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[1340-63]
| The top image is the Portrait of Madame de Pompadour from 1756. It is an oil on canvas painting by François Boucher, now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany The lower image is a 1759 painting, the last of a series of seven portraits by the artist of Madame de Pompadour. It was first exhibited at the Château de Versailles before passing to the subject’s brother. It is on show at the Wallace Collection in London. | ![]() ![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Madame de Pompadour, Portraits | 1756 and 1759 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Boucher, François | 1703-1770, aged 67 | French painter | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-40] | |
| Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany / Wallace Collection, London UK | 91 x 68 |
![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons | Wilson made many drawings in Rome and Naples between 1750 and 1757 that later served as backgrounds for his mythological and history paintings. The subject is taken from the Roman poet Ovid’s popular Metamorphoses. Niobe boasted unduly of her parentage, marriage, and fourteen children. The offended goddess Latona sent her own son and daughter, Apollo and Diana, to punish Niobe by slaying her children. Apollo, with Diana behind him, is shooting the children with arrows from the cloud at the left. Wilson, typically, conveys the drama through the landscape, rather than through the figures. [Source: collections.mfa.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Apollo Destroying the Children of Niobe | 1760 | Oil/Canvas | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Wilson, Richard | 1714-1782, aged 67 | English painter | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-41] | |
| Private Collection | 58 x74 |
| The painting was executed for Sir Humphrey Morice, son of a wealthy merchant and director of the Bank of England. Morice was a great animal lover and commissioned from Batoni a portrait of himself reclining in the Roman countryside after the hunt as a pendant to this canvas. It shows the goddess of the hunt withholding the bow from Cupid. Although full of extraordinary warmth and feeling, the figure of Diana is based on a celebrated ancient statue of the sleeping Ariadne in the Vatican. The painting may have been conceived as Batoni’s response to his rival, Anton Raphael Mengs, who championed the Neoclassical style. [Source: metmuseum.org] | ![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Diana and Cupid | 1761 | Oil/Canvas | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Batoni, Pompeo | 1708-1787 | Italian painter Rome | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-42] | |
| Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY USA | 125 x 173 |
![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons | David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who had a profound influence on theatrical practice in the 18th c. This portrait was painted in Naples in the same year as the Kauffman portrait of Brownlow, 9th Earl of Exeter standing before Vesuvius. The Earl was one of the principal patrons of the gifted young Swiss born artist. [Source: collections.burghley.co.uk] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| David Garrick, Portrait of | 1764 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Kauffman, Angelica | 1741-1807, aged 66 | Swiss painter | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-43] | |
| Burghley House, Peterborough, Stamford PE9 3JY UK | 84 x 69 |
| Prosperity permeates this group portrait by Reynolds. Lord George Clive was cousin of Robert Clive, founder of the empire of British India, and made his fortune at that land. Most beautifully painted is the centrally placed Indian nurse, who, kneeling, supports the little girl in Indian courtly attire. Clearly the painter found the Indian’s depiction his greatest pleasure. [Source: wga.hu] | ![]() Image source:Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| George Clive and his family with an Indian maid | 1765 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Reynolds, Joshua | 1723-1792, aged 69 | English painter | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-44] | |
| Gemäldegalerie, Berlin Germany | 140 x 171 |
![]() Image source: 1000 Museums | In a suspended, muffled atmosphere, where grey and blue are the predominant tones, some gondolas are moving through the calm waters of the lagoon, while in the distance, in the rosy light, we see the Venetian estuary. Water and sky seem to merge, separated only by the line of buildings, walls and bell towers on the horizon. It is maybe the isle of Murano, here represented in a view wholly unusual in the Venetian painter’s repertory. Some scholars have assumed that the work is the fragment of a larger painting. They all agree in seeing this picture as foreshadowing the later development of landscape painting in the nineteenth century. [Source: artsandculture.google.com] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Gondolas on the Lagoon (Grey Lagoon) | 1765 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Guardi, Francesco | 1712-1793, aged 81 | Italian painter Venice | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-45] | |
| Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Via Alessandro Manzoni, 12, 20121 Milano MI, Italy | 31 x 42 |
