French painter (full name: Marie-Louise-Élisabeth Vigee-Lebrun). Vigee LeBrun's most famous client was Marie Antoinette, France's much maligned queen. When the two met in 1778, Vigee LeBrun's art-dealer husband had gambled away his wife's earnings. Still, she was dauntless and set out to establish her own salon where she would court royal clients. In a November 1982 article for Art in America, Brooks Adams noted that in her memoirs, Vigee LeBrun said that her much sought-after salon was, "a place where art and society mixed, where noblemen and ministers were content to sit on the floor, to avoid the stiff, formal court entertainments at Versailles." In time, her portraits and memoirs alike painted a portrait of Vigee LeBrun as a woman born to contend with anyone. Unfortunate Circumstances Marie Louise Elisabeth Vigee LeBrun was born in 1755 in Paris. Her father was Louis Vigee, a little-known portrait artist who worked in pastels. From the time she was small, he taught his daughter the skills of the trade. She proved to be somewhat of a prodigy. Her parents placed Vigee LeBrun in the convent of La Trinite, directly behind the Bastille. Her earliest memories were of drawing so frantically on the walls of her dormitory that the sisters regularly punished her. When her father died, Vigee LeBrun was only 12. He had been her biggest supporter. For an article in Antiques, magazine in November 1967, Ilse Bischoff quoted Vigee LeBrun's father after he saw a drawing she had done as a small child. It was the head of a bearded man with the light of a lamp falling on his face. She took care to observe light and shade, and showed skill beyond her years. Her father had exclaimed, "You will be a painter if I ever saw one." By the time she was 15, Vigee LeBrun had established a business as a painter that provided major financial support for her family. Her mother was a hairdresser from Luxembourg, who remarried not long after her first husband's death. Her stepfather soon began to squander her earnings. When she was only 21, she married an art dealer named Pierre LeBrun. It was clearly a marriage more of convenience, than of love. They had one daughter, Julie, born in 1780. Vigee LeBrun's marriage helped her gain access to a world normally restricted to men. Although she was denied access to a male apprentice system, and was unable to participate in classes at the major art academies around the city, she gained admission to the lesser salon of the Academie de Saint Luc. However, the Academie Royale was closed to her without proper connections. In those days, being shown in lesser salons kept a painter away from the financial benefits to be gained from wealthier clients who frequented the prestigious Academie Royale. When Vigee LeBrun was finally admitted to the Royale in 1783, her critics were not kind. She was accused of using her husband and the palace, most particularly her friendship with Queen Marie Antoinette. Another unfortunate rumor was that she had a long-standing sexual affair with the finance minister, Calonne. Her accusers contended that he aided her in squandering much of the Royal Treasury. That was never proven. Still, it was clear that she capitalized on her associations with the queen and the rest of the royal family. The aristocracy longed to be seen as simple, especially as unrest grew among the people outside of the palace confines. One portrait of Marie Antoinette was considered so scandalously informal, that it was withdrawn from the salon in the midst of her debut at the Academie Royale. Vigee LeBrun's arch-rival was a woman painter named Madame Labille Guiard. They were admitted to the Academie Royale on the same day. For the rest of the decade, before the French Revolution erupted in 1789, the two women maintained their rivalry. At the time of the academy's biennial exhibitions, the bitterness they felt toward each other had reached the height of its intensity. Vigee LeBrun painted one of her most acclaimed works in 1784. It was the portrait of Marie-Gabrielle de Gramont, Duchess of Caderousse. That was the same year she suffered a miscarriage, and painted only five portraits. Her usual output far exceeded that. The portrait was shown at the Salon of 1785 to much acclaim and became one of the artist's most celebrated works. In her memoirs, written fifty years later, Vigee LeBrun recalled the painting. "As I detested the female style of dress then in fashion, I bent all my efforts upon rendering it a little more picturesque, and was delighted when, after getting the confidence of my models, I was able to drape them according to my fancy. Shawls were not yet worn, but I made an arrangement with broad scarfs lightly intertwined around the body and on the arms, which was an attempt to imitate the beautiful drapings of Raphael and Domenichino I could not endure powder persuaded the Duchess to put none on for her sittings." Thrived in Exile Vigee LeBrun was not immune to the anxious rumbling that became the French Revolution. What had begun on that fateful night of July 14, 1789, erupted further when mobs stormed the palace at Versailles on the following October 6. Vigee LeBrun had been in disfavor for her association with Marie Antoinette for some time and was considered to be a royal sympathizer.   