Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun
is France's last great portraitist,
the most famous in Europe.
A child prodigy, taught by her father,
she starts painting professionally at the age of 14.
Ambitious and independent, she gains access
to the highest levels of power
by becoming portraitist to Queen Marie Antoinette.
Energetic and determined, she'll produce over 660 portraits.
Because of her close ties to the Royal Court,
she's forced to flee into exile
during the French Revolution.
This period of exile,
which she imagined would last only six months,
will last 13 years, taking her to all
the Royal Courts of Europe.
She'll live in Italy, Austria, England and Russia.
A friend of the rich and powerful,
and the greatest artists of her time,
she'll be acclaimed in all the royal courts
and art academies of Europe.
Her destiny is that of a talented and free woman,
who managed to combine success and fortune.
She'll declare in her memoirs,
"Before the Revolution, women ruled.
"The Revolution dethroned them."
[Elisabeth Voiceover] My very dear friend,
you urge me so warmly to write my memoirs for you
that I have decided to satisfy your desire.
Imagine what it will mean to my heart
to recall the various events I have witnessed.
And the friends who exist no more, save in my thought.
Nevertheless, the task will be an easy one,
for my heart loves to remember.
And, in my hours of loneliness, those dear
departed friends surround me still,
so vivid do they appear to my imagination.
(upbeat orchestral music)
Louise Elisabeth Vigee is born
in Paris in April 1755, a few months
before Marie Antoinette.
18th century France saw the growth of a practice
of major significance, wet nursing.
Middle-class women, the wives of artisans
and merchants, send their children to neighboring
villages in order to be free to carry out their activities.
Shortly after her birth, little Elisabeth
will be entrusted to a wet nurse
in the Epernon region of Normandy.
In 1761, her father Louis comes to take her home.
Elisabeth, now aged six, discovers a father
she doesn't know, and has to say goodbye
to her foster family.
She'll spend a few weeks in the family apartment
in Paris, Rue de Clery, where she'll discover
the day-to-day life of her parents,
her brother, Etienne, three years younger than herself,
and especially her father's work.
Her father was a pastel portraitist,
a member of the Academy of St. Luke Artist's Guild,
he was the man who sought out
the company of musicians, poets, and wits.
Court life, and the growth of a wealthy
Parisian middle class, account for the increasing
popularity of the portrait.
La Tour, Van Loo, Greuze, or Drouais,
will be the fashionable masters of this art.
Everyone wanted their portrait painted.
There was no other way to preserve
your likeness in that age.
Pastels artists, Louis Vigee,
whilst not having the genius of the great masters,
has acquired a fairly large clientele.
Artists, nobles, and burghers, all sit for him.
I mention these facts
to show what an inborn passion
for the art I possessed.
My father, whose name was Vigee,
made very good pastel drawings.
He did some portraits which would've been
worthy of the famous La Tour.
But coming back to the pleasures I enjoyed
in my childhood home,
I must tell you that my father allowed
me to paint several heads in pastels,
and also, to dabble with his crayons all day.
Her father adored her.
And he would give her free reign when
he would let her in his studio.
Take his pastel boxes and start drawing.
Her father is very encouraging
of her talent, and one day after seeing
a drawing she did of a bearded man, exclaims,
"You will be a painter, child, if there ever was one."
After a few short weeks
spent in the family home,
Elisabeth is sent to boarding school
at the Trinity Convent in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
At six years old, she's one of its youngest pupils.
While boys are educated in schools,
or through private tutors,
girls from the upper and middle classes
are mainly educated in convents.
They're taught very little.
Biblical history, the basics of sewing, and writing,
in order to prepare them for their future roles
as companionable wives and mothers.
At the age of 11, she leaves the convent.
Her father undertakes to train her,
and sends her to one of his friends,
a painter called du Vin,
who teaches her how to set a palette.
These future artists in painting
pastels or drawing are going to meet
other masters during their youth.
Madame Vigee Le Brun will have a lot of admiration
for artists such as Jean-Baptiste Greuze,
and Joseph Vernet.
She'll observe them, question them,
and listen to their advice on how to improve.
Elisabeth continues her apprenticeship,
but is soon going to lose her first teacher.
[Elisabeth Voiceover] I had just spent one happy year
in my parents house, when my father fell ill.