| Jean-Baptiste Greuze was a French genre and portrait painter who initiated a mid-18th-century vogue for sentimental and moralizing anecdotes in paintings. Although Greuze’s attention at this time was fixed on a less-pretentious type of genre painting in which the influence of 17th-century Dutch masters is apparent, the favorable attention he received turned his head and established the lines of his future career. In 1755 Greuze left for Italy but remained impervious to the influence of Italian painting. In 1759 he became acquainted with Denis Diderot, who encouraged his inclination toward melodramatic genre, and throughout the 1760s Greuze reached new heights of popular acclaim. Throughout the 1770s Greuze was kept busy painting moralizing pictures, but by the 1780s his work had gone out of fashion and his income was precarious. By 1785 his once-considerable talent was exhausted. The reaction against his sentimental genre paintings resulted in critical neglect of his drawings and portraits, in which Greuze’s superb technical gifts are displayed with great integrity. This painting is on show at the Hermitage, St Petersburg Russia. [Source: flickr.com] | ![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Spoiled Child, The | c1765 | 0 | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Greuze, Jean-Baptiste | 1725-1805, aged 79 | French painter Paris | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-46] | |
| State Hermitage Museum, Palace Square, 2, St Petersburg, Russia, 190002 | 67 x 56 |
![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons | Wigs played an important role in 17th-century portraits. The exact origin of this accessory is not clean, but they were certainly widespread in distinguished circles by 1620-30. Wigs lent faces – and therefore all portraits – a similar impact because of a similar framework of ringlets and curls. Whether bald or not, people choose the colour of their hair according to the attire to be worn and the event to be attended. Louis XIV and all French princes were highly attentive to such points. Bare-headed portraits, like van Loo’s depiction of Diderot, were the stuff of intellectuals and free-thinkers who asserted their independence and flaunted their character. [Source: wga.hu] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Denis Diderot, Portrait of | 1767 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Loo, Louis-Michel van | 1707-1771, aged 64 | French painter | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-47] | |
| Musée du Louvre, Paris France | 81 x 65 |
| The Swing, aka Les hasards heureux de l’escarpolette is Fragonard’s iconic painting, and one of the most emblematic images of 18th c French art. A young woman wearing a lovely pink silk frock is tantalisingly positioned mid-air on a swing between her elderly husband on the right and her young lover on the left. The force of the swing caused one of her slippers to fly off, resulting in a privileged view for her lover whose delight is suggested by the symbolic offer of his hat. [Source: wallacecollection.org] | ![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Swing, The | 1767 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Fragonard, Jean-Honoré | 1732-1806, aged 74 | French painter Paris | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-48] | |
| Wallace Collection, London UK | 81 x 64 |
![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons | At the time this portrait was painted, Denis Diderot was one of the most famous literati in Paris. As the editor and publisher of the Encyclopédie, and author of many articles, novels and pieces of art criticism, he had great reputation. From aristocratic Rococo culture to the bourgeois ethic of virtue, his books and articles accompanied the whole of French art production under the ancien regime. Fragonard’s portrait of Diderot is part of his series of figures des fantaisies, which was being built up at this time and depicts people in particularly inspired moments. Diderot himself had, on the occasion of another portrait, demanded the ‘grace of action’. He wanted an action appropriate to the activity of the sitter, one which characterized him. The commandment here was truth and naturalness of presentation. The action and pose were to be demonstrated with natural gestures. The ideal, for Diderot, was solitude in an unobserved moment, and the portrait was to simulate this. And as an unobserved genius in a state of inspired thought-production is also how Fragonard depicts him. This is a familiar enough genre, but Fragonard stages the enthusiasm of literary ideas with his impulsive painting technique and this combines the interest of the sitter with that of the beholder, a central concept in Diderot’s theory of art. [Source; wga.hu] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Denis Diderot | 1769 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Fragonard, Jean-Honoré | 1732-1806, aged 74 | French painter Paris | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-49] | |
| Musée du Louvre, Paris France | 82 x 65 |
| Inspiration (Self Portrait) is so different from many of Fragonard’s other paintings in that it is more warm, wistful, and frothy than his other portraits and was produced during the artist’s early years. Fragonard’s intent here is not only to represent himself on canvas, but also to depict the moment when an artist receives inspiration from a subject. By leaving the subject unknown, the painting becomes a source of inspiration itself, in either a common or divine sense. The artist is caught mid-pose, his actions frozen, his hand with brush in tow, ready for the next action that he will draw from this unseen inspiration. [Source: artble.com] | ![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Inspiration (Self Portrait) | 1769 | Pen/Ink | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Fragonard, Jean-Honoré | 1732-1806, aged 74 | French painter Paris | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-50] | |
| Private Collection/Met Museum | 23 x 35 |
