DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61284#0259
130
VIGEE-LEBRUN
if we may trust that portrait. Indeed, the artist assures us that at a ball
at the Palace, where she was unable to keep count of the multitude of
lovely women who passed before her as she sat watching the polonaises,
the four young princesses of the Imperial family were the most beautiful.
They were all four dressed a la Grecque, their tunics being fastened on the
shoulders by diamond hooks, so that they seem to have shown their pretty
arms on this occasion, and to give the lie to Zuboff. Madame herself
assisted at the toilette of the Grand Duchess Elisabeth, “ so that her
costume was the most correct”—a conclusion that, remembering her idea
of the correct costume for Achilles, we may find it difficult to endorse.
We know from the Comtesse Golovine, who was in St. Petersburg at that
time, that the Empress was much displeased with the Grand Duchess for
appearing in this dress, which, in her eyes, was far from being “correct.”
After the death of Catherine, who, as Vigee-Lebrun believed, had been
a very fountain of happiness for her subjects, the brief and unhappy
reign of the eccentric Paul I was in no way inimical to the interests of the
French portrait-painter. The new Empress, Marie Feodorovna, had happy
memories of her visit to Paris. Madame Lebrun had there been presented
to her; and now, in 1799, she painted a great portrait of the new Empress,
with all the usual accessories of Royal portraiture—crown, columns,
sumptuous curtain and the rest.
Her vogue as a painter was also maintained by the exhibition of her
last portrait from life of Marie Antoinette, and the favour shown to her
by that involuntary roi faineant, Stanislas Poniatowsky, whose portrait
she painted twice, helped to keep her busy. Her charge seems to have
been about £300 for a portrait of ordinary size, a large price in those days.
In addition to her portraits of others, she painted for the Academy of St.
Petersburg, into which she had just been received with the usual honours,
the picture of herself, with her palette in her hand, which, from prints
and photographs, is familiar to the admirers of her work.
VIGEE-LEBRUN
if we may trust that portrait. Indeed, the artist assures us that at a ball
at the Palace, where she was unable to keep count of the multitude of
lovely women who passed before her as she sat watching the polonaises,
the four young princesses of the Imperial family were the most beautiful.
They were all four dressed a la Grecque, their tunics being fastened on the
shoulders by diamond hooks, so that they seem to have shown their pretty
arms on this occasion, and to give the lie to Zuboff. Madame herself
assisted at the toilette of the Grand Duchess Elisabeth, “ so that her
costume was the most correct”—a conclusion that, remembering her idea
of the correct costume for Achilles, we may find it difficult to endorse.
We know from the Comtesse Golovine, who was in St. Petersburg at that
time, that the Empress was much displeased with the Grand Duchess for
appearing in this dress, which, in her eyes, was far from being “correct.”
After the death of Catherine, who, as Vigee-Lebrun believed, had been
a very fountain of happiness for her subjects, the brief and unhappy
reign of the eccentric Paul I was in no way inimical to the interests of the
French portrait-painter. The new Empress, Marie Feodorovna, had happy
memories of her visit to Paris. Madame Lebrun had there been presented
to her; and now, in 1799, she painted a great portrait of the new Empress,
with all the usual accessories of Royal portraiture—crown, columns,
sumptuous curtain and the rest.
Her vogue as a painter was also maintained by the exhibition of her
last portrait from life of Marie Antoinette, and the favour shown to her
by that involuntary roi faineant, Stanislas Poniatowsky, whose portrait
she painted twice, helped to keep her busy. Her charge seems to have
been about £300 for a portrait of ordinary size, a large price in those days.
In addition to her portraits of others, she painted for the Academy of St.
Petersburg, into which she had just been received with the usual honours,
the picture of herself, with her palette in her hand, which, from prints
and photographs, is familiar to the admirers of her work.