1 / 1

download image
This image is in the public domain. You can copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes. Learn more about our image policies.

Shown from the knees up, a woman stands facing and looking at us with her head tilted a little to our left in this vertical portrait painting. She has pale skin, a heart-shaped face with rosy cheeks, and a rose-pink bow mouth. Thin, arched, sable-brown eyebrows frame her gray eyes. A wreath of pale pink flowers and curling white ostrich feathers crowns her long gray hair, which is piled high on her head. Loose curly tendrils brush both shoulders. Her glowing, silver satin gown is trimmed with delicate sheer lace around the wide, plunging neckline and sleeves, and has a pink sash around her narrow waist. Pearl bracelets adorn her wrists. She leans to her left, our right, to rest her left elbow against a waist-high, cinnamon-brown stone pedestal, which is decorated with a bronze-colored garland and bow on the side facing us. A ring of blue, yellow, red, and pink flowers, woven with strands of ivy, dangles in the hand resting on the pedestal. Her right hand hangs loosely by her side. Along the left edge of the dimly lit background, a tree with a thick trunk angles into the upper left corner. A smaller sapling grows just in front of it. On the right, bushes with olive and fern-green leaves dotted with lilac-purple flecks rise above the pedestal. Dark clouds fill most of the top third of the canvas but they part around her head to reveal the soft blue sky. The artist signed and dated the work in white in the lower right corner, “L. Vigée Le Brun 1782.”

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun

Madame du Barry, 1782

West Building, Main Floor — Gallery 54

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 114.94 × 89.54 cm (45 1/4 × 35 1/4 in.)

framed: 146.05 × 119.38 × 12.7 cm (57 1/2 × 47 × 5 in.)

Credit Line

Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection)

Accession Number

2014.136.36

Artists / Makers

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (painter) French, 1755 - 1842

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

lower right: L. Vigée LeBrun, 1782; reverse: Presented by the Empress Eugenie to Earl Sydney in memory of her son, the Prince Imperial, to whom it belonged

Provenance

William A. Clark [1839-1925]; bequest 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.

Associated Names

Clark, William Andrews
Corcoran Gallery of Art

Exhibition History

1978: The William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 26 April-16 July 1978, unnumbered catalogue.

1983: The Rococo Age: French Masterpieces of the Eighteenth Century, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 1983, no. 36, repro.

2001: Antiquities to Impressionism: The William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 3 November 2001-4 February 2002, unnumbered cat., repro.

Bibliography

1980: Baillio, Joseph. "Identification de quelques portraits d'anonymes de Vigée Le Brun au Etats-Unis". Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6th per., no. 96 (November 1980): 158 fig. 3, 159-160, 167 n. 8.

1981: Michel, Marianne Roland. "A Note on a Portrait of Madame du Barry." In Fenway Court [ Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 1980 Annual Report]. (1981): 21, fig. 3.

1992: Zafran, Eric M. Madame du Barry de Versailles à Louveciennes. Paris, 1992: 140, 146-147, repros.

2011: Bailey, Colin B. Fragonard's Progress of Love at The Frick Collection. New York and London, 2011: 53, fig. 35.

2021: Smee, Sebastian. "A portrait that portends scandal, intrigue, and, ultimately, the guillotine." The Washington Post.(14 November 2021): E11, repro.