description: Described by a contemporary as 'the idol of her century', Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun rose from humble origins in pre-Revolutionary France to become one of the leading painters of her age and one of the most successful women artist in history.Born in 1755, the daughter of a portraitist and a former hairdresser, Vigée Le Brun triumphed over institutional prejudice to make a career as Marie-Antoinette's favourite portraitist and painter-confidante of royalty all over Europe. her connections in Parisian high society made the Revolution dangerous for her, and after the fall of the Bastille she fled France both to save her own skin and to go on painting beautiful women and powerful men. Her wandering, cosmopolitan life took her to Bourbon Naples, Hapsburg Vienna, imperial St. Petersburg and Georgian London, ans wherever she went she attracted attention for her alluring portraits.Vigée Le Brun, in both her personal and her public life, was a woman of contradictions. A revolutionary female artist, she was apolitical reactionary who yearned for what he saw as the lost paradise of France before the Revolution. A proud and independent woman, she raised her daughter single-handedly, only tragically to lose her affection.Angelica Goodden's illuminating account of this extraordinary woman - the first biography of the artist in English for seventy-five-years - is also a vivid portrait of an age of society scandal and political turmoil. Drawing on contemporary records and Vigée Le Brun's own fascinating memoirs, Godden brings to life the remarkable range of friends and acquaintances the artist made through her work, from Catherine the Great to Madame de Staël to Emma Hamilton, whose suggestive portrait won Vigée Le Brun some notoriety. As her art regains favour, this definitive biography is a long-overdue reassessment of this sometimes scandalous, often devious but prodigiously gifted woman.
language: English
title: The Sweetness of Life. A Biography of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun
titlecomplete: The Sweetness of Life. A Biography of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun
genres: Biography, History, Art
ratings_count: 17
publisher: Chameleon