The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-12-10
THE NEW PUBLICATIONS.
SOME OF THE LATEST BOOKS OF
 THE SEASON.

Memoirs of Mime. vIgeI Lsbrun-Fred-
 erick Trevor HIII's "Thc Wcb''-
 DickenS t'London''-"Earth' Enig-
 mas,,-story of tho Foss River Rnnci
 -"rhe HolIaday Case'' "Merry
 Hearts"-Rips aud Raps-Raphasi
 Tuck & Co.'S Booklets, Calendars,
 Etc -NagazIne Notes.
 A book of remarkable interest is the Memoirs of Mime. Vigee Lebrun' (Dou- bleday, Page and Company, translated and edited by MT. Lionel Strachey. The narrative has been slightly con- densed to make the volume uniform with the Memoirs of Countess Potoc- ka', and Memoirs of 8 Contemporary" which were translated by the same hand. Much of interest is related con- corning European sovereigns of the times in which the author lived. She travelled extensively over Europe and was one of the most successful portrait painters of her day, and painted the portraits of nearly all the leading sov- ereigns. Four of her portraits are fa- miliar to art lovers the world over,- that representing herself and her daugh- ter, the portrait of Madame Potocka, Queen Louise of Prussia and the Girl with a huff. It is by these alone that the artist, Madame Lebrun, is known to the great mass of picture lovers in this country, although during her fifty years professional career--from IT'S to 1S2S- she painted nearly seven hundred por- traits and half as many ideal figure subjects. She was born artist, and was bred amidst artistic surroundings. Her father was a portrait painter, and being of an eminently social disposition, his house was the meeting place of ar- lists and friends of art, so that the child grew up in an atmosphere conge- nial to her tastes and favorable to her development along the lines of her fu- ture career She showed surprising tal- ent at a very early age, and at seven painted a picture which threw her father into transports of joy" At four teen she was painting portraits and copying pictures at the Louvre. At twenty her professional career began. Her work as painter of portraits soon became in great demand from the most eminent people and she was overrun with orders. In painting the portraits of crowned heads she had wonderful op- portunity for studying their characters and observing their surroundings, and she saw also most of the celebrities of the day. She writes about them all gracefully and most entertainingly. Her descriptions are lively and gossippy and cast side lights upon the lives of many noted personages. None of her sex in the past century had greater op- portunity for her pen as regards the eminent people of her day. Madame Lebrun died in 1S42, after having paint ed portraits of Marie Antoinette and her ill-fated court, after having spent fruitful years in Italy before Napoleon overran it; after having intimately known the, terrible but great Catherine of Russia and her cruel son Paul. and the Alexander who came to the throne by Paul's murder to be Napoleon's fate and after further sojourning in the Par IS of the Restoration and the London of the Regency. Her professional career covered nearly half a century. She saw much of the French court before and after the Revolution. Tn 1779 she was honored by an order to paint the queen. E Marie Antoinette of France, who was then in the heyday of her youth and beauty. Says Madame Lebrun: Ma rife Antoinette was tall and admirably built, being somewhat stout, though not excessively so. Her arms were superb, her hands small and perfectly formed, and her feet charming. She had the best walk of any woman in France, car- rying her head erect with dignity that stamped her queen in the midst of her whole court, her majestic mien, fowev- CT, not in the least diminishing the sweetness and amiability of her face. Her features were not regular. She had inherited that long and narrow oval peculiar to the Austrian nation. Her eyes were not large; in color they were almost blue, and they were at the same time merry and kind. Her nose was slender and pretty, and her mouth not too large, though her lips were rather thick. But the most remarkable thing about her face was the splendor of her complexion. never have seen one so brilliant, and brilliant is the word, for her skin was so transparent that it bore no umber in the painting. Neither could render the real fleet of it as wished. had no co1ors to paint such Freshness, such delicate tints which were hers alone and which I had never seen in any other woman. As for her conversation, it would be tliffi- cult for me to convey all its charm, all its affability. do not think that Queen Marie Antoinette ever missed an oppor- 3tunity of saying something pleasant to those who had the honor of being pre- sented to her. She neglected nothing to impart to her children the courteous and gracious manners which. endeared her so to all her surroundings. once saw her make her six-year-old daugh- ter dine with a little peasant girl and attend to her wants. The queen saw to | 1t that the little visitor was served first. saying to her daughter, You must |do the honors.'"
 Madame Lebrun painted in all thirty |pictures of the queen-busts, half |lengths, full-lengths and in groups with her children. She also painted the en- tire royal family, some of the members