![]() Image source: Wikimedia Commons | Gainsborough’s iconic painting first appeared in public in the Royal Academy exhibition of 1770 as A Portrait of a Young Gentleman, where it received high acclaim. By 1798 it was being called The Blue Boy, a nickname that stuck. Huntington purchased The Blue Boy in 1921 for $728,000, the highest price ever paid for a painting at the time. By bringing a British treasure to the United States, Huntington imbued an already well-known image with even greater notoriety on both sides of the Atlantic. But beyond its cultural significance, the painting is considered a masterpiece of artistic virtuosity.Gainsborough’s command of colour and mastery of brushwork are on full display in the painting. [Source: huntington.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Blue Boy, The: Jonathan Buttall | 1770 | Oil | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Gainsborough, Thomas | 1727-1788, aged 60 | English painter | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-51] | |
| Huntington Library and Gallery, 1151 Oxford Rd, San Marino, CA 91108, USA | 178 x 122 |
| The history of these paintings – one of the most powerful evocations of love in the history of art – is linked with the career of the Comtesse du Barry, the last mistress of Louis XV. For a pleasure pavilion she commissioned from the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux in 1771, the countess ordered from Fragonard four canvases depicting ‘the four ages of love’. The series advances from a flirtatious proposal (a young man offers a girl a rose), to a furtive meeting (the lover scales the wall of a garden), to consummation or marriage (the girl crowns her lover with roses), to the calm enjoyment of a happy union (the reading of love letters). Yet, for all their beauty and passion, Madame du Barry soon returned the canvases to the artist and ordered replacements from another. Were the resemblances between the red-coated lover and Louis XV potentially embarrassing? Fragonard was left holding on to his creations for another twenty years. Then, adding seven more canvases, he installed the series in a cousin’s villa in southern France. They passed through the collection of J. P. Morgan, where they were displayed in his London house. They were acquired by Frick in 1915 and installed in a room specially designed for them. [Source: artsandculture.google.com] | ![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Progress of Love: The Meeting (Les Progrès de l’amour : Le rendez-vous) | 1771-3 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Fragonard, Jean-Honoré | 1732-1806, aged 74 | French painter Paris | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-52] | |
| The Frick Collection, New York USA | 318 x 244 |
![]() Image source: National Gallery | This is one of a pair of seascapes, originally commissioned on behalf of the King of Poland, that the British officer and East India Company official Lord Clive (known as Clive of India) bought from Vernet in 1773. Originally known as Tempête (Storm), it depicts a rocky shoreline buffeted by a violent sea storm. Two ships roll in the giant swell, sails tied down or tattered by the turbulent winds and lashing rain, while a third ship lies shattered against the rocks. Figures carry salvaged goods up the shore, while an unconscious woman is laid out on a rock, her friends overwhelmed with despair. The extreme, turbulent elements depicted here contrast with the tranquil atmosphere of its pair, Calme, reflecting ideas fashionable at the time about the beautiful and sublime in nature and art. They are the only great pair of marine views by Vernet in a British public collection. [Source: nationalgallery.org.uk] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Shipwreck in Stormy Seas, A | 1772 | Oil/Canvas | Landscape |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Vernet, Claude-Joseph | 1714-1789, aged 75 | French painter | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-53] | |
| National Gallery, London UK | 114 x 163 |
| Poised on the edge of cliff clutching a harp, the last surviving bard places a curse on the English invaders before leaping to his death. This dramatic history painting has become iconic for Wales. Based on Thomas Gray’s poem The Bard, it recounts the tale of Edward I’s legendary massacre of the Welsh bards. Bards were highly regarded in Welsh society at that time, and were thought to be descendants of the Celtic druids. Jones makes this connection by giving his Bard druidic features – a long white beard and hooded robe. The stone circle in the background, based on Stonehenge, emphasizes the antiquity of the druid. This is one of Jones’ early paintings in the grand manner, where the landscape is used as a background setting for a scene from history, literature or mythology. Jones regarded it as ‘one of the best I ever painted’. [Source: museum.wales] | ![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Bard, The | 1774 | Oil/Canvas | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Jones, Thomas | 1742-1803, aged 61 | English painter | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-54] | |
| National Museum Cardiff, Cardiff CF10 3NP UK | 115 x 168 |
![]() Image source: Web Gallery of Art | Depictions of a royal person at table are infrequent, but at the court of Charles III, the king’s lunch followed a strict ceremony described by numerous foreign visitors of his time. Paret invites us to attend this daily ritual at the Royal Palace in Madrid. Spain’s King Charles III sits at the table in presence of his ministers, ambassadors, servants and his favorite hunting dogs. Paret captures the moment when he is about to drink from a goblet offered by a servant on bended knee. The walls are sumptuously decorated with striking tapestries whose mythological subjects have been identified. They touch on subjects such as patriotism, embodied by Iphigenia’s sacrifice, which legitimized her father Agamemnon’s attack on Troy; love, suggested by Mercury and Herse’s shared passion; hunting, in the form of its tutelary goddess, Diana; and military honor, reflected by the armor that Vulcan made for Venus’s son, Aeneas, future conqueror of Rome. These scenes may have been chosen to reflect the ceremony taking place in front of them, or as allusions to the king’s intimate thoