Elisabeth Le Brun was known as a prominent woman artist in Eighteenth-Century
art. She is known for her work as a portrait painter. Her most famous works are included
in the series that she had painted at age twenty-four of Queen Marie-Antoinette. Elisabeth
was a woman of so many talents. Before she died at eighty-seven years old, she was an
accomplished artist, exceptional musician, and a loving mother. She was an unusually
unattractive woman. Although, she was charming and self-confident with an ability to
present her sitters' personas with an advantage. She was very reputable because she
managed to keep her head and professional reputation in a time of the French Revolution.
Whereupon she gained fame in France, Italy, Austria, and Russia.
By the age fifteen she could have supported herself and her family.
Nine years later she began work on her most famous portrait series of
Marie-Antoinette, which included "Marie-Antoinette and her children at Verssailles-1788".
This portrait was the last of thirty that Elisabeth painted of the doomed Queen.
This painting still hangs at Versailles. Elisabeth was a painter of the Rococo
period which placed emphasis on portraying the carefree life of the nobility rather
than on heroes or martyrs. Love and romance were considered to be better subjects for
art than historical or religious subjects. The styles characteristics were free, graceful
movements; a playful use of line; and delicate colors. Marie-Antoinette is painted with a
fair complexion and is portrayed as an extremely feminine woman. Elisabeth shows Marie
as a good motherly figure. The Queen and Elisabeth developed a close relationship which
later became too dangerous. After Marie-Antoinette and Louis XIV were arrested,
Elisabeth began twelve years of exile. Although, her talent gained her admissions to
several academies. Here is a quote characterizing her art as, "a co...