Exhibition Review

Exhibition Review Deborah Kennedy Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842): The Portraitist to Marie Antoinette. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (10 June 2016 to 11 September 2016). Other tour dates: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (15 February 2016 to 15 May 2016); and Grand Palais, Paris (23 September 2015 to 11 January 2016). Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842) was one of the most famous artists of the eighteenth century, and in her example we have the story of a woman who was both successful and prolific during her lifetime, not a neglected female talent to be discovered posthumously. Vigée Le Brun is known to have painted over nine hundred works, the majority of them portraits—and portraits of women at that. This major retrospective has a decidedly celebratory tone, marketed with what one imagines was a collective cheer of “at last.” It is unprecedented to have a solo exhibit of a female artist on such a large scale. One cannot overstate the historical significance of the worldwide attention it has brought to a new vision of female agency in the world of the visual arts. Opening in Paris at the Grand Palais in September 2015, and then moving to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in February 2016, the exhibition had its final showing at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa from June to September 2016. Some 160 paintings were on display in Paris, with around ninety in New York and Ottawa. Many of Vigée Le Brun’s subjects were members of the royal family and nobility in her native country of France, but her fame was widespread, and when she lived in exile during the revolutionary years, she became a portraitist of international scope, with well-heeled clients wherever she lived, from Italy to Russia to Switzerland, with a brief sojourn in England. Portrait art of the eighteenth century was, of course, restricted to individuals and families who could afford it. Members of the rising middle class were having portraits done as well, but it remained a genre for [End Page 117] the privileged. Vigée Le Brun commanded high prices for her work, and like the masterpieces of Gainsborough and Reynolds, hers were not simply likenesses but true works of art. The organizers of the exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada made great efforts to welcome the community, hosting a “Vigée Le Brun Day” on 11 June 2016. This featured not only well-attended tours or lectures by Geneviève Haroche-Bouzinac and two of the co-curators, Joseph Baillio and Paul Lang, but also several hands-on events. These included live model sketching (with all materials supplied), as well as more leisurely sessions that capitalized on the current adult coloring book craze, where visitors could pick up a pencil and color in a page of Vigée Le Brun’s work. Two coloring books of her paintings have been published to coincide with the exhibition (Chêne; Larousse), and this is surely another savvy marketing tool for promoting her work. The exhibition in Ottawa was organized according to the chronological phases in Vigée Le Brun’s career, though the first objects on display were a series of self-portraits and a bust of the artist by sculptor Augustin Pajou. Along with several large gallery rooms, the exhibition included alcoves devoted to a timeline and other contextualizing information. On the way out, for instance, one could stop to view a specially made film about Vigée Le Brun’s life, also available on DVD. Most impressive from an experiential point of view was the exhibition side room called Marie Antoinette’s Boudoir. This beautifully designed room, all in creams and pinks and florals, provided a replica of her bedroom at Versailles, along with a demonstration of the art of getting dressed in the eighteenth century (with audience participation), starting with the chemise and topping things off with a wig and a hat. For all the books on eighteenth-century or Regency era fashion one might own, this was by far the best practical introduction to clothing of the period that one could hope...

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