young girl, represented as Hebe, upon a cloud, holding a cup from which an eagle is drinking. PoEsiE, La. Exhibition of the Academic de Saint-Luc, 1774. PoLASTRON, Marie Louise Franfoise d'Esparbez de Lussan, Vicomtesse de. London, 1802- 1803. 1764-? 1816. Wife of Denis, Vicomte de Polastron. Died in England, and was buried in St. Pancras Cemetery. A son of the above. London, 1802-1805. PoLiGNAC, Ag^nor de. A child. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. Son of Due (Jules) et Duchesse (Gabrielle) de Polignac [q.v.). Auguste Jules Armand Marie, Prince de. Brother of above, as a boy. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. Bagatelle, 1911. 1780-1847. Son of Due (Jules) et Duchesse (Gabrielle) de Polignac {q.v.). Edmond de. Brother of above. Pastel. Vienna, 1792-1794. Gabrielle de Polastron, Duchesse de. Full face, ^length, in open air. White dress. Black lace mantle over arm. Straw hat with daisies and feather. 1782. Paris, Ex- hibition of Eighteenth-century Art, 1883-1884, Collection of Due de Polignac. Exhibi- tion of Marie Antoinette and her Time, Galerie Sedelmeyer, 1894, Same collection. " Exposition Retrospective Feminine," 1908, same collection. Exhibition of One Hundred Portraits of Women, 1909, same collection. ? Engraved by Comte de Paroy, who was a friend of the painter. 1749 ?-i8i7. The favourite friend of Marie Antoinette. The same. Much the same composition as the above picture, but the duchess is wearing a thin scarf loosely knotted round her neck. Baron Edmond de Rothschild. The same. With a straw hat. 1787. The same. Replica of above picture. 1787. The same. Standing, holding a song and touching a piano. 1787. Large hat, necklace of three rows of pearls. The same. 1787. The same. (Two pictures.) 1789. The same, with her child. On wood. 18^ x 15. In an alcove draped with curtains. The mother is dressed in white, and has a white cap with pink ribbons. Seated on a bed, she holds her baby. On a table to the right are a cup and a porringer. Comtesse de Clermont-Tonnerre sale, 1900. 10,000 fr. The same. Water-colour. 82f x 68|. Sale, Paris, April 17, 1899. 7,000 fr. The same. With a child. 18^ x 15. Sale, Dec. 10, 1900. 10,000 fr. The same. Painted from memory after her death. Vienna, 1793-1794. 2i| X 17^. 2i6 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Wearing a frilled cap with strings tied under chin and a fichu. Clermont-Tonnerre sale. Engraved, in reduced size, by J. Fisher, 1794. A reproduction of this print was shortly afterwards made in London by J. Smith. PoLiGNAC, Jules, Due de. 1787. The father of the above. 1788. Comtesse Metzy de. Sister of Due (Jules) de Polignac, and daughter of the last- mentioned. Pastel. Vienna, 1792-1794. PoNiATOWSKY, Stanislas Auguste, King of Poland. Head and shoulders. Costume of Henri IV. St, Petersburg, 1795-1801. The same. Wearing a velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, cordon of blue moire; St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. Retained by the artist for her own collection and be- queathed by M. Tripier Lefranc to the Louvre. Exhibition for the " Caisse de Secours des Artistes," Paris, i860. The great-niece of above, playing with a little dog. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. PoNSE, Mademoiselle de. 1778. PoNTS, Max, Comte de Deux-. Afterwards King of Bavaria. 1776. Of the Palatine house of Birkenfeld, which came to the Bavarian throne in 1777. There are some anecdotes of this Prince in the Souvenirs of Comte Louis-Philippe de Segur (q.v.). PoRPORATi, Mademoiselle. Tiorin, c. 1792. Born c. 1771. Daughter of Carlo Antonio Porporati (1741-1816) the Pied- montese engraver. Porte, Madame de la. 1781. Portrait, A Small. Vienna, 1793-1794. For Madame de Carpeny. PoTEMSKi, Princesse. A girl. |-length. Paris, 1802-1805, PoTOCKi, Comte. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. POTOCKA, Comtesse. 1776. PoTOCKA, Mademoiselle. Dresden. Comtesse, nee Cetner, by her first marriage Princesse de Lambesc. Painted at Rome, 1790. Reclining on a rock, above a ravine. Dress open on chest, curly hair, full face, hands crossed. Comte Charles Lanckoronsky. Comtesse Severin. Vienna, 1792-1794. Prince, Baron de Crespy le. Seen drawing. Paris, after the Revolution. Priest, Monsieur de Saint-. Ambassador. 1778. Prout, Madame de. Niece of Comte de Coetlosquet. Paris, after the Revolution. Provence, " Monsieur," Comte de. Afterwards Louis XVIII. Twelve portraits of, 1776. The same. Painted" forM.de Ldvis." (MarquisdeLevis, a collector of pictures.) 1778, One of the above thirteen portraits was sold in 1851 in the Baron de Silvestre sale. The same. 1781. RepUca of above. 1781. Oval. Salon, 1783. Louise Marie Josephine, Comtesse de. 1778. Seated; full face. Flowers on knees. Dressed en bergdre. Straw hat with wild-flowers on powdered hair. Open-necked white dress, laced with red ribbons ; gauze fichu. Sprig of hlac in left hand. 35 J x 28f . Beiurnonville sale, 1881. 6,400 fr. Daughter of the King of Sardinia ; married the Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis XVIII, in 1771. The same. Salon, 1783. 32 x 24I. Pleated white dress, blue silk band. Oval. CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 217 Signed and dated, 1783. Paris, Exhibition of Marie Antoinette and her Time, Galerie Sedehneyer, 1894, Collection of Comte A. de la Rochefaucauld. On the back of the canvas is this inscription : " Originale de Mde. Le Bnin donn^ par le roi Louis XVIII en 1815 k M. le Marquis de Crux ancien ^cuyer commandant I'^curie de la reine, Mde. la Comtesse de Provence." Prussia, Prince Ferdinand of. Paris, after the Revolution. Probably from a sketch made in Berlin. Prince Auguste Ferdinand of. Son of the above. Paris, after the Revolution. Probably from a sketch made in BerUn. Prince Henry of. 1782. The same. 1782. The same. 1782. Psyche regarding the sleeping Cupid. Drawing. Constantin sale. 1817. PuDEUR, La. Pastel. Sale, Paris, 1900 (sold in one lot with "Une Vestale"), 1.500 fr. PUYSEGUR, Comtesse de. 1786. Plain straw hat, bare arms, corsage of red wooUen material, brown woollen skirt. Hands crossed on a pitcher placed on the margin of a well. Radnor, William Pleydell Bouverie, Viscount Folkestone, afterwards 3rd Earl of. Russia, 1800. 49 X 39. ^length. Looking at spectator. Right arm leaning on rocks with the hand hanging down ; the left holds a large black hat. Dark hair and eyes, fair complexion. He wears a blue coat, a white cravat, white double-breasted waistcoat and Ught brown breeches. Earl of Radnor, Longford Castle. Radzivill, Princesse Louise. Daughter of Prince Ferdinand of Prussia. Paris, after the Revolution. Probably from a sketch made in Berlin. Raffeneau, Madame. 1768-1772. Ragani, Monsieur. Husband of Giuseppa Grassini [q.v.). Bust. Large picture. Paris, after the Revolution. Rannomanoski, Monsieur de. 1778. Rasoumovska, Comtesse. Vienna, 1793. Engraved by C. Pfeiffer. Elizabeth, daughter of Count Franz Josef Thun-Hohenstein. Married in 1788, Andreas, Count Rasoumovsky, afterwards Russian Ambassador at Vienna. The patron of Beethoven. He was the son of Kjnill Rasum, a peasant of the Ukraine, who was ennobled by the Empress Elisabeth. A beautiful miniature by Fiiger, repre- senting the Countess Elizabeth with her two sisters (the sisters were known as " The Three Graces"), is in the Pierpont Morgan Collection, and is reproduced in Dr. Williamson's Catalogue. Rassy, Madame de. 1778. Red, Boy in. See Boy. Reflexion, La. Ou le Souvenir. Nude woman lying on a couch, one hand supporting her head, the other placed on a bouquet. Stevens sale, 1847. 