My mother wept day and night.
As for myself, I will not attempt to describe my desolation.
I was about to lose the best of fathers,
my support, my guide, the one whose indulgence
encouraged my first attempts.
In order to distract her from her grief,
her mother, Jeanne, takes her to see the private
collections of masterpieces exhibited to the public,
such as that of the Duke of Orleans.
Where Elisabeth gets to know the great European painters,
and develops her taste.
She had no real formal training.
She took courses here and there.
Dabbled...
But you can't say, she's self-taught, actually.
At the age of 12, in order to help her mother,
and pay for her young brother's schooling,
Elisabeth is obliged to work.
Her talent soon becomes noticed,
in particular, through two portraits which
reveal her precocious, artistic maturity.
The portrait of her brother, Etienne,
dressed as a schoolboy,
which she's believed to have painted at the age of 14,
and that of her mother,
are so well done that they're talked about in Paris.
Commissions soon begin to flow in.
A year after the death of her husband,
Jeanne Maissin marries a rich jeweler,
Jacques-Francois Le Sevre,
to whom Elisabeth and Etienne are openly hostile.
When the young girl starts to receive
payment for her first commissioned portraits,
Le Sevre considers that this money belongs to him,
and he uses it for himself.
Elisabeth rapidly builds up a large
clientele of artists, burghers, and nobles.
Her fees increase, and she starts earning a lot of money.
For the gentlemen models who gaze at her too insistently,
she devises a clever trick to turn
their eyes away from her.
As for those gentlemen,
as soon as I realized that they wish to make eyes at me,
I would paint them with their gaze averted
which prevents the sitter from looking at the painter.
At the least movement of their pupils in my direction,
I would say I am doing the eyes now.
This would vex them a little, as you could imagine.
And my mother, who was always present,
and whom I had taken into my confidence,
would laugh to herself.
In fact, Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun
practically invents this masculine theme
that of the pre-romantic character
gazing off into the distance.
Eyes raised up to heaven, his thoughts elsewhere.
In this way, she diverts the man's eyes,
and possible amorous intentions away from her.
So, she shows intelligence there, too.
Wiliness, I'd say, in the way she deals with the situation.
Despite her numerous commissions,
Elisabeth finds time to enjoy the favorite pastime
of 18th century Parisians, going out for a stroll.
Nobles and gentry, artisans, merchants, and scamps,
pass each other by in the Tuileries gardens.
In the squares of the Champs-Elysees.
In the Luxembourg and Palais-Royal gardens,
where Elisabeth and her family live.
When out strolling, you have to see, and especially be seen.
Fashionable gathering places are created,
and last for a brief time, such as the Colosseum.
Located in one of the Champs-Elysees' squares
this amusement site, illuminated by 2,000 candles,
could hold 40,000 people.
It's attractions included cafes, circuses,
trinket and curiosity shops, a show hall,
a ball, and a fireworks display.
During these strolls, Elisabeth attracts a lot of attention.
It's at this time that two women,
important for her future destiny,
will cross her path.
The Duchess of Chartres,
who you might say is her neighbor,
since she resides in the Palais-Royal gardens,
will ask her to come and paint her portrait,
as well as that of her friends.
The Duchess of Chartres,
future Duchess of Orleans, is a patron of the arts.
It's she who will introduce the milliner and dressmaker,
Rose Bertin to Queen Marie Antoinette.
The second meeting that will prove decisive
for Elisabeth's future success will again take place
during one of her strolls in a park.
We went to Marly-le-Roi,
and there I realized for the first time
how enchanting a place could be.
One morning, I met the Queen walking in the park
with several ladies of her court.
They were all in white dresses,
and so young that they looked like an apparition.
I was with my mother, and was turning away to leave,
when the queen very kindly stopped me,
and invited me to continue in any direction
I might prefer.
Marie Antoinette had arrived in France
in May 1770, at the age of 15,
to marry Louis-Auguste, dauphin of France,
and grandson of Louis XV.
During a firework display held to celebrate the marriage,
Place Louis XV, future Place de la Concorde,
is the scene of a dramatic incident.
133 people are smothered and trampled to death
during a wave of panic caused by a fire
set off by a falling rocket.
An ominous omen, for it's on this very same site
that 20 years later, the royal couple will be executed.
