Memoirs
of
Madame Vigée Lebrun
Uniform with this volume:
MEMOIRS OF COUNTESS POTOCKA
Illustrated. Translated by Lionel Strachey
MEMOIRS OF A CONTEMPORARY
Illustrated. Translated by Lionel Strachey
MME. VIGÉE LEBRUN AND HER DAUGHTER.
Memoirs
of
Madame Vigée Lebrun
Translated by
Lionel Strachey
With Numerous Reproductions of
Paintings by the Authoress
London
Grant Richards
1904
Copyright, 1903, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
Printed by Manhattan Press
New York. N. Y., U. S. A.
(p. v) PREFATORY NOTE
Madame Lebrun brought out her Memoirs at the suggestion of her friend,the Princess Dolgoruki, in 1835. The authoress was born in 1756, atParis, where she died in 1842. She was the daughter of Louis Vigée, anobscure portrait painter. Her baptismal name was Marie LouiseElisabeth. In 1776 Mademoiselle Vigée was married to Jean BaptistePierre Lebrun, a notable picture dealer and critic, known also to hiscontemporaries as an inveterate gambler.
This book forms a rendering of Madame Carette's edition of the LebrunMemoirs, slightly abridged for the sake of uniformity with the"Memoirs of the Countess Potocka" and the "Memoirs of a Contemporary,"issuing from the same hands as the present volume.
(p. vii) CONTENTS
Chapter I. Youth. PAGE
Precocious Talents Manifested — Mlle. Vigée's Father and Mother — Death of Her Father — A Friend of Her Girlhood — Her Mother Remarries — Mlle. Vigée's First Portrait of Note (Count Schouvaloff) — Acquaintance with Mme. Geoffrin — The Authoress's Puritanical Bringing-up — Male Sitters Attempt Flirtation — Public Resorts of Paris Before the Revolution3
Chapter II. Up the Ladder of Fame.
Tedious Sojourn in the Country — Social Amenities in Paris — Mlle. Vigée Becomes Mme. Lebrun — Prognostications of Unhappy Wedlock — On the Ladder of Fame — Singularities of Oriental Taste — Marie Antoinette as a Model — Painting the Royal Family — How Louis XVIII. Sang — The Princess de Lamballe16
Chapter III. Work and Pleasure.
Impressions of Flanders — The Authoress's Election to the French Royal Academy of Painting — Her Devotion to Work — Social Pleasures — A Tale of an Artist's Extravagance — Calonne and Calumny — M. Lebrun Allows His Wife Naught Per Cent. of Her Earnings — A Dramatic Constellation — The Incomparable Mme. Dugazon32
Chapter IV. Exile.
A Gallic Maecenas — Anecdote Concerning Beaumarchais — The Duke de Nivernais — Mme. Du Barry Sketched in Words — And Painted in Oils — Rumblings of the (p. viii) Revolution — Mme. Lebrun's Fearsome Journey to Italy — Renewed Artistic Activity at Rome — Easter Sund