Memoirs of Madame Vigée Lebrun

This is a remarkable memoir from one of the most celebrated female artists in European history. Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842) was the official portraitist to Marie Antoinette, painting the queen over thirty times, and her canvases captured the glittering world of pre-Revolutionary France before it descended into chaos. Her autobiography offers an intimate window into that vanished universe of aristocratic privilege and artistic ambition, written by a woman who navigated the treacherous waters of the French art world at a time when women painters were still largely dismissed as amateurs. When the Revolution erupted, Vigée Le Brun fled France with her daughter, embarking on an extraordinary odyssey that took her to Italy, Austria, Russia, and England, where she continued to paint royalty and aristocrats in exile. Her memoirs are a vivid account of artistic survival, prejudice, and reinvention. A vital historical document that reads like part art history, part travelogue, part court memoir, it remains essential reading for anyone fascinated by the French Revolution, the history of women in art, or the glittering, dangerous world of European courts.