Elisabeth and her family escape the fire unharmed.
Elisabeth's clientele grows larger day by day,
but she works as a free agent
outside any official institution.
The Gironde, a body governing professional incorporations,
ceases her studio, and obliges her to register her activity
within a professional framework.
In 18th century France it's obligatory
to belong to an artists' guild,
and in Paris this was the Academy of St. Luke.
So, if you weren't a member of the Academy of St. Luke,
you had to be a member
of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture.
This is why she applies to become a member
of the Academy of St. Luke,
where she'll be enthusiastically accepted.
In 1775, Jacques-Francois Le Sevre
and his family move to an apartment in a big mansion house
in Rue de Clery, almost directly opposite the former
apartment of Louis Vigee.
Their apartment is in a beautiful
mansion house called the Lubert Mansion
whose live-in owner is Jean Baptiste Pierre Le Brun.
Jean Baptiste is an ambitious young man
who pursues a triple career as painter, art restorer,
and art dealer.
His apartments are filled with works of the old masters
which Elisabeth will study and copy.
The best learning method for aspiring
female painters, who'd already mastered the basics,
was to copy the existing works of art.
It's always been like that.
Jean-Baptiste is also the curator
of several large private art collections,
such as that of the Count of Vaudreuil.
Joseph Hyacinthe de Vaudreuil is a nobleman
of the court of Louis XVI.
Peer of France, governor of the Louvre,
a member of the Academy of Fine Arts,
he'll become one of the first collectors
of Elisabeth's portraits.
At the Lubert Mansion, the young art dealer
soon succumbs to the charms of the talented
and beautiful young woman.
I was then 20 years old.
I was living without anxiety as to my future,
since I was earning a good deal of money,
and thus felt no inclination for matrimony.
But my mother, who believed Monsieur Le Brun
to be very rich, unceasingly urged me not to refuse
such a profitable match,
and I, at last, consented to the marriage.
They both have an artistic sensitivity.
They can discuss painting,
and they're both very ambitious.
So, it's this love of painting,
this ambition, and a mutual attraction,
that will form the bond of their couple
which will last, finally, for quite a number of years.
Jean-Baptiste does business
with the Dutch art dealers,
and he takes the young woman with him
on one of his trips to Flanders.
In Antwerp, she discovers the masterpieces of Rubens.
It's during this trip that the great master's technique
inspires her to do a self portrait on oak panel.
The years of oil on wood gives
the painting a glossy, almost enamel effect.
Which is different to the effect produced
by oil on canvas.
The panels are remarkable for the transparency
of the coloration.
Which is surely a Rubensian effect,
because it's very clear that she was very, very much
influenced by Rubens.
She visits the Antwerp art dealer,
Jean-Michel Van Arve,
and discovers a portrait that's commonly known
as The Straw Hat.
It's actually a felt hat which enables
an effect of projected shadow.
A play of light and shade,
particularly on the face and forehead.
She went back to France and painted her self portrait,
which was one of the greatest pictures she ever painted.
And the first one on panel.
And she learned this, she acquired skill in painting
with glazes, with colored glazes.
And she's at the top of her form there.
The painting is so successful
that Elisabeth, at the request of her clients,
reemploys the same accessories.
The silk shawl edged in black lace, and the hat
creating a gentle chiaroscuro effect can be found
in several of her other portraits.
She'll use them to cover Madame du Barry,
herself, Marie Antoinette, and many others.
It's amusing to see that
from one portrait to another Vigee Le Brun,
once she's found a formula that works,
will use the same costume, the same accessories,
on different models.
Although united through their shared love
for painting and their ambition,
Elisabeth and Jean-Baptiste live independent lives.
And she'll describe her husband as a dissipated gambler
who squanders all her money.
She speaks very badly of her husband
in her memoirs, but I think her husband
was very useful to her, in fact.
Not only by introducing her to great works of art,
but also by his unfailing support of her.
Elisabeth, nonetheless, follows Jean-Baptiste's
advice and sets up a painting atelier for young ladies.
The young woman doesn't have much authority
over her students, but transmits to them her love
of art and her technique.
Her young ladies' school, as Madame LeBrun calls it,
will prove to be quite a success.
She had a group of young women around her
who worked at her side, and whom she taught.
And one of the exercises she had them do was
the expressive head study.
