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Helm, W. H.; Vigée-Lebrun, Louise-Elisabeth [Ill.]
Vigée-LeBrun 1755-1842: her life, works and friendships : with a catalogue raisonne of the artist's pictures : with a frontispiece in colours, 40 photogravure plates and other illustrations — London: Hutchinson & Co., 1915

DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0240
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1793

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Kaunitz, then considerably over eighty, but still one of the finest horse-
men that could be seen. It was in his drawing-room that “ the Sibyl ”
portrait of Lady Hamilton was exhibited for a fortnight, during which
the Prince “ did the honours of that picture to the town and to the court
with a grace that was all kindness for me.”
The death of this kindly old man, whilst she was still at Vienna,
afforded an object-lesson in the shallowness of popular esteem to Madame
Lebrun, who had received many such lessons before she left Paris. “ Up
to the time of his death, the glory that he had gained as Minister still
remained to him ; on New Year’s Day, and on his birthday, a huge crowd
came to his house to congratulate him, no one kept away, one might have
supposed he was Emperor on those occasions. I was therefore greatly
astonished, at the moment of his death, by the indifference of the Viennese
at the loss of their celebrated countryman.”
Vigee-Lebrun, as we know, had always been fond of theatricals, and
at the houses of the Strogonoffs and the Fries (both of which families
provided her with several subjects for portraits) she saw some amateur
performances entirely to her taste.
For a time the social delights of Vienna were saddened, if not stopped,
for the French exiles by the news from Paris, first of the execution of
Louis XVI, and then of that of Marie Antoinette. This last tragedy does
actually appear to have killed the Duchesse de Polignac, who, however
unhappy her personal influence over the Queen may have been, really
loved her deeply. Madame Lebrun did not read the news of either event.
Having one day seen in a gazette a list of persons who had been guillotined,
wherein were the names of nine of her own acquaintances, she never—so
she tells us—looked again at newspapers (which she calls papiers-nowo elies')
until those troubled days were over. She heard from her brother in Paris
that the King and Queen had died on the scaffold. It would seem that
the horror which she felt at the Paris events of 1793 was little allied with
grief. It is difficult to discover, at any point in her memoirs, that she
gave up any particular pleasure in consequence of bad news. Hers was
one of those buoyant natures which, so long as the immediate evidence
of anguish and death can be kept away from them, are not very deeply
affected. The knowledge that a dead body was in the same house with
her always caused her intense distress, even when she had never seen the
dead person in life or in death. But the gloom cast on her mind by the
tragedies of the Revolution was never of long duration. In speaking of
 
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