Portrait of a Young Woman
Marie Louise Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun
(French, 1755–1842)
about 1797
Medium/TechniqueOil on canvas
Dimensions82.2 x 70.5 cm (32 3/8 x 27 3/4 in.)
Credit LineRobert Dawson Evans Collection
Accession number17.3256
On View
On viewClassificationsPaintings
Collections
Vigée‑Le Brun was primarily self‑taught, as women were not allowed to attend France’s official art schools. She went on to achieve great fame for her portraits of the French aristocracy and gained admission to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture through the support of her chief patron, Queen Marie Antoinette. When the French Revolution began in 1789, Vigée‑Le Brun fled France and spent thirteen years in exile, painting the nobility of Naples, Austria, Poland, Russia, and Switzerland. Some scholars think that the charming young woman in this portrait may be Countess Irina Ivanovna Worontzov, a Russian aristocrat.
Provenance1913, Eugène Kraemer collection; May 5-6, 1913, 2d posthumous Kraemer sale, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, lot 50, sold for fr. 4,300 to Edward M. Hodgkins, London. Maria Antoinette Evans Hunt (Mrs. Robert Dawson) Evans (b. 1845 - d. 1917), Boston; 1917, bequest of Mrs. Robert Dawson Evans to the MFA. (Accession Date: November 1, 1917)
Marie Diéterle Van Marcke de Lummen
Marie Diéterle Van Marcke de Lummen
Louis Le Nain
Henri Eugène Augustin Le Sidaner