Not able to have live models
in her atelier, Elisabeth gives her students
her own drawings to copy as an exercise.
These are drawings done in black chalk
with white chalk highlights.
And we can see that she works as though she's
using pastels, that is, she stops her lines
probably with her fingertips.
She smudges the black chalk to model the face.
To create this shading that brings out the depth and volume.
This is a very difficult exercise that each
of her students has to learn how to do.
Shortly after opening her school,
Elisabeth gives birth to her first child.
A little girl that she'll name Julie,
soon nicknamed Brunette.
Added to the joy of being a mother,
is the satisfaction of becoming a recognized artist
whose fees are amongst the highest of her time.
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Le Brun,
who knows the art market very well
and who's an excellent businessman,
knew what he was doing when he set extremely high prices
for his wife's paintings.
An art dealer specializes in handling their artist
in order to achieve the best result financially.
But I have the impression that Vigee Le Brun
was able to achieve the result financially on her own.
She's personable and talented enough
to be able to establish her own connections.
Little by little, she's going to succeed
in making a name for herself, in the society of her time.
On the one hand through her talent, and on the other,
through her beauty.
She's a very graceful woman, very bright and cultivated.
While heads may turn to look at her in Paris,
it's Elisabeth's conversation that particularly
charms her models during sittings.
Another thing about painting portraits is that
you have to be an intelligent person,
and a good conversationalist.
People hated sitting for portraits.
Members of the royal family hated it the most,
because they had to be painted the most.
They wanted to be entertained when they sat.
Ambitious, her desire is to reach
the highest ranks of power.
And it's undoubtedly through the Duchess of Chartres
that she gains access to Queen Marie Antoinette.
In 1778, she obtains official entrance
to the royal palace of Versailles.
Empress Maria Theresa,
who was Marie Antoinette's mother,
was in (mumbling) that she received...
She received some portraits that so offended her,
that she asked the queen to find a painter.
Marie Antoinette is always disappointed
with the portraits done of her.
There's this famous letter to her mother
in November 1774, in which she writes,
"The painters kill me, and make me despair."
So, it's in this context of expectancy
on the part of the Queen that Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun
is going to be given her chance at painting her,
and it's this first portrait of the Queen called,
En Robe a Paniers, in a hoopskirt.
When you look at the Queen's face
in this portrait it's still the Hapsburg face,
that is the jutted out chin, the thick bottom lip,
the slightly protruding eyes.
Then, progressively she uses her talent
to soften these physical defects.
To create an image which, 10 years later,
is that of this woman of great beauty,
but which no longer exactly reflects reality.
The likenesses are perfect, and yet she operated
like a plastic surgeon.
Elisabeth's true talent could be said to be
that of adapting herself to the personality of her sitter.
She's capable of bringing out the grace
of the young noble ladies.
The picone likeness of the actress Madame Mole-Raymond,
or the sensuality of Madame Grand,
the future princess of Talleyrand.
There's a lot of grace
in Vigee Le Brun's portraits,
and her texture is soft and velvety, in fact.
There's a lot of sentiment there,
rather than sentimentality.
We feel she has empathy for her model.
Because she listens and observes
she knows how to bring out the natural attributes
of her models.
It is difficult, however, to convey
to anyone who has not seen the Queen,
an adequate idea of her noble traits
and many graceful qualities.
But the most remarkable thing about her face
was the splendor of her complexion.
I have never seen one so brilliant.
And brilliant is the word, for her skin was so transparent
that it had no shading.
I was unable to reproduce its effect to my satisfaction.
I had no colors to paint such freshness,
such delicate tints which were hers alone,
and which I have never found in any other woman.
Marie Antoinette has found her portraitist.
While not actually being close friends,
a steady relationship of affectionate intimacy
established itself between the two women.
Marie Antoinette shares her passion
for the opera with the portraitist,
and the sittings often end with the two of them
performing in a duet the fashionable tunes of the time.
(singing)
Elisabeth now wants the ultimate recognition
that of being accepted by the Royal Academy of Painting,
but she is refused admission because its regulations
formally forbid any contact with mercantile professions,
and she's the wife of an art dealer.
A woman at that time shared the profession of her husband.
So, that was the reason they excluded her.
And so she went behind their backs and went to the Queen
and persuaded the Queen to get permission form the King
for her to be able to enter the academy
because that was the royal way to succeed.
Then, you could exhibit in the official
salon of the academy.
In reality, the academy accepts
very few women artists,
only four of them will be admitted in 1783.
Madame LeBrun, Anne Vallayer-Coster,
Marie-Therese Reboul,
and a formidable rival in the art of portraiture,
Adelaide Labille-Guiard.
She and her great rival, Madame Labille-Guiard,
used to show their finest works in the salon,
and each of them tried to beat the other one.
So, in 1783 Vigee Le Brun did her self portrait
wearing a straw hat,
which is one of the great masterpieces of her.
The very next salon, Madame Labille-Guiard
produced her self portrait with her students.
So, she was trying to show off,
and to put herself on the same level as her rival.
Madame Vigee Le Brun,
who was extremely ambitious,
ardently wanted to attain the higher hierarchy of painting,
which was history painting.
Among the history painters,
Jacques Louis David, member of the Royal Academy,
is the uncontested master.
He will achieve fame in 1784 with his famous painting
Oath of the Horatii, which will eclipse his rivals.
He'll be a precious friend and advisor to Elisabeth.
She always wanted to be a history painter.
In the scale of the genres,
history painting was at the very top,
and portraiture came at a much lower,
had a much lower standing.
In the 18th century,
anatomy is a domain strictly reserved for men.
The rule for women is not to see a nude body,
not to be in the presence of a nude body.
If you couldn't draw from a male nude,
you couldn't paint history,
you couldn't paint mythology.
Essentially, you couldn't rise
to the highest plain in the arts,
so you were permanently handicapped.
Madame Vigee Le Brun gets through
thanks to the helping hand of her royal connections,
and impudently flirts with the history painting genre
through the work she presents as her reception piece,
Peace Bringing Back Prosperity.
We can see in this her desire
to be a history painter, but using female models,
so remaining within the limits of decency.
But while women may know a certain
success as artists, they're limited to the minor arts
which are the miniature, the portrait, or still life.
What's always interesting with these
still lifes is that these women
are sending a hidden message.
Anne Vallayer-Coster is an artist
specialized in this static world that is still life.
One of the compositions of which hides
a very distinctive signature.
This marine still life showing shells
opening before us is a female signature with
very precise symbols, almost depictions of female genitalia.
(piano music)
The protection afforded to the portraitist
through her royal connections has unexpected consequences.
Rumors start circulating.
She's accused of contributing to the royal deficit
by burning bank notes to warm herself,
of having multiple lovers, including Monsieur de Calonne,
the then controller general of finances.
A fictitious erotic correspondence between
Elisabeth and Calonne is published
and distributed in Paris.
Her closeness to a more and more unpopular queen
soon harms her reputation.
Of a horrible press campaign against her,
because she belonged to the circle who formed
the most intimate friendships with the court of Louis XVI
and Marie Antoinette.
And she became the official, or rather,
the non-official first painter to the Queen.
Elisabeth is likened to the much criticized
queen who's accused of being clownish,
of spending extravagantly,
and of disregarding court etiquette.
Marie Antoinette breaches court etiquette
by choosing her own dressmakers
which theoretically she doesn't have the right to do.
But she overrides this rule,
and this is why she favors Rose Bertin,
as well as other dressmakers,
and why she also favors Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun.
She's really the protector of both these women.
This female trio represented by
Marie Antoinette, Rose Bertin, and the portraitist
will become the model for Parisian taste.
Elisabeth, for her part, spends very little on her wardrobe,
and invents a simple and practical dress style
that's suited to her work.
Leaving aside wigs, hoops, and adornments,
she wears white cotton blouses, and comfortable skirts
that she embellishes with a colored belt.
Soon, ladies of the court, and Parisian women,
will want to emulate her style of dress.
She explains that she wants to change
the fashion codes,
and move more towards simplicity.
She relates that she's the first one not to use
powder on her models.
To have natural-looking hair in her portraits.
All this takes place in a historical context,
the 1780s,
influenced by Jean-Jacques Rosseau
and his natural man philosophy.
Madame LeBrun,
always on the lookout for new clients,
knows that the salon of the Royal Academy,
a veritable contemporary art fair,
is the place to be seen at.
She exhibits her portraits there at each session.
The art salon is in dispensable.