Related Paintings of VIGEE-LEBRUN, Elisabeth :. | Count G I Chernyshev Holding a Mask (mk05) | Self Portrait (san 05) | Countess A S Stroganova and Her Son (san 05) | Woman's Head iy | Portrait of der Madame de Stael als Corinne |
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Teodor Axentowicz
born May 13, 1859 in Braşov, Romania - August 26, 1938 in Krakew) was a Polish-Armenian painter and university professor. A renowned artist of his times, he was also the rector of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakew. As an artist, Axentowicz was famous for his portraits and subtle scenes of Hutsul life, set in the Carpathians. Axentowicz was born May 13, 1859 in Braşov, Hungary (now Romania), to a family of Polish-Armenian ancestry. In 1893 in Chelsea, London, he married Iza Henrietta Gielgud, aunt of Val Gielgud and John [Arthur] Gielgud of the theatrical dynasty. A son, Philip S.A.D. Axentowicz was born in Chelsea in 1893. Between 1879 and 1882 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. From there he moved to Paris, where he continued his education until 1895. During that time he started a long-time cooperation with various journals and started his career as a copyist, duplicating the works of Tizian and Botticelli. He also made numerous travels to London and Rome, where he prepared a set of portraits, one of the first in his career.
Jan Antonisz. van Ravesteyn
(1572(?) - buried June 21, 1657) was a successful painter to the Dutch court in The Hague. Van Ravensteyn was born in The Hague. It is unknown who taught him how to paint, but he was a follower of the Delft portrait painter Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt. Van Ravesteyn is mentioned there in the city archives 1597. From 1598 until his death he lived in the Hague, where in 1598 he became a member of the Guild of St. Luke of the Hague. In 1604 he married Anna Arentsz van Berendrecht and in the same year he was mentioned as a good painter by Karel van Mander (though his earliest dated works are from 1611). In 1608 he bought a house on the Molstraat and in 1628 he moved in the Molstraat. In 1640 his wife was buried and in the same year his daughter Marie married one of his pupils, the painter Adriaen Hanneman. In 1654 he moved to the Nobelstraat next to the house of his daughter. In 1656 he left the guild with a group of dissatified painter friends and was one of the founders of the Confrerie Pictura. He was a Catholic and his name occurs often as a witness in the records of the church in the Molstraat, such as for the marriage of his daughter Agnes in 1641 with Willem van Culemborgh. His portrait was painted by Sir Anthony van Dyck and he produced Schutterstuk works. His workshop produced many portraits for the royal house of Nassau and he competed with Miereveld for several commissions. Van Ravesteyn was in turn, the teacher of Dirck Abrahamsz., Leendert Barthouts, Johannes Harmensz. Borsman, Aelbert Dircksz. Coeppier, Pieter Craen, Jacob Dirksz. van den Enden, Fransise de Goltz, Adriaen Hanneman, Barent Jansz., Thomas Ouwater, Clement Ram, Jan Rassenbourch, Frederick Sonnius, Dirck Verlaer, Jan Pous Voet and Pauwels Willemsz.
Miel, Jan
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1599-1664 Flemish painter, active in Italy. Miel must have arrived in Rome in the early 1630s; he immediately came under the influence of Pieter van Laer (il Bamboccio) and the BAMBOCCIANTI. His earliest paintings of bambocciate (low-life scenes) are the Bowls Players (1633; Paris, Louvre) and its companion piece The Cobbler (Besan?on, Mus. B.-A. & Arch?ol.). Shortly after his arrival in Rome, Miel joined the Schildersbent, a confraternity of Netherlandish artists, and was given the nickname 'Bieco' ('threatening look'). His presence in Rome is documented from 1636 to 1658, when he moved to Turin and entered the service of Charles-Emanuel II, Duke of Savoy. Other early paintings that can be attributed to the 1630s include Halt at the Inn (Marseille, Mus. B.-A.) and Hunters' Rest (Warsaw, N. Mus.). Both are reworkings, in their subject-matter and composition, of contemporary paintings by van Laer