This sensitively rendered yet visually striking self-portrait by Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was executed by the artist shortly after she had, with her nine-year-old daughter and the child’s governess, fled revolutionary Paris for Italy in the autumn of 1789. The French Revolution is a period of extraordinarily well-documented European history, and this is not the context in which to further elaborate, however suffice it to say Mme Le Brun’s proximity to the Maison de la Reine and various members of Marie Antoinette’s close circle (see lots 7, 8 and 19) made her at one moment the quasi-official painter of the Ancien Régime and in the next breath a political enemy of France.

Though the upheaval of Vigée Le Brun’s exile from her homeland was undoubtedly a time of profound insecurity and melancholy for the artist, these pressures clearly did nothing to negate her artistic genius. Indeed, the present work can be counted as one of, if not, the finest and most important pastels in her oeuvre. Executed in pastel on gray paper the artist portrays herself looking all of twenty – she was in fact thirty-four years old at the time she produced it – as she dons the simple clothing of a traveler in the form of a dress with a wide collar and short cape (a type of carrick), whilst her curly chestnut hair is bound into a muslin kerchief knotted at the top. It has been noted by Mary Tavener Holmes that “the modesty of the costume…adds to the naturalism and feeling of vitality” an observation that when coupled with the technical handling of the medium, in which “the chalk is often left unblended, adding to the sense of freshness and youth”² leaves the viewer simultaneously enthralled by the artists extraordinary artistic capacity as well as her legendary beauty.

With an artist as socially adept as Vigée Le Brun there can be little doubt that behind the technical accomplishments and aesthetic appeal of this pastel also lay a powerful political message for her detractors in France. Gone are the vestiges of extravagance or whimsy, traits which in much of her society and court portraits of women came to define her work as well as the era that was swept away by the Revolution, and were to be found in early self-portraits, such as Self-Portrait Wearing a Black Hat decorated with Cherry-Red Ribbons,³ and the Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat,⁴ as well as her numerous portrayals of Marie-Antoinette. Instead, in the words of Guégan “of the vanities of high society, she (Vigée Le Brun) has retained only the most elementary coquetry. Was there any better response than simplicity to the slanderous pamphlets targeting her on the eve of the Revolution?”.⁵

Now many hundreds of miles from Paris and the ongoing recriminations of the French Revolution, Vigée Le Brun needed to provide herself and her daughter with some semblance of stability. She achieved this in part through the execution of two of her most celebrated self-portraits, the present work as well as her splendid Self-Portrait,⁶ commissioned by the Uffizi authorities following the artists visit to Florence. In mid-November 1789, just over a month after her departure from Paris, Mme Le Brun arrived in Italy and whilst enroute to Rome received authorization to visit the Palazzo Pitti and the Galleria degli Uffizi, in Florence. There she was able to admire, amongst the many treasures, the collection of self-portraits first assembled by Prince Leopoldo de’ Medici from 1664 onward and was flattered when asked to add her own image to the prestigious assemblage (Fig.1). The Uffizi painting is an artistic tour de force and its initial reception was well documented by François-Guillaume Ménageot, the then Director of the Académie de France in Rome. According to Ménageot, “The painting Mme Le Brun has just finished is a complete success; with one voice, all of Rome is in awe of her talent and situates that portrait among the ranks of the most beautiful works”.⁷

Ménageot is an interesting figure to quote regarding the Uffizi painting as his role within the broader context of Vigée Le Brun’s arrival in Italy was highly important and multifaceted. Firstly, in his capacity as Director of the Académie de France in Rome he was able to provide Vigée Le Brun with an apartment at the Palazzo Mancini in which she both lived and worked. This gesture of support was in some ways a reversal of roles for Ménageot and Mme Le Brun as in Paris, before taking up his post in Rome, the former had rented an apartment in the Hôtel de Lubert, the townhouse owned by Vigée Le Brun and her husband. Secondly and of particular interest and relevance to the present work, Ménageot was, in fact, its first owner having been presented it, per the old inscription to the original backing, by the artist. There has been some speculation surrounding the intention of this gift, with Guégan alluding to the “temptation to muse about the meaning of this token of affection”⁸ particularly considering the sitters more youthful appearance. It seems likely, however, that the gift was made primarily out of gratitude for the way in which Ménageot supported Mme Le Brun and her family, upon her arrival in Rome. There can also be no doubt that there would have been little harm, as far as her artistic reputation was concerned, for the influential and well-connected Director of the Académie de France in Rome to be in possession of this virtuoso reminder, for any one in doubt, of what the artist was capable.

The appearance of this exquisite and rare work, presented for sale for the first time in over four decades, is a market defining moment for a work on paper by Vigée Le Brun. Its appearance comes some five years after the market for the artist’s work was redefined in these rooms by the sale of her monumental portrait of Muhammad Dervish Khan⁹ and a decade since the last work on paper of major significance, Vigée Le Brun’s black chalk and stump Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat with a Plume,¹⁰ appeared unexpectedly and with little fanfare at a small auction house in the suburbs of Paris. Although it is easy, on occasion, for hyperbole to muddy our understanding of the importance of an object there is little risk of overstating things in the case of Self Portrait in Traveling Costume. It’s appearance on the market presents both private and institutional collectors alike with a unique opportunity to compete for that most rare of things, a true masterpiece, created at arguably the most fascinating and life defining moments of the artist’s career, that maintains through its utterly exquisite condition every semblance of quality and nuance that Vigée Le Brun first instilled in it over 230 years ago.

1. J. Baillio and X. Salmon (eds.), Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, exhibition catalogue, Paris, Grand Palais, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Ottawa, Musée des Beaux-Arts du Canada, 2015-16, cat. no. 7

2. See New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Eighteenth-Century French Drawings in New York Collections, New York 1999, p. 216

3. Baillio and Salmon, op. cit., p. 81, reproduced

4. Ibid., p. 11, reproduced

5. J. Baillio, K. Baetjer, and P. Lang, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, exhibition catalogue, New York 2016, p. 139

6. Baillio and Salmon, op. cit., p. 143, reproduced

7. Correspondance des directeurs de l’Académie de France, vol. 15, p. 403, doc. 9065

8. Baillio and Salmon, op. cit., p. 139

9. J. Baillio and X. Salmon, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, exhibition catalogue, Paris 2015, pp. 166-7, 352, cat. no. 53, reproduced p. 167; sale, New York, Sotheby’s, 30 January 2019, lot 38 ($7,185,900)

10. Baillio and Salmon, op. cit., p. 82, reproduced; Sale, Deuil-la-Barre, Hôtel des ventes de la Vallée de Montmorency, 11 March 2014, lot 16