You have to show yourself.
And this is something that Vigee Le Brun excels at,
because not only is she a woman artist,
she's also a businesswoman.
A strategist, who pursues her career in a very
independent way, and who understood
marketing ahead of her time.
Elisabeth and Marie Antoinette
mutually enhance each other.
The artist simplifies the look of her royal model,
and beautifies it,
but this simplification has its limits.
And for the salon of 1783, she'll propose a quite
unexpected picture of the queen.
We know the story of the famous
muslin dress portrait in which Marie Antoinette
wears a simple English style dress.
Where the queen progressively agrees to discard
her heavy stiff gowns,
and be represented in a much simpler manner.
This muslin dress, which is a simple cotton muslin dress,
places the spotlight on a material, cotton,
that's normally used for underwear,
or for a house dress, at the most.
So, it's particularly audacious on the part
of Vigee Le Brun to present a portrait of Marie Antoinette
dressed in a muslin dress in 1783.
Because this is the first salon where she's exhibiting,
and she's taking an enormous risk.
A risk she doesn't entirely assume, however,
because a few days later,
because of the scandal it provoked,
she withdraws the painting,
and replaces it with an identical portrait,
but with the queen wearing a much more conventional dress.
Despite the scandal provoked by the portrait,
Marie Antoinette's faith in her portraitist
remains unshaken.
She'll commission other portraits from her,
and soon one of her children, too.
We have to place ourselves in the context.
A few years after their marriage,
the royal couple's infertility becomes an affair of state.
So much that the arrival of Madame Royal
Marie-Therese Charlotte
is a cause for national celebration.
And then, the birth of the dauphin
Louis-Joseph Xavier Francois
sends the country into raptures of joy.
Since there's now a male heir to the throne
ensuring dynastic continuity.
Madame LeBrun is going to place them in a pastoral
setting with the royal children sitting on the ground.
This is not, at all, in keeping with court etiquette,
and yet their costumes still reminds us of the rank
of Marie Antoinette's children since the heir-apparent
wears the insignia and the celestial blue ribbon
of the Order of the Holy Spirit.
Which all children of the sovereign receive
on the day of their baptism.
Madame Vigee Le Brun will find the model for his painting
in a work by one of her elders,
Francois Hubert Drouais,
called Comte d'Artois and Madame Clotilde.
They are the brother and sister of Louis XVI.
Pregnant again,
Elisabeth loses her second child
aged only a few months.
She transfers all her affection to Julie.
In the tradition of the virgins of Raphael,
whom she admires, she paints herself with
her arms around her daughter.
An expression of maternal tenderness on her face.
In 1787, she paints herself
with her daughter in a self portrait
that the critics are immediately going to name,
Maternal Tenderness.
This gentle affection of the soul.
And this portrait will be unanimously
applauded at the salon.
It's true it does give off a particularly
harmonious image of the mother-child relationship.
And it's this sort of ideal, symbiotic image
that the artist will try to preserve,
and which will be destroyed by the reality
of her true relationship with her daughter.
King Louis XVI,
and especially Marie Antoinette,
are the target of increasingly aggressive criticisms
and satirical cartoons.
Discontent is brewing.
And what should've remained just an anecdote
in 1785 becomes a scandal.
The jewelers Boehmer and Bassenge had in their safe,
since 1772, a fabulous 2,800 carat diamond necklace
intended for Madame du Barry.
Louis XV dies before the necklace is delivered.
The jewelers offer it on two separate occasions
to Marie Antoinette, who refuses it.
The Countess de la Motte concocts an extraordinary
plan to steal the necklace compromising the queen.
When the affair comes to light the countess is arrested,
and branded with V for voleur meaning thief.
The necklace was never found.
The pamphleteers picked up the story
of the affair of the necklace,
and refused to believe in Marie Antoinette's innocence.
The scandal destroys what's left of the Queen's reputation
in the eyes of the public,
who now accuse her of all kinds of wrongs.
This is why the Superintendent
of the King's Building's, d'Angiviller,
is going to commission from the artist a portrait
of the Queen as a mother with her children.
It's at a time when the Queen
is extremely unpopular.
She's referred to as the Austrian.
There's this famous necklace affair.
So, it's really in the aim of rehabilitating
Marie Antoinette.