305 fr. Reymond, Madame Elisabeth Felicitd Mole. 1787 ?. Picture known as " La Femme au Manchon." ^length. Walking rapidly from right to left. Dark violet silk coat, blue dress, large blue hat turned up, with large rosette, and feathers. Large muff. Louvre. Bequeathed by Mademoiselle Reymond. Engraved by Jules Massard. 1760-1834. Natural child of the Marquis du Valbelle and Pierrette Claudine H^l^ne Pinet (known as Mademoiselle d'Epinay), of the Comedie Fran9aise. She was legitimated by the marriage of her mother with Franfois Reni M0I6, the comedian, also of the Com^die-Franfaise (1734-1802). She is herself sometimes described as 2i8 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS " of the Com^die Fran^aise," but it is very doubtful if she was engaged there, or even if she was ever an actress. Reymond, Madame. Oval. Salon, 1787. The same. Holding her child. 1789. Rezzonico, Prince. Naples, 1790. Richard, Madame la Presidente. 1779. Richelieu, Cardinal de. LjTie-Stephens sale, London, 1895. 270 gns. One of the portraits based on old pictures or engravings, of which the artist did a good many in her early life. See for instance, those of La Bruyere and Cardinal de Fleury for the Academy. Riviere, Alfred de. Paris, after the Revolution. Charles-Fran9ois de Riffardeau, Due de. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. 1763-1828. Confidential friend and minister of Charles X of France. The same. Paris, 1824- Painted for Charles X. Jean Baptiste de. Charge d' Affaires for Saxony in Paris before the Revolution. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. Father-in-law of Louis (Etienne) Vigde, the artist's brother. Mademoiselle de. Paris, after the Revolution. ? A daughter of the Due de Riviere, or one of the family into which the artist's brother had married. CaroUne de. The artist's niece. Showing both hands. Paris, after the Revolution. The only child left by Louis Vig6e and his wife Suzanne Marie Franfoise, daughter of Jean Baptiste de RiviSre {q.v.). She used her mother's maiden name. Robert, Hubert. 1788. Salon, 1789. In Madame Lebrun's own collection. Robert is shown leaning on a balustrade. Louvre, gift of Monsieur and Madame Tripier Lefranc. 1733-1808. Painter of landscapes and architecture. Many of his works are in the Louvre. The same. 59^ x 33J. Laborde sale, 1789. Sold in one lot with picture of Madame Vigde-Lebrun and her daughter (q.v.) for 18,000 fr, Robin, Mademoiselle. 1774. RocHECHOUART, M61anie de. See Piennes. RocHEFORT, Prince de Rohan-. 1775. Prince Jules de Rohan-. 1775. Son of the above. Mademoiselle de Rohan-. 1775. Daughter of the Prince de Rohan-Rochefort. Rochefoucauld, Duchesse de la. 1789. White dress trimmed with gold braid ; green and yellow sash ; white and gold band round hair. Wife of Loilis Alexandre, Due de la Rochefoucauld. He was massacred at Gisors, September 1794. Arthur Young writes in May 1787, that he was introduced to the Due, " well known for his attention to natural history." He it was who, in 1789, declared, " If the constitution is not set up, we shall cease to exist." Rochette, Monsieur Raoul, Bust. Paris, after the Revolution. RoiSY, Monsieur de. 1773. Madame de. 1773. Wife of the above. " Le Petit." 1774. Son of the above pair. CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 219 Roland, Mademoiselle, afterwards Lady (?) Wellesley. Painted at Rome c. 1790. See Jaucourt, Marquise de. RoMBEC, Comtesse de. Bust. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. The same. Bust. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. RoNCHEROL, Chevalier de. 1775. Marquise de. 1775. RoNSY, Madame de. 1775. RosAMBEAU, Comtesse de. Daughter of Comtesse d'Andlau (q.v.). Showing both hands. Paris, after the Revolution. RossiGNOL, Mademoiselle. 1774. An American. Mademoiselle. 1774 . . Sister of the above. Rouge, Nathahe Victurniene de Mortemart, Marquise de. Oval. 25J x 2if. Scarf round hair. White muslin dress, with gold waistband. Marquise de Plessis-Belli^re sale, 1897. 1,900 fr. The same. See Pezay, Marquise de. With whom the Marquise de Rouge and her two sons were painted. Rousseau, Madame. With her little girl. |-length. The child standing on an uncovered table, with her left hand in her mother's right. Salon, 1789. Collection of M. Georges Heine, 1912. The wife and daughter of M. Rousseau, an " jurchitect du Roi." Another portrait. 1789. (? a Replica.) RoYALE, Madame. See ANGOULiME, Duchesse d'. RuBEC, Mademoiselle de. 1775. RussE, Mademoiselle Th^r^se Marie Budan de. 1785. Oval. 27I x 22f. Seated. Dark curly hair with roses and leaves in it. Large gold hoop earrings. Light brown satin dress with lapels and cape. Hands crossed. Left elbow rests on blue cushion. On cuff of her right sleeve is a large button with the letter T. Purchased by Messrs. Trotti from Monsieur H. Budan de Russd. Mr. William McKay, 1913. Sabran, Marquise de. 1786. Muslin dress, with sash. Arms crossed on a cushion. En- graved by D. Berger, 1787. Salm, Landgravine of. 1783. ? Wife of Frederic, Prince of Salm-Kyrbourg, 1746-1794, who was living in Paris about this date. He built there a mansion, which is now the Palace of the Legion of Honour. He supported the Revolution, but was guillotined as an aristocrat, Salverte, Mademoiselle Baconniere de. Oval. 28| x 22|-. The Marquise de Saporta, nee Thdr^se Beatrix de Ginestous, inherited this portrait from the Comtesse de Ginestous, maid of honour to the Princesse de Lamballe. E. M, Hodgkins, 1914. Samoiloff, Comtesse Catherine Serguievna, nee Princesse Troubetzkoy. Between her son and daughter (afterwards Comtesse Bobrinsky). 88^ x 29J. Open air. Signed. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Comte Alexis Alexandrovitch Bobrinsky. Has been engraved. Sapey, Monsieur. Bust. Paris, after the Revolution. Sapieha, Princesse. Vienna, 1792-1794. 220 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Sapieha {continued) The same. J-length. Dancing, with a tambourine. St. Petersburg. Signed and dated, 1797. Now in America. ? Frick Collection. Sassenay, Mademoiselle de. Bust. Paris, after the Revolution. Saulot, Madame. 1776. Savalette, Monsieur de. 1776. Savigni, Madame. 1789. Savigny, Madame de. 1779. (Possibly the above Madame " Savigni " ten years younger.) The same. 1779. A son of the above. 1779. ScHOEN, Mademoiselle de. Pastel. Vienna, 1792-1794. ScHCENFELD, Madame de. Wife of the Saxon Minister to Austria, with her child on her lap. Vienna, 1792-1794. ScHOUVALOFF, Comte Paul Andrievitch. 1775. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Comtesse Elisabeth Vladimirovna Schouvaloff. In Collection of Comte Charles Lanckoronsky, Vienna, 1913. 1727-1789. Chamberlain of the Empress Elizabeth of Russia, and son of her favourite, Field-Marshal Comte (Pierre Ivanoff) Schouvaloff, dead in 1762. Comtesse. A young woman. Bust. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. 25J x 21^. At about fifteen years old. Powdered hair, tied with a ribbon. Satin dress. Muff and stole of tiger -skin. Sedaine, Mademoiselle. La B^raudi^re sale, 1881. 