A Study Of Vigée Le Brun's Paintings

During the latter half of the 18th century to early 19th century, Elisabeth Vigée Lebrun was the most successful female artist in French art field. In this paper, combined with social political history, cultural and artistic background, I mainly have a meticulous discussion about Vigée Lebrun's life, painting style's evolution. In order to highlight her achievements in self-portraits, I introduce a great many self-portraits of male and female artists before Vigée Lebrun's period and compare her self-portraits with other European artists'self-portraits in the same period. Through a comprehensive and thorough analysis of the creation of self-portraits in this special historical period, I conclude the response, thinking and behavior of women artists during their times and their position which women artists had. Thus I dig out the historical significance behind the success of Vigée Lebrun.