To have people forget the frivolous young woman
she may have been,
and rehabilitate her through exulting her
in her role as mother.
So, it's a highly political commission.
It's a group portrait.
A composition that the artist isn't
particularly used to doing.
And it's also a very large format portrait,
so she's going to ask David for advice.
He suggests a triangular composition,
in order to sanctify the painting.
And bring to mind the compositions of the Renaissance.
And in particular, Raphael's Holy Families.
Exhibited in the salon of 1787,
between the portrait of Julie and her mother,
and a portrait of Madame Adelaide by Labille-Guiard,
the painting could almost allude to an episode
of Roman history.
That of Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi.
A friend who'd come to visit Cornelia and show off
her jewelry, asks to see Cornelia's in turn.
Cornelia replies by gesturing to her children.
"These are my treasures and my finest jewels."
That's why we see in this highly composed
painting Queen Marie Antoinette with her children,
and behind them the queen's jewel case.
The jewel case is relegated to the background,
and it's her children that are placed in the foreground.
Placed on the jewel case is the royal crown
resting on a cushion decorated with fleurs-de-lis
to remind us of the majestic dignity of the characters.
We're still in a royal context.
Now, this jewel case, even if it is in the shadows
can't help bringing to mind the recent
affair of the necklace.
So, it perhaps because of this the painting
fails in its purpose.
Everyone sees the portrait.
It's heavily criticized, especially for the expression
on the Queen's face,
which is deemed to be too sad.
It's far too late for Marie Antoinette's
reputation to be restored.
These scandals don't make a dent
in Madame LeBrun's artistic and social successes.
Her little antechamber has become a very popular
salon in Paris where celebrities can be counted
amongst the painters, poets, and fashionable musicians.
Salons were the private entertainment of that time.
Especially, in the class of society in which she operated.
And in order to have access to the right people,
it would be necessary to meet them
under the right circumstances.
And those circumstances would be the salon where
every sort of conversation was held,
where you needed knowledge of music and arts,
where you needed to know everything that
was going on in society,
and where you had to amuse everybody.
Otherwise, they wouldn't come to your salon.
Anyone who was anyone in Paris, in music,
came to her salon.
So, who were these people?
Well, there was Gluck.
Gluck is a star in France.
Since his arrival at the Paris Opera House,
he received lots of commissions.
He wrote six great operas for Paris.
Gretry came to her salon, she sang with him,
and Gretry was also a European celebrity.
Everyone came to her.
She put on very, very fine entertainments.
(lively violin music)
In a constant spirit of creativity,
Elisabeth lends support to a movement that
will be very popular up until the beginning
of the 19th century,
the return to the antique style.
I will now give you, my dear friend,
the exact account of the most brilliant supper
I ever gave in the days when people were always
talking about my luxurious and magnificent way of life.
While she rests, he brother would
read her poems, or books, and that day he reads
her an excerpt from a novel by the Abbott Barthelemy
describing an antique style dinner.
One evening when I had invited a dozen
or more friends to hear a recital by the poet LeBrun,
my brother read aloud to me a few pages
The Travels of Anacharsis during my rest.
When he came to the passage where,
in a description of Greek dinner,
the method of preparing various sauces is explained,
he said we ought to try this tonight.
I sent immediately for my cook and gave her the necessary
instructions for the preparation of a certain sauce
for the fowl, and of another for the eel.
My atelier full of things I used for draping my models
would furnish me with enough material for garments.
I placed behind the chairs a large screen which
I took the precaution of concealing beneath
some hangings looped up at intervals,
as may be seen in Pusan's pictures.
As I was expecting some very beautiful women,
I thought it a good idea to dress everybody
in Greek costumes, in order to have a surprise
ready for Monsieur de Vaudreuil,
who was not expected til 10 o'clock.
As I always wore white gowns in the form of a tunic,
I needed only to put a chaplet of flowers on my head.
The preparations were finished.
I took particular pains in costuming my daughter,
darling child that she was.
The guests start to arrive,
Madame de Bonneuil, Madame Chalgrin.
She dresses them up in drapings from her studio,
wrap scarves and shawls around their waists.
And there they were,
all three metamorphosed into perfect Athenians.
Lebrun-Pindare comes in,
and I fix on his head a crown of laurels.
At 10 o'clock, we heard the carriage
of Count de Vaudreuil enter the courtyard.
He was so surprised and delighted that he stood
motionless for a long time before making up his mind
to take the seat we had reserved for him.
I do not believe I have ever spent
a more amusing evening.
Monsieur de Vaudreuil was so delighted with the evening
that he talked about it to all his acquaintances
the next day.
Some ladies of the court begged
me to repeat the performance.
I declined for various reasons,
where at several of the ladies took offense.
If the name of Count Vaudreuil
is so often mentioned in Madame LeBrun's memoirs
it's because their relationship may have been
less platonic than she describes it.
She probably had a liaison
with Count Vaudreuil.
In any case, her gardener notes in his diary
that Madame LeBrun was Vaudreuil's mistress.
Madame LeBrun possessed among her objects
a snuff box which had a lock of Vaudreuil's hair
inlaid in its lid.
There exists a regular correspondence between them.
This correspondence was burnt during the Reign of Terror
by Etienne Vigee for safety's sake.
But the fact that this correspondence existed,
gives us a clue.
Since the end of the 1780s,
bad harvests, and ever heavier taxes weaken
and discontent the population.
Revolts break out.
To find a solution to the financial crisis,
the King convokes a meeting of the estates general.
On June 20, 1789, in the Jeu de Paume room at Versailles,
the deputies of the third estate, the clergy,
and the nobility, take an oath not to adjourn
before adopting a constitution for France.
On June the 30th, the people of Paris storm the prison
of the Abbey of St. Germain de Pres,
and free the French guards imprisoned
there for insubordination.
On the morning of July the 14th,
the Parisian rioters go looking for arms.
They pillage the arsenal of the Hotel des Invalides,
and the royal treasury where they find guns and cannons,
but no powder.
They'll find some at the Bastille.
Together with other partisans of the revolution,
amassed in front of the fortress prison
in Faubourg Saint-Antoine since that morning.
The storming and destruction of the Bastille,
symbol of arbitrary power, begins.
(guns firing)
(people yelling)
An atmosphere of insecurity spreads
through Paris, and Louise Elisabeth
feels herself in danger.
Inscriptions are scrawled on the newly renovated walls
of the Le Brun mansion.
She can no longer show herself at the window.
A new municipal administration
is going to be set up.
Louis XVI goes to Paris on July the 17th,
and agrees to wear pinned to his hat the tricolor
cockade a combination of blue and red, the colors of Paris,
with the royal white.
During the night of August 4th, 1789,
the assembly abolishes aristocratic privilege.
The society of the old order is living its final moments.
Louise Elisabeth,
who doesn't want to stay at the Le Brun house,
goes to Louveciennes where she's promised
Madame du Barry, the former favorite of Louis XV,
to paint her portrait.
She finds a moment of peace in this setting
where she admires the view of the Seine hillsides.
At Louveciennes,
time seems to have stood still,
but the peace is deceptive.
Paris is under siege, and violent rioting rages
day and night in the suburbs.
From Louveciennes we could hear
cannon fire in the distance.
(cannon fires)
And I remember the poor woman saying,
"If Louis XV were alive, none of this would be happening."
Elisabeth knows that she has to leave France.
It's effectively the moment
for her to go into exile.
She waited, however, until October before leaving.
Unlike Count Artois, who left on July the 14th.
On October 5, 1789, a crowd, mainly women,
makes its way towards Versailles.
The King receives the delegation.
But at break of day on October the sixth,
the horde storms the palace killing several guards.
To calm the situation Louis agrees to go,
with his family, to the Tuileries palace.
They're escorted through an angry vociferous crowd.
The heads of guards are brandished on pikes.
For Elisabeth, flight is now inevitable.
By a strange coincidence,
she'll take the stagecoach the day after the royal family
is led from Versailles to the town hall,
then to the Tuileries.
That night, disguised as working women,
Elisabeth, Brunette, and her governess,
climb into the stagecoach.
(melancholy orchestral music)
Her brother, Etienne, Jean-Baptiste Le Brun,
and their friend Hubert Robert, ride at the side
of the coach up to the Saint-Antoine barrier.
The first stage of the journey, will take Elisabeth to Lyon.
She doesn't know it yet,
but this journey will last 13 years.
13 years of exile throughout Europe.
(melancholy violin music)