When the Austrian Archduchess Marie Antoinette married the heir to the French throne Louis-Auguste at the age of 14 in 1770 and moved to the Palace of Versailles, she was a tomboy who played with dogs and the children of her ladies-in-waiting.
That changed immensely, however, when Marie Antoinette became Queen four years later and, through her cousin-in-law, the Duchess of Chartres, and her dear friend, the Princess of Lamballe (both very fashion-conscious young women and sisters-in-law to boot), she came into contact with the stylish creations of the Paris milliner Rose Bertin.
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Fashion became one of the greatest pleasures for the unhappily married young queen, who loathed her royal duties, and together with Rose Bertin, who was named "Minister of Fashion" during the course of the collaboration, Marie Antoinette created a look that was her hallmark: towering hairstyles decorated with all sorts of ribbons and feathers - again an invention of their hairdresser Léonard Autié.
Her interest in fashion earned not only admiration, but also a lot of ridicule. And Marie Antoinette's mother, Empress Maria Theresa, who had heard the whole thing in distant Vienna, thought this was unworthy of a queen. Nevertheless, she longed very much for a portrait of her youngest daughter, whom she had married abroad at such a young age.
Marie Antoinette was also quite willing to comply with her adored mother's wishes, but she simply could not find a painter whose skills she agreed with. No one had ever managed to reproduce her likeness to her liking "The painters are killing me and driving me to despair!" wrote the disappointed queen to Vienna.
But then finally there was a glimmer of hope in the form of another young woman who caused a sensation in Paris at the time: Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun. Élisabeth Vigée was born in Paris in 1755, the daughter of the pastel painter Louis Vigée, whose talent she had inherited and whose ability she soon eclipsed. When Marie Antoinette, who was the same age, came to France, Élisabeth was already receiving commissions as a portraitist for the nobility and wealthy bourgeoisie. In 1776 she married the art dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Le Brun, who successfully managed his wife. Finally, in 1778, the call came from Versailles, where the Queen wished to be painted by Madame Vigée Le Brun.
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The two young women got along right away and after Marie Antoinette, who was born in the music city of Vienna, found out that the painter had a beautiful singing voice, not a single portrait session went by without a duet. The first portrait, which depicts the queen in a large court robe, was also well received and Marie Antoinette was happy to send it to Vienna, where it was also enthusiastically received. "Your large portrait delights me!" Maria Theresa wrote to her daughter after she was received the painting in the spring of 1779.
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Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun had only words of praise for her royal client. Even in old age, when she wrote her memoirs, she emphasized the kindness that Marie Antoinette had always shown her; for example the queen insisted on picking up some brushes that the painter, who was pregnant at the time, had dropped. She was also impressed by the grace of her queen, but above all by her radiant complexion. She described the queen's skin as "so translucent it didn't pick up any shadows at all. I could not reproduce it [the complexion] as I would have liked, I lacked the colors, the subtle tones for this freshness..."
Marie Antoinette supported her friend to the best of her ability and made sure that she became a member of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture on May 31, 1783, one of few women admitted. In the fall of the same year, Vigée Le Brun exhibited at the Paris Salon for the first time. One submission was another portrait of the queen, who had meanwhile become a mother but had increasingly lost her popularity with the population. Reasons for this were her love for expensive clothes, jewelry and gambling and neglecting her royal duties, alienating the nobility. Rather, Marie Antoinette preferred to withdraw to her Petit Trianon in the park of Versailles together with an illustrious circle of close friends, where she strolled around in light muslin dresses.
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Madame Vigée Le Brun was actually the trendsetter here, as she wore light muslin dresses while painting. And Marie Antoinette had herself painted in such a dress, holding a rose and wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. When this painting was exhibited at the salon, visitors were outraged: the queen was practically in her underwear! And some suspected that the Austrian-born queen intended to drive the French silk industry into decline.
A replacement portrait was needed quickly. In record time, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun painted another portrait of Marie Antoinette in the same pose, but replacing the muslin dress with a silk gown and the straw hat with a fashionable bonnet called a toque. The incident in the salon did not damage the friendship between the queen and the painter, and Marie Antoinette called on Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun several more times to have her portrait painted.
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This was also the case in 1785, when the Foreign Office asked for a portrait of the Queen to be sent to the then French ambassador in Constantinople. The clothing style of the now three-time mother Marie Antoinette had become more reserved, but her earlier recklessness was to be her undoing in the same year when the so-called "Affair of the Queen's Necklace" further damaged her reputation, though she actually innocent and had been framed by scammers.
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Also in 1785, the Swedish king Gustav III, who greatly admired Marie Antoinette, commissioned his subject Adolf Fredrik Wertmüller to paint a portrait of the queen with her two eldest children, Marie-Thérèse and Louis-Joseph. However, the painting was not well-received and Marie Antoinette probably shed no tears for it as it left France for Sweden.
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Perhaps to put the Queen's image in a better light, the Royal Buildings Administration also commissioned a portrait of Marie Antoinette with her children. In order to obtain a positive result, they turned to Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who began work in 1785.
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In 1787, Marie Antoinette's reputation was so bad that Madame Vigée Le Brun dared not show the portrait in the Salon. However, it was given a place of honor in the Palace of Versailles, where Marie Antoinette passed every day. However, this changed when she and her husband Louis XVI lost their eldest son at the age of seven to tuberculosis in 1789.. Now Marie Antoinette could no longer bear to look at the picture and had it hung in a less prominent place - although she immediately informed the painter of the reasons for her decision.
The portrait with her children was the last painting for which Marie Antoinette sat as a model for her favorite painter. However, she insisted on commissioning another in 1788. It shows Marie Antoinette in a blue and white dress sitting on a chair with a book on her lap. The pose and clothing are based on the group portrait, for the background Vigée Le Brun used the first background she had painted of the Queen ten years earlier.
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It is possible that another portrait of Marie Antoinette was created in this way, showing her in a similar design. However, since it shows the Queen with a striking pearl necklace, it was certainly not an official portrait, because Marie Antoinette no longer wanted to be associated with precious necklaces after the necklace affair.
When the Palace of Versailles was stormed at the beginning of October 1789 and the royal family was taken to Paris, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun left her home country with a heavy heart together with her daughter Julie. The danger due to her connections to the highest circles of the French monarchy was simply too great. A journey across Europe began, which took mother and daughter to Italy, Vienna and Russia, and led to an exile that was ultimately to last twelve years.
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Wherever she stayed, high-ranking people wanted to have their portraits painted by the "painter of Marie Antoinette". Especially in Russia she found a wealthy clientele. In Naples she painted the legendary Lady Hamilton, but above all she kept in her heart the memory of her work with the Queen of France, who had lost her graceful head under the guillotine on October 16, 1793.
In July 1800 she painted a posthumous portrait of Marie Antoinette, which she sent to Marie Antoinette's only surviving child, her daughter Marie-Thérèse. It may have been a wedding present as the now Duchess had married her cousin the year before. It showed the fated queen in a way for which she had been severely criticized 17 years earlier: in one of those plain white dresses she was so fond of wearing.