9,100 fr. Daughter of Michel Jean Sedaine, the poet and dramatist (1719-1797). Segur, Philippe Henri, Marquis de. Marechal de France. 1789. j-length. Standing, to left. Right hand rests on his baton, left hand on sword hilt. Orders, and ribbon across breast. Paris, Exposition des Alsaciens-Lorrains, Palais-Bourbon, 1874, Collec- tion of Marquis de Sigar. 1724-1801. Minister of War. 1780. Louis Philippe, Comte de. 1785. Plain coat, with Maltese cross of an order on left breast. Right hand thrust under waistcoat. Periwig. 1753-1830. Son of the above. Celebrated diplomatist smd man of letters. Author (1824) of Souvenirs et Anecdotes. The same. Replica of same picture. 1785. Marie d'Aguesseau, Comtesse de. Salon, 1785. Seated, hands crossed and resting on a table, on which some flowers lie. Large hat with ribbon bow and feather. Kerchief of lawn loosely tied round neck. Low-cut velvet bodice ; full skirt. 1759 ?-i828. Wife of the above Comte (Louis-Philippe) de S6gur. The same. Replica of the above picture. 1785. The same. Bust. Profile. 1789. Light dress cut low. Dark shawl over right shoulder and left arm. Loose curling hair. Veil over back of head. Collection of Marquis de S6gur. Sence, Mademoiselle de. 1774. Seere, Comtesse de. 1784. ? The mother of Pierre Frangois de Serre, a prominent figure in politics and diplomacy during the Restoration. Sibyl, A. Salon, 1798. 4 J x 3 J. Seated in a grotto. Red robe with a blue drapery ; a veil falls over her hair and around her body. J. B. Lebrun sale, 1814. 460 fr. SiCARDi, Madame. Head and shoulders. Robed as a vestal virgin, her eyes looking upwards. Constantin sale, 1816. 61 fr. (Henry.) CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 221 SiEGEN. See Nassau. SlLVA, Madame. Rome, c. 1790. A yomig Portuguese lady. SiMiANE, Comtesse de. 1783. The same. 1783. The same. 1789. The same. 1789. Skavronska, Countess. See Litta. SoLTYKOFF, Comte Ivan Petrovitch. St. Petersburg. Signed, 1801. St. Petersburg, Ex- position Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Varvara Ilyinitchna Miatleff. SouzA, Madame de, nee Canillac. Wife of the former Portuguese Ambassador to France. Berlin, 1801. Spanish Scene, A. Spanish Lady, A Young. Salon, 1791. Stael, Madame de. As Corinne. Seated on a rock, near a mountain. She is plapng on a lyre. Painted at Coppet, 1808. Geneva, Museum of Art and History. 1766-1817. Gerard also painted Madame de Stael as Corinne, seated on a rock, with a Ijnre, " at Cape Myctoes." The same. Oval, ^length. High-waisted, low-necked bodice. Scarf round head, with one end faUing over left shoulder. Engraving by Hopwood in B.M. Stainville, Mar^chal Comte de. 1773. Strogonoff, Comte Paul. Bust. Vienna, 1792-1794. 1774-1817. The same, showing the hands. Vienna, 1792-1794. The same. St. Petersburg, 1796-1798. j-length. 41 x 36. Seated on a blue velvet chair. He wears a brown " Directoire " frock-coat with a red velvet collar, a white neckcloth, and fawn-coloured breeches. He holds a pair of brown gloves. Prince Gahtzin, Marino, Novgorod, Russia. Comtesse Sophie, wife of the above, n&e Princesse GaUtzin. St. Petersburg, 1796-1798. |-length. 41 X 36. Companion picture to the portrait of her husband. Seated on a blue velvet sofa. She wears an orange-coloured "Empire" (as it would now be called) dress ; green Indian shawl draped from head over a white turban. She holds a baby (her son Comte Alexandre, 1795-1814) dressed in white, with a hlac sash. Prince Galitzin, Marino, Novgorod. Comtesse Nathalie, daughter of the above Comte and Comtesse Paul, as a child. Head and shoulders. Pastel. 11^x9^. White frock. Prince Galitzin, Marino, Novgorod. Comtesse Anna Serguievna, nie Princesse Troubetzkoi. Arranging flowers in a vase. Signed. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Marie Pavlovna Rodzianko. Suffrein. See Suffren. Suffren, Vicomtesse de. (?) 35^x28. Seated, three-quarters to left. J-length. Low-necked dress of white musUn, with waistband of blue ribbon. Powdered hair, with roses. Black scarf over right arm, bouquet in left hand. Kraemer sale. May 5, 1913. 22,000 fr. (Hodgldns.) ? The " Madame de Suffrein " whom the artist painted from memory. Some experts have thought that the picture here described represents Marie Antoinette. The simple white dress is similar to that of the portrait at Darmstadt commonly described as " Marie Antoinette en gaulle." 222 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Suzanne, Madame. 1768-1772. Wife of M. Suzanne, the sculptor. Tabari, Madame. 1775. Talaru, Marquise de. Formerly Comtesse de Clermont-Tonnerre. Salon, 1785. Oriental costume. Yellow robe, turban ornamented with pearls, gold necklace. Talbot, Lord. Bust. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. Talleyrand, Charles Maurice de, Prince de Benevento. Sale, 1847. 80 fr. 1754-1838, The famous bishop, foreign minister, and diplomatist. Madame Grant, afterwards Princesse de. 1776. An Enghsh lady. When Talleyrand, after his exile of 1794-1795, returned to France early in 1796, he brought her with him, she having been divorced from her English husband. The same. Looking up to left. Oval, 35I x 28|. Square-cut open corsage. Drop earring. Hair arranged close to head. Her right arm rests on a cushion, and holds the music of a song. Exhibition of Portraits of Women and Children, Ecole des Beaux Arts, 1897. No. 137. Bagatelle, 1909, Reproduced in the illustrated catalogue. Bagatelle, 1909, Collection of Madame de Vernhette. (Wildenstein.) The same. 1783. Oval. Seated, looking up to left. Square-cut open corsage. Right hand rests on a cushion, and holds the music of a song. Hair brushed up and out from forehead, curls over shoulders. Ribbon bows on head and on breast. Exhibition of Portraits of Women and Children, Ecole des Beaux Arts, 1897, Collection of M. Vern- hette. Doucet sale, 1912. 400,000 fr. Tchernycheff, Comte Ivanovitch. Vienna, 1792-1794. In black domino, holding a mask. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Comte Hippolyte Tchernycheff-Klouglikoff. M. Nigris (the husband of Julie Lebrun, the painter's daughter) was secretary to Comte Tchernycheff. Tetare, Madame. 1773. Teuilly, Madame de. 1778. Thilorie, Madame. Bust. 1773. Thomas, Monsieur. Architect. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. Thoun, Comtesse de. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. Thun, The Lake of. Pastel. 7 J x 11. G. Mallet sale, 1898. Sold in one lot with Lucerne, Lake of. 10 fr. Tippoo Sahib. Sale, 1847. ? A fancy portrait. See Dervisch Khan and Usman Khan. Tolstoi, Comte. Salon, 1824. Comtesse. |-length. Leaning on a rock near a cascade. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. ToNNERRE, Comtesse de Clermont-. See Talaru. ToTT, Madame de. 1786. ? Baronne deTott, wife of the distinguished soldier and diplomatist (1733-1793), who, after years of service in Turkey, returned to France in 1776, and in 1786 was appointed governor of Douai. Toullier, Monsieur de. 1776. — — Madame. 1776. Wife of the above. Tournon, Comtesse de. 1779. ? Mother of Comte de Toumon-Simiane (1^78-1833), diplomatist, peer of France 1824. CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 223 Tranchart, Monsieur. 1768-1772. TuFFiAKiN, Princesse. The head painted at Moscow ; completed in Paris after the Revo- lution. UsMAN Khan, Mahomet. Ambassador from Tippoo Sahib, Sultan of Mysore. Salon, 1789. To below the knees, seated on a sofa. J. B. Lebrun (after death) sale, 1814. 151 fr. (Constantin.) See Dervisch Khan. Valesque, Frangois de. 1776. Oval. 31^ x 26. Sale, Paris, June 14, 1900. 5,900 fr. " Echevin, fermier general, guillotine a Lyon, 1793." Marguerite de. Oval, 66 x 31^. Sale, Paris, June 14, 1900. 6,400 fr. " Nee k Montlong." Vandergust, Monsieur. 1768-1772. Vannes, Madame de. 1779. Varontzoff, Comtesse Irene Ivanovna, nSe Ismailoff. Signed, St. Petersburg, 1797. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Col- lection of Comte Ilarion Ivanovitch Varontzoff Dachkoff. Vassiltchikoff, Prince. See Galitzin. Vaubal, " Le Petit." 1776. Vaudreuil, Comtesse de Rigaud de. Pastel. Bust. Yellow open bodice. Light hair in curls. 19J x 15. Clermont-Tonnerre sale, Paris, 1900. 2,250 fr. Wife of Joseph Hyacinthe Fran9ois de Paule, Comte de Rigaud de Vaudreuil (q.v.), to whom she was married in England during the emigration. Comte Alfred de. (Child.) Pastel. Bust. To right. Yellow shirt. 14J x 11^. Painted at Twickenham, 1802-1805. Clermont-Tonnerre sale, Paris, 1900. 5,800 fr. Son of Joseph H. F. de P. Comte de Rigaud de Vaudreuil {q.v.) Comte Charles de. (Child.) Pastel. Bust, to left. In red draperies. 14J x 11. Painted at Twickenham, 1802-1805. Clermont-Tonnerre sale, Paris, 1900. 6,100 fr. Another son of Joseph H. F. de P. Comte de Rigaud de Vaudreuil (q.v.), Joseph Hyacinthe Fran9ois de Paule, Comte de Rigaud de. 1784. 5if x 39I. 1784. J^length. Seated. Court costume of maroon cloth, with gold embroidery. He wears the orders of Saint Louis and the Saint Esprit. Three-cornered hat under left arm. Left hand holds his sword, and right hand rests on a table. He wears a periwig. Exhibition of the Alsaciens-Lorrains, Paris, 1874, Collection of the Vicomtesse de Clermont-Tonnerre. Clermont-Tonnerre sale, 1900. 11,200 fr. 1749-1817. Born in Saint Dominique. Grand Falconer, Lieutenant-General, and peer of France. Director of the household of Marie Antoinette. The same. 1784. ^-length. Oval. 28 J x 23^. Full face. Grey coat with broad turned-down collar, brown waistcoat of striped satin. Ribbon and order of the Saint Esprit. Sale, 1908. 6,050 fr. (Monsieur Sortais.) Exposition Retrospective Feminine, 1908, Collection of M. Sortais. The artist says that in 1784 she painted one portrait of the Comte de Vaudreuil, and "five copies of the same." The same. Two portraits. Busts. Paris, after the Revolution. Vicomtesse de, nee Riquet de Caraman. 1785. 36! x 26|. ^length. Full face. Seated on a little hillock and holding a book. Silk dress, with ruffles, collarette, and fichu of white gauze. White hat. Clermont-Tonnerre sale, 1900. 3,400 fr. Vicomtesse de. Niece of the Comte (J. F.) de Vaudreuil. Paris, after the Revolution. 224 CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS Venus, Study of head for. 1781. Binding the wings of Cupid. Salon, 1783. Pastel on glass. 45J x sgf. For Comte de Vaudreuil. J. B. Lebrun sale, 1814, 341 fr. Mile. Thevenin sale, i8ig, 251 fr. Didot sale, 1825. Line engraving in B. M. The same. See Juno. Verdun, Marquis de. 1780. A Fermier-General. Marquise de. J-length. 25^ x 2o|. Low-necked red bodice, laced in front and opening over a white under-bodice. Straw hat with blue ribbon and flowers. Powdered hair. Kraemer sale, 1913. 29,700 fr. (HodgMns.) Wife of the above. Madame Lebrun painted portraits of this almost lifelong friend in 1777, 1779, 1780, and 1782. The aunt of the Marquise de. 1787. The mother of the Marquise de. 1780. The sister-in-law of the Marquise de. 1780. Veenet, Antoine Charles Horace, called " Carle " Vernet, painter, son of Claude Joseph Vernet. Oval drawing. Wanda de Boucza sale, 1902. Claude Joseph. 1789. 36^ x 2 8 J. Palette in left and brushes in right hand. Louvre. 1712-1789. Marine painter, who painted, for Louis XV, the fifteen views of French seaports now in the Louvre. It is said that in order to study a storm at sea, he had himself lashed to the mast of a ship which brought him from Italy to France. Vertu Irresolue, La. An engraving by Dennel, bearing this title (representing a girl sitting up in bed, holding a letter, which has apparently come with a pearl necklace seen on a table at the bedside), is dedicated " i Madame Lebrun Peintre." It has been described as a reproduction of one of her own pictures. If this attribution is correct, the subject and treatment show the influence of Greuze, of whose work she was a keen student in girlhood. Veselay, Monsieur de. 1775. Vestale, Une. Pastel. Sale, Paris, 1900 (sold in one lot with La Pudeur. 1,500 fr.). Vestris, Madame Lucia Elizabeth. English actress. 35^ x 27I. Signed and dated, 1804. Blue dress cut low, coral necklace, red ribbon in hair. She is walking out of doors, with her loose hair blown by the wind, and holds up her skirt by her crossed arms. Paris, Exhibition of Portraits of Women and Children, Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 1897, Collection of M. Charles Sedehneyer. Formerly in D. H. King, Jr., Collection in America. Christie's, 1908. £157 los. (Lennie Davis.) Vesuvius. Sketch of the volcano. Naples c. 1790. ViaminSki, Princesse. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. ViCTOiRE, Louise Marie Thdrese de France, known as Madame Victoire. Daughter of Louis XV. Rome, c. 1790. 1733-1799. She nursed her father in his last illness. Emigrated with her sister Adelaide (q.v.) in 1791, and died at Trieste. ViEUViLLE, Comtesse de. 1768-1772. ViGEE, Louis Jean Baptiste Etienne. The artist's brother, in schoolboy's dress. 1768- 1772. 1758-1820. Author of much hght verse and some comedies. Secretary of the Comtesse de Provence (q.v.). Imprisoned under the Terror. The same, in schoolboy's dress. Pastel. 1768-1772. Madame. The artist's mother, wearing a turban. Pastel. 1768-1772. The same. Back view. 1768-1772. CATALOGUE OF MADAME LEBRUN'S WORKS 225 ViGEE, Madame. In white pelisse, 1768-1772, The same. 1785. Jeanne Messain, wife of Louis Vigde (1727-1767). She died in April 1800. ViLLiERS, ? Mrs. London, 1802-1805. ViOTTi, Jean-Baptiste. The vioUnist. Paris, after the Revolution. 1753-1824. ViRiEU, Claudine de Maleteste, Vicomtesse de. 1779. Paris, Exhibition of the Alsaciens- Lorrains, 1874, Collection of Marquis de Ganay. Exhibition of Eighteenth-century Art, Galerie G. Petit, 1883-1884, same Collection. Lady-in-waiting to Madame Sophie de France. The same. 1785. ViSMES, Monsieur de. 1773. VoMBAL, Baron de. 1777. VoRONTSOFF, Comtesse Irene Ivanovna, nee Ismailoff. Bust. St. Petersburg, 1797. Signed and dated. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Comte Ilarion Ivanovitch Vorontzoff-Dachkoff. Vrague, Marquis de. 1779. Wales, George, Prince of. Afterwards George IV. J-length. Wearing Hussar uniform. Left hand on sword hilt. The plumed hat on table to right. Presented by the Prince to Mrs. Fitzherbert. London, 1804-1805. Now at Came House, Dorchester, in the possession of the Dowager Countess of Portarlington Warr. See De la Warr. WoiNA, Comte de. Son of the Polish ambassador to Austria. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. Mile Caroline de. Sister of the above. Pastel. Vienna, 1793-1794. The same. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. Woman holding a dove, ^length. Desmarets sale, 1778. 175 Uvres. A, " en levite," 1779. Painted for the Due de Cosse. Wurtemberg, Princesse de. Vienna, 1792-1794. York. See Frederica Charlotte, Duchess of. Young, Madame. 1781. YoussouPOFF, Princesse Tatiana Vassilievna, nee Engelhardt. Near a rustic altar. She is making a wreath of flowers. Signed. St. Petersburg, Exposition Artistique et Historique de Portraits Russes, 1905, Collection of Prince Felix FeUxovitch Youssoupoff. In her first marriage Princesse Potemkine. Zamoyska, Comtesse. Dancing, with a shawl. Vienna, 1792-1794. ? Daughter of Andr6 Zamoyski, Grand Chancellor of Poland under Stanislas Poniatowski, 1764. Zanicourt, Comte de. 1768-1772. ZouBOFF, Comtesse Marie Feodorovna, nee Lubomirska. Resting on a large couch ; pressing a dove to her bosom. St. Petersburg, 1795-1801. 15 APPENDIX Page 190. Bystry. These portraits of the Comte and Comtesse Siemontkowsky Bystry were exhibited at the Ehrich Galleries, New York, in Jan. 1915. The Comte's portrait measures 32^ X 24i. Black cloak over red jacket. Auburn hair ; he holds a guitar, on which is the artist's signature. The Comtesse's portrait measures 32 X 24!. She wears a draped white chemisette, and orange-red mantle; a yellow scarf, with a wreath of roses on her head. Holds a goblet. Signed and dated (1793) in left-hand corner. Page 191. Chatenay. a " portrait presum6 de Madame de Chatenay " was sold at the Kraemer Sale, 1913. 37,100 frs. (Saint.) Page 196, insert : Elliot, Mrs. Grace (supposed portrait of). Bust. White scarf twisted in hair, white fichu ; striped dress of duU yellow and blue. 20 x 16. (Lord Weardale.) [Writer of a Journal during the Revolution, friend of Philippe Egaht^.] Page 198, insert : Genevieve, Saint. As a young shepherdess, seated with a Bible in her lap. She holds a distaff. Landscape background, with sheep. Painted for Louveciennes Church, where it now hangs. Girl, A little, sleeping. Sale, March 1909. 2,625 fr. Page 199, after line 5, insert : A young. Sale 1912, as " La fillette i la charlotte blanche." 19,000 frs. (Comte Horace de Choiseul.) Page 202. KiNSKA, Comtesse. The " Bust " portrait mentioned was exhibited at the Ehrich Galleries, New York, in Jan. 1915, Oval, 28^ x 23. White cap and dress, light blue sash. Fair, with blue eyes. Page 204, after line 19, add : This picture appears to have been catalogued at the Doisteau Sale, 1909, as " Portrait presumd de Lady Hamilton en Diane." 8,500 frs. Page 205, insert : Lebrun, Jean Baptiste Pierre, husband of the artist (supposed portrait of, by her). Circular, on ivory, 3 inches diameter. Dark green coat, with purple collar; he holds palette and brushes. (Lord Weardale.) Page 206, after line 11, insert : The same. 1782. |-length. 44 x 34. White dress, lace collar and cuffs. Wreath and ostrich feathers on powdered hair, landscape background. Signed and dated. Presented by the Empress Eugenie to Earl Sydney in memory of The Prince Imperial. Sydney Sale, Frognal, Kent, 1915. ;f6,930. (Mr. George Kessler.) [This portrait bears little likeness in the face to the following portrait, painted in the same year.] Page 206, line 43, add : Sale, Dec. 1910, 13,100 frs. Page 207, after line 31, insert : The same. Drawing in black, blue, and white chalks, with tinge of red on the cheeks. Nearly full-face. High-waisted light dress, with high collar. SJ x yl. Pasted at the back of the drawing is the original mount, on which is written : "A card of leave by Madame Vigee le Brun, drawn on the eve of her departure from London, August 1805, for Mr. de Cort." (Frank T. Sabin, Ltd.) Page 208, Louis XVI. Delete second entry (Line 38). Page 209. Delete Maintenon entry. Page 211, Marie THERfesE, Princesse, after " 1790," delete remainder of entry. Page 215, line 27. Before " Gabrielle," insert : " Yolande." Page 216. PoRPORATi, Mademoiselle, insert : Bust, nearly fuU-face ; abundant dark hair. Page 219. Sapieha, Princesse. Ehrich Galleries, New York, Jan. 1915. Oval. 31J x 24^. Seated at a table, hands crossed, left hand holds manuscript. Wreath of ivy on powdered hair. Signed and dated (1795) on table. Note, referring to page 115, last paragraph : During the Directory, in July 1799 (Thermidor, year VII), an eloquent petition, signed by scores of prominent painters, sculptors, and others (including Robert, David, Greuze, Fragonard, Isabey, Prud'hon ; Houdon, Pajou ; Cuvier, and Lamarck), was vainly pre- sented to Barras, praying for the removal of Madame Lebrun's name from the list of exiles. Madame TaUien had already done her best in the matter. When at last, in June 1800, permission to return was granted, the influence of David, whom the exile so greatly mistrusted, seems to have been successfully exerted on her behalf. INDEX Academy, the French, Elisabeth Vigee's gifts to, 14 Academy of Saint Luke, Elisabeth Vigee's pictures exhibited there, 12 Adelaide, confidential attendant to Madame Lebrun, 141 ; in Switzerland, 169 Alembert, Jean le Rond d', as secretary of the French Academy, his letter to Elisabeth Vigee, 15 ; visits her studio, 15 Alexandrovsky, Madame Lebrun stays there with Princesse Dolgorouky, 127 AngiviUer, Comte d', Director-General of Academies, arranges for the entrance of Madame Lebrun to the Academy of Art, 40 Angiviller, Comtesse d', wife of the above, her flatteries, 46 ; and eccentricities, 46 Angouleme, Duchesse de (" Madame Royale "), 34 ; her letter to Madame Lebrun, 134 Anspach, Margravine of, entertains Madame Lebrun at Hammersmith, 154 ; in Berkshire, 154 ; takes her to the Isle of Wight, 155 Arms and the Man, Mr. Bernard Shaw's play, mentioned, 16 Arnould, Sophie, described by Madame Lebrun, 55 ; her saying concerning the Calonne portrait, 68 Artaut, Monsieur, shelters Madame Lebrun at Lyons, 94 Artois, Comte d'. See Charles X. Aubert, Court jeweller, his opinion of Madame Lebrun's marriage, 18 Auguier, Madame, visited by Madame Lebrun at Marly, 88 ; disquieting incident at her house, 88 ; shows revolutionary papers to the Queen, 89 Austen, Jane, mentioned, 157-158 Balloon-ascent of M. Robert in the Tuileries gardens, 66 Banti, Italian prima donna, her curious chest- formation, III Barry, Comte Jean du, sits to Elisabeth Vig6e, II Barry, Comtesse du, her life at Louveciennes, 79-83 Barth61emy, the Abbe, his Travels of Young Anacharsis, 84 Bauflremont, Prince (Theodore) de, his portrait of Marie Antoinette by Vig^e Lebrun, 33 Beaujon, Nicolas, financier, his philanthropy, 21 ; lives at the Elysee, 21 ; his rooms described, 21 ; his iU-health, 21-22 ; his guests, 22 Beaumarchais, his Mariage de Figaro produced, 100 Benoist, Madame Emilie, a pupil of Vigee- Lebrun, 19 Bentinck, Lady Mary, friend of Madame Lebrun in London, 161 ; her Sunday parties, 161 Betty, Master, " The Infant Roscius," men- tioned, 161 BilUngton, Madame, prima donna, at Madame Lebrun's soirees, 145 Bocquet, Rosalie. See Filleul Boigne, Comtesse de, on Vigee-Lebrun, 112 Bonneuil, Madame de, dines with the Mysorean envoys, 82 ; at the " Greek supper," 85 Bordeaux, Madame Lebrun's visit to, in 1820, I 79-1 81 Bourbon, Due de, at Madame Lebrun's house in London, 150 Boutin, Monsieur, financier, his hospitalities at Montmartre, 64 ; guillotined, 138 Braham, John, singer, at the opera in London, 161 Breteuil, Baron de, his gossip, 139 Briard, Gabriel, historical painter, gives lessons to Elisabeth Vigee, 5 Brie, Comte de, insults EUsabeth Vigee, 11 ; denounced to the police, 18 Brissac, Due de, patron of Madame Lebrun, 23 ; at Louveciennes with Madame du Barry, 81 Bristol, Earl of (Bishop of Derry), sits to Madame Lebrun in Italy, 114 ; his character and magnificence, 114 Brongniart, architect, at the Vaudeville with Madame Lebrun, 43 ; shelters her at the Revolution, 90 Bruydre, La, Elisabeth Vigee's picture of, 14-15 Burns, Robert, his opinion of the Abbe Barthe- lemy's book, 84 Bystry, Comtesse de, makes Madame Lebrun's acquaintance at Milan, 116 Caderousse, Duchesse de Gramont-, alters her hair to please Madame Lebrun, 67 Calonne, Controller-General of Finance, his portrait by Madame Lebrun, 67 ; the pay- 227 228 INDEX ment for it, 68 ; gossip about his relations with Madame Lebrun, 69 ; his interview with the King, 71 ; his financial principles, 71 ; his periwig, 75 Carreau, Julie. See Talma. Casanova, Franfois, battle-painter, his character, 118 Catalani, Angelica, prima donna, sings at Madame Lebrun's parties, 163 Catherine II, Empress of Russia, receives Madame Lebrun, 124 ; at home, 129 ; and the picture of her grandchildren, 129 Chaillot, M. Le Ffivre's house at, 14 Chalgrin, Madame (daughter of Joseph Vernet), at the " Greek supper," 85 ; guillotined, 137 Chamfort, a scandalmonger, 49 Champcenetz, Chevalier de, an enemy of Madame Lebrun, 49 Charles X (as Comte d'Artois) at Gennevilliers, 60 ; his character, 100 Charrot, Madame, governess of Julie Lebrun, her influence over her pupil, 132 Chateaugiron, envoy of the French Republic to Russia, 126 Chinnery, Mrs., entertains Madame Lebrun in England, 150 Choiseul, Etienne Frangois, Due de. Minister of Louis XV, 13 Choiseul, Marquis de, sits to Elisabeth Vigee, 10 Clairon, Mademoiselle, actress, described by Madame Lebrun, 56 Clarissa (Richardson's), the first novel read by Madame Lebrun, 54 Clery, Rue de, early home of Elisabeth Vigee in, 7, 16 ; she Uves there after her marriage, 18 ; her property there, 70 Cobentzl, Comte, Austrian ambassador at St. Petersburg, his hopeless afiection for the Princesse Dolgorouky, 126 Coigny, Chevalier de, his absurd interview with M. Le Pelletier, 62 Coliseum, The, in the Champs-Elysees, 1 1 Colombes, seat of the Marquis de Verdun, 59 Comedie Fran9aise, performers at, 56, 57 Constant, Benjamin, at Coppet with Madame de Stael, 171 Conti, Princesse de, her antiquated ideas, 61 Coppet, Madame Lebrun stays with Madame de Stael at, 171-172 Corporations, law of, invoked against Elisabeth Vig6e, 12 Correspondance Secrete . . . de 1777 A 1792, quoted, 68-69 Cosme, Jean, eminent surgeon, attends Louis Vig6e, 4 Coster, Madame VaUayer-, flower-painter. Aca- demician, 39 Cramer, J. B., pianist, as a youth plays at Madame Lebrun's house, 51 Craven, Lady. See Anspach, Margravine of. Crussol, Baronne de, painted by Madame Lebrun, 67 CubiSres, Marquis de, at the " Greek supper," 85 ; tells the truth about it to the King, 86 Dancing, the zest of the Viennese for, 121 Davesne, painter, teaches Elisabeth Vigee to prepare her palette, 3 David, Jacques Louis, painter, his portrait of Madame Lebrun, 10 ; his conduct during the Terror, loi ; his gossip about Madame Lebrun, loi Delille, the Abb6, a " child who never grew up," 48 ; his social attractions, 48 Denis, Madame, niece of Voltaire, sits to Elisa- beth Vig6e, 13. See Duvivier. Denon, the Baron, diplomatist and artist, his kindness to Madame Lebrun at Venice, 114 Deny, Bishop of. See Bristol, Earl of. Dervisch Khan, envoy of Tippoo Sahib, his por- trait, 82 ; trouble about it, 83 ; his fate, 83 Devonshire, Georgiana, Duchess of, 145-146 Dolgorouky, Princesse, her coldness to Comte Cobentzl, 126 ; admired by Potemkin, 126, 127 Dora, play by Sardou, mentioned, 18 Dorset, Duchess of, at Knole, insists on silence during dinner, 151 ; Madame Lebrun's portrait of, 151 Doyen, Gabriel, painter, his story of Frago- nard's " swing " picture, 4 ; friend of Elisa- beth Vig6e, 4 ; his worldly wisdom, 51 Dresden, Madame Lebrun's success at, 121 Duchesnois, Mile, actress, her d6but, 164 Dugazon, Jean, actor, 56 Dugazon, Madame, divorced wife of the above, actress, as " Nina," 56-57 Dumesnil, Mile, actress, her tragic powers, 56 Dumont, Franfois, artist, his miniature of Vigee-Lebrun, 10 Duroc, Gerard, envoy of the French Republic at St. Petersburg, incident at a dinner given to, 126 Duvivier, Monsieur, husband of " Madame D6nis," his unromantic mind, 112 Elisabeth, Grand Duchess, afterwards Empress of Russia, her welcome to Madame Lebrun at St. Petersburg, 124 ; her portrait, 129 ; her fancy dress displeases the Empress Catiierine, 130 Enghien, Due d', the news of his execution received in London, 159 Epernon, Elisabeth Vig6e's infancy at, 2 Espinchal, Comte, his " extensive and peculiar " knowledge of other people's business, 47 ; how he found a lost wife for a stranger at the opera ball, 47 ; destroys his journals, 138 ; his death, 138 Esterhazy, Comte, envoy from the exiled Bourbons to Catherine II, 123 ; presents Madame Lebrun to the Empress, 124 Femey, Voltaire's house at, visited by Madame Lebrun, 173 INDEX 229 Filleul, Madame, nie Bocquet, studies with Elisabeth Vig6e, 5 ; her marriage, 137 ; guillotined, 137 Firework display at Paris in 1770, disaster at, 8 Fitzgerald, Pamela, afterwards Lady Edward, acclaimed by the Revolutionary mob, 91 Fitzherbert, Mrs., the Prince of Wales gives her his portrait by Madame Lebrun, 147 Fleury, Cardinal, Madame Lebrun's picture of, 14-15 Fleury, Duchesse de, friend of Madame Lebrun at Rome, 11 1 ; her character, 112 ; her reply to Napoleon, 112 Fragonard, Jean Honore, his picture in the Wallace Gallery, anecdote of, 4 Franklin, Benjamin, sets the fashion in Paris, 47 Frenilly, Baron de, on the coronation procession of Napoleon, 162 Gainsborough, Thomas, his portraits of Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Siddons, 30 ; reference to his earnings, 70 Galerie des Dames Francaises, quoted, 72 GaUtzin, Princesse, contretemps at her dinner to the French Republican envoys, 126 Garat, Jean Pierre, singer, at Madame Lebrun's concerts, 51 Gardel, MaximiUen, dancer, 58 Gaudran, Monsieur, as owner of Moulin- J oli, 86, 87 GenneviUiers, seat of the Comte de Vaudreuil, 60 ; theatricals at, 60 ; the Mariage de Figaro produced at, 100 George IV, as Prince of Wales, at Madame Lebrun's soirees in London, 145 ; her portrait of him, 146 ; her account of him, 147 George V, King, restores bronze bas-reliefs to France in April 1914, 20 Georges, Mile, actress, her d6but, 164 ; her beauty, 164 Gladstone, W. E., references to, 31, 56 Golovine, Comtesse, her memoirs referred to, 130 GrEissini, Giuseppa, prima donna, at Madame Lebrun's soirees in London, 145 ; her kind- ness to the artist, 160 ; her success in London, 161 Gretry, Andre, composer, 7 ; plays at Madame Lebrun's house, 51 Greuze, Jean Baptiste, painter, friend of Elisabeth Vigee, influence of his work on hers, 6 Grimm, Baron F. M., assists Madame Lebrun at Gotha, 135 Grollier, Marquise de, her conversation, 46 ; her knowledge of mankind, 46 Gros-Chenet, Rue du, the Lebruns' house in, 75, et passim Guiard, Madame. See Labille-Guiard Guimard, Madeleine, premiere danseitse at the Paris Opera, 58 Haldane, Viscount, his Gifford Lectures quoted, I 70-1 71 Hall, Swedish artist, shows his miniature of Madame Lebrun to Voltaire, 63 Hall, Miles Addle and Lucie, daughters of the above, sit for the figures in Madame Lebrun's diploma picture, 64 Hamilton, Emma, Lady, Madame Lebrun's portraits of, 113 ; displays her " attitudes " in Madame Lebrun's drawing-room in Lon- don, 149 Hamilton, Sir William, husband of the above, his account of the Neapolitan Court, 113 ; his dealings in works of art, 158-159 Heist, Van der, painter, one of his pictures at Amsterdam delights Madame Lebrun, 37 Heury, Prince, of Prussia, brother of Frederick the Great, plays at Madame Lebrun's con- certs, 51 Herschell, Sir William (the elder), Madame Lebrun's visit to at Windsor, 159 Interlaken, Cantonal FSte at, 173 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, his view of portraiture, 107 Joinville, Madame de, her letters to Madame Tripier Lefranc, 182 Joseph, Swiss servant of Madame Lebrun, 1 76 Kauffmann, Angelica, painter, at Rome, 109 Kaunitz, Prince de, his kindness to Madame Lebrun, 119; his death, 119 Kinska, Comtesse, her remarkable marriage, 118 Knole, visit to the Duchess of Dorset at, 150-151 Kourakin, Princesse Natalie, friend of Madame Lebrun, on the Uffizi portrait, 10 ; with Princesse Dolgorouky, 126 ; in Paris after the Restoration, 1 77 ; meets Madame Re- camier, 177 ; Madame Lebrun's letters to, passim Labille-Guiard, Adelaide, portrait-painter, first exhibits her work, 12 ; elected to the Aca- demy, 42 ; during the Terror, loi Laborde, Marquise de, her portrait, 34 Lacrobc, Paul, his XVIII"" Siicle quoted, 8 Larive, Jean, actor, his respect for Mile Clairon, 56 Latour, Maurice, pastellist, mentioned, 7 Lauzun, Armand, Due de, his charming talk, 13 Lawrence, Sir Thomas, P.R.A., his portrait of Mrs. Siddons mentioned, 30 Lebrun, Ecouchard, poet, his " ode to himself," 50 ; his verses on Madame Lebrun, 64 ; his adaptable principles, 73 ; at the " Greek supper," 85 Lebrun, Jean Baptiste Pierre, husband of Vigee-Lebrun, his proposal of marriage, 16 ; reason for a secret wedding, 17 ; his character, 20 ; saves works of art during the Revolution, 20 ; his first salon picture, 39 ; defence of his wife, 69 ; death, 175 Lebrun, Marie Elisabeth Louise Vigee-, her infancy, 2 ; studies art, 5 ; her appearance, 230 INDEX 10 ; legal trouble about her work, 12 ; first exhibits her pictures, 12 ; social engagements, 13 ; meets Marie Antoinette, 14 ; sends present to French Academy, 14 ; marriage, 17 ; slanders about her, 18 ; her school, and its speedy collapse, 18-19 ; petition for separation of goods drawn up, but not proceeded with, 19 ; her letter to Prince de BaufEremont, 33 ; at Versailles, 35 ; member of the Academy of Art, 42 ; gives up dinner- parties, 53 ; hbel on, 71 ; her acquaintance with Calonne, 74-75 ; visits Madame du Barry, 79 ; dines with the Mysorean envoys, 83 ; her " Greek supper," 84-86 ; her troubles when the Revolution begins, 90-92 ; leaves Paris in disguise, 92 ; anxieties of the journey, 93 ; rests at Lyons, 94 ; crossing the Alps, 95 ; recognised by a postiUon, 95 ; arrives at Turin, 95 ; at Bologna, 95 ; her character, 98 ; her friends, 100 ; her qualities as artist, 103-107 ; arrives at Florence, 108 ; Rome, 109 ; on Michelangelo and Raphael, 109 ; trouble in finding quiet lodgings, no ; at Naples, 113; paints Lady Hamilton's portrait, 113 ; at Venice, 114 ; at Turin, 115 ; disappointed of returning to France, 115 ; at Milan, 115 ; arrives in Vienna, 117 ; her life there, 11 7-1 21 ; journey to St. Petersburg, 121-122 ; her success at Dresden en route, 121 ; visit to Prince Henry of Prussia, 122 ; received by Catherine II, 124 ; her mistake on that occasion, 124 ; arranges tableaux vivants at Princesse Dolgorouky's, 127 ; losses by robbery and the failure of a bank, 128 ; encounter with a French scandal- monger, 128 ; her court portraits at St. Petersburg, 129-130-133 ; she arranges a fancy dress which annoys the Empress, 130 ; her charges for portraits, 130, 172 ; distress at her daughter's marriage, 133 ; visits Moscow, 133 ; leaves Russia, 134 ; at Potsdam with Queen Louise, 134 ; return to Paris, 135 ; resumes her " evenings," 139 ; goes to London, 141 ; her parties in Maddox Street, 145 ; portrait of the Prince of Wales, 146 ; country visits in England, 150-158 ; at Bath, 157 ; in Paris again, 162 ; tour in Switzerland, 167-174 ; visits Madame de Stafil at Coppet, 171 ; death of Monsieur Lebrun, 175 ; she buys a house at Louve- ciennes, 175 ; her house pillaged by Prussian soldiers, 176 ; received by Louis XVIII, 177 ; death of her daughter, 178 ; visit to Bor- deaux, 180; last years, 181-182; her death, 183 ; where she is buried, 183 Le Ffivre, step-father of Madame Lebrun, 7 ; his avarice and jealousy, 7 ; his cottage at Chaillot, 14 Lefranc, Eugenie, Madame Tripier, niece of J. B. P. Lebrun, 106 ; with Madame Lebrun, 181 ; her quarrel with CaroUne de Riviere, 182-183 Le Kain, Henri Louis, actor, 7, 55 Le Moine, sculptor, 7 Le Pelletier, Monsieur, " of Mortefontaine," his ill-managed house, 62 ; his eccentricities, 62-63 Ligne, Charles Joseph, Prince de, his opinion of Madame Lebrun's " panier " portrait of Marie Antoinette, 31 ; entertains the Lebruns in Belgium, 37 ; encourages Madame Lebrun to visit St. Petersburg, 121 Louis XIV, his poUcy, 27 Louis XVI, his marriage, 8 ; character of, 28 ; and the entrance of Vigee-Lebrun to the Academy, 41 ; interview with Calonne, 71 Louis XVIII, as Comte de Provence, his songs, 35 Louise, Queen of Prussia, sits to Madame Lebrun, 134 ; her remark on her own chil- dren's appearance, 134 Louveciennes, Madame du Barry's house at, 79-81 ; Vigee-Lebrun at, 79-82 ; buys a house at, 175 ; grave of Vig6e-Lebrun at, 183 LubomirsM, Prince Henri, his portrait, 88 Maddox Street, London, Madame Lebrun's house in, 144-145 Madrid, insurrection at, in 1766, 24 Malmaison, Madame Lebrun meets Sieyes at dinner there, 89 Maria Theresa, Empress, her opinion of the " panier " portrait of Marie Antoinette, 31 Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, disaster during her marriage festivities in Paris, 8 ; her character, 28 ; sits to Madame Lebrun, 29 ; description of, 30 ; portraits of, 30-33 ; her conversation, 32 Marie Feodorovna, Empress of Russia, her portrait, 130 Marly, Elisabeth Vigee meets the Queen there, 14 ; the artist's disquieting experience at, (in 1789), 88 ; state of her place after the Revolution, 137 Marmoutier, the famous monastery, its end, 180 Mars, Mademoiselle, actress, her great attrac- tions, 57 Martini, composer, plays at Madame Lebrun's house, 51 Maupertuis, seat of the Marquis de Montes- quiou, the great state kept there, 61 Menageot, Franjois, historical painter, advises Vigee-Lebrun, 40 ; at Rome, 109 Mercier, Louis Sebastien, his Tableau de Paris quoted, 49 Millais, Sir J. E., P.R.A., his portraits of Disraeli and Gladstone mentioned, 31 Moira, Earl of, entertains Madame Lebrun in England, 155 ; his Ubrary, 155 Mole, Fran9ois, actor, 57 Montesquiou, Marquis de, his town and country manners, 61 Montesson, Madame, morganatic wife of the Due d' Orleans, 60 Montpensier, Due de, his walks with Madame Lebrun at Twickenham, 152 INDEX 231 Monvel, Jacques, actor, 57 Mortefontaine, seat of M. le Pelletier at, 61 Moscow, Madame Lebrun at, 133 Moulin- Joli, island in the Seine near Paris, 64-65 ; why Madame Lebrun failed to buy it. 65 Muller, J. G., his engraving of a picture by ■Vigee-Lebrun, 39 Murat, CaroUne, sister of Napoleon, trouble over her portrait, 165 Napoleon Bonaparte, his orders concerning Madame Lebrun's money at Venice, 115 ; his remark on Madame Lebrun's stay in Eng- land, 164 ; and Corinne, 171 Nigris, JuUe, Madame, daughter of Vig6e- Lebrun, her birth, 34 ; at the " Greek supper," 85 ; her appearance and accomplishments, 131 ; her marriage, 132 ; parted from her husband, 162 ; her death, 178 Nigris, Monsieur, son-in-law of Madame Lebrun, 132 ; in Paris, 162 Noailles, Marshal de, at Madame Lebrun's soirees, 50 Noisville, Madame de, friend of Madame Lebrun, 178 Opera, the Paris, visitors from Brussels " for the evening," 37 ; performers at, 55, 58 Orleans, Due de (grandson of the Regent), at Raincy, 5o Orleans, Louis PhiUppe Joseph, Due d' (PhiUppe EgaUt6), his remark on Elisabeth Vig6e, 12 Orleans, Louis PhiUppe, afterwards the " Bour- geois King " of France, at Twickenham, 152 Orleans, Duchesse de, wife of Philippe EgaUt6, her portrait by Vigee-Lebrun, 87 ; her nature, 88 Palais-Royal, the, pictures at, 6 Paris, still badly lighted, 5 ; Madame Lebrun's life at, passim Paul, Emperor of Russia, rejoicings on his death, 133 Pierre, Monsieur, Director of the Academy of Art, his objection to women as members, 39 Pius VI, Pope, why Madame Lebrun did not paint his portrait, iii Polignac, Duchesse de, her influence at Ver- sailles, 52 ; her death, 119 Poniatowsky, Stanislas, King of Poland, his patronage of Vig^e-Lebrun, 130 PortaUs, Baron, his remarks on Muller's en- graving of the " Chapeau de Paille " portrait, 39 Portman Square, Madame Lebrun's stay in, 143 ; why she left, 143 Potemkin, Prince, his " entertainment " for his niece, 127 Potocka, Comtesse Vincent, Madame Lebrun's letters to, 167 Potsdam, Vig6e-Lebrun at, 134 Pr6ville, Pierre, comedian, 56 Provence, Comte de. See Louis XVIII Prussia, Prince Henry of, entertains Madame Lebrun at Reinsberg, 122 Prussia, Louise, Queen of. See Louise Raincy, seat of the Due d'Orleans (grandson of the Regent), stag-hunting at, 60 ; Madame Lebrun's visit to, 60-61 Raucourt, Mile, actress, her d6but, 57 ; her character, 57 Recamier, Madame, her " stage-fright " at Coppet, 172 ; meets Princesse Natalie Koura- kin, 177 Revolution, The French, Incidents of, 87-93 Re3midre, Madame Grimod de la, friend of Vigee-Lebrun, 45 ; her manner, 45 Reynifire, Monsieur Grimod de la, husband of tiie above, his dread of thunder, 45 ; his absurdities, 45 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, P.R.A., his remark on the portrait of Calonne, 148 Ritt, Augustin, miniaturist, his portrait of Vig6e-Lebrun mentioned, 10 Rivarol, Antoine de, and Madame Lebrun, 72 ; his reply to a question by Calonne, 73 Rivifire, Caroline de (Vig6e), niece of Madame Lebrun, 181 ; her alleged greed for money, 182 Riviere, Monsieur de, Saxon Charg6 d'Affaires in Paris, shelters Vig6e-Lebrun at the out- break of the Revolution, 91 Robert, Hubert, his portrait by Vigee-Lebrun, 87 ; his physical strength, 87 ; his character, 87 ; imprisoned during the Terror, loi ; letter to him from Madame Lebrun at Rome, 109, no ; at her house in 1805, 163 Rochefort, Princesse de Rohan-, friend of EUsabeth Vig6e, her parties, 13 Rohan, the Cardinal de, 13 Rohan-Rochefort. See Rochefort Romney, George, his portrait of Mrs. Robinson, 30 Roslin, Alexandre, Swedish artist, 31 RosUn, Madame, an Academician, 39 Rouen, David's portrait of Madame Lebrun at, 10 Rousseau, Madame Lebrun's admiration for his works, 167 Rubens, his Henri Quatre pictures, 5 ; his " Chapeau de Poil " portrait, 38 Russian hospitality to foreigners, 125 Sacchini, Antoine, composer, at Madame Le- brun's concerts, 51 Saint-Huberti, Madame, operatic singer, 58 Sails, Baron de, his unrecorded anecdotes, 169 School for Scandal, the, mentioned, 48 Schouvaloff, Andre, Comte, Russian courtier, sits to Elisabeth Vig6e, 13 ; his popularity, 13 Segur, Louis PhiUppe, Comte de. Napoleon's remark to him concerning Madame Lebrun, 164 Siddons, Mrs., 161 232 INDEX Sieyds, the Abb6, at a dinner at Malmaison, 89 Skavronska, Comtesse, her idle life in Italy, 113 Stael, Madame de, at Coppet, 171 ; her con- versation, 172 ; how her portrait was painted, 172 Suzanne, Monsieur, sculptor, his kindness to Elisabeth Vig6e, 14 ; his " singular malady," 14 Switzerland, Madame Lebrun's tour in, 167-174 Tallien, Madame de, her beauty and character, 139-140 Talma, Madame (Julie Carreau) sits to EUsabeth Vigee, 13 Tchemycheff, Comtesse, her friendship with Julie Lebrun, 132 ; helps her to marry M. Nigris, 132 Thoun, Comtesse de, her " evenings " at Vienna, 117 Tippoo-Sahib, Sultan of Mysore, sends envoys to Louis XVI, 82 Tivoli, Monsieur Boutin's house on Mont- martre, Madame Lebrun at, 64 Todi, Madame, vocalist, at Madame Lebrun's concerts, 51 Trimlestown, Lord, friend of Vigee-Lebrun, 161 Usman Khan, envoy from Tippoo-Sahib, his portrait by Vigee-Lebrun, 82 ; his end, 83 Vaudeville Theatre, Paris, Vigee-Lebrun ap- plauded there, 43 Vaudreuil, Comte de, described by Madame Lebrun, 52 ; at the " Greek supper," 84-85 ; at Twickenham, 151 ; in Paris after the Revolution, 176 Vaudreuil, Comtesse de, wife of the above, entertains Vigee-Lebrun at Twickenham, 151 Verdun, Marquis de, how he escaped death at the Revolution, 138 Verdun, Marquise de, lifelong friend of Madame Lebrun, on the day of Julie Lebrun's birth, 34 ; tells Madame Lebrun of Julie's death, 178 Vemet, Joseph, his advice to EUsabeth Vigee, 6 ; proposes her for election (in 1783) to the Academy, 39 Versailles, life at before the Revolution, 26-27 .' Vigee-Lebrun at, 29-35 Vestris, Auguste, dancer, his talent, 58 Vestris, Gaetano, dancer, his vanity, 58 Vial, General, French Minister at Berne, 168 Vien, Madame, painter, member of the Academy, 39 Vienna, life there, described by Madame Lebrun, 120 Vig6e, Jeanne (nSe Messain) mother of Madame Lebrun, her character, 3 ; her death, 131 Vigee, Louis, father of Madame Lebrun, his work as an artist, 3 ; his obsessions, 3 ; his death, 4 Vig6e, Etienne (Louis Jean Etienne), writer, brother of Madame Lebrun, 7 ; and the " Greek supper," 84 ; sees the King and Queen at the Hotel de Ville (Oct. 6, 1789), 92 Vigee, Madame Etienne {nSe Riviere), wife of the above, at the " Greek supper," 85 ; letter from Vigee-Lebrun in Russia to, 129 Vigee-Lebrun. See Lebrun, Marie Elisabeth Louise Vigee- Villette, Marquise de (the " Belle-et-Bonne " of Voltaire), 63 Viotti, Giovanni, violinist, plays at Madame Lebrun's house ia Paris, 51 ; in London, 145 ; guest at Mrs. Chinnery's country house, 150 Voltaire, and a miniature of Vigee-Lebrun by HaU, 63 Walpole, Horace, on pictures at the Palais- Royal, quoted, 6 ; letter to Gray, 26 Warwick Castle, Madame Lebrun at, 158 West, Benjamin, P.R.A., Madame Lebrun visits his studio, 148 Westminster Abbey, frequent visits to it of Madame Lebrun, 144 Wilscheck, Comte de, Austrian envoy at Milan, advises Madame Lebrun to visit Vienna, 116 Young, Arthur, at Pont Beauvoisin, 94 Zuboff, Prince, favourite of Catherine II, his feeling towards Vig6e-Lebrun, 129 Printed by HauU, W»tsm & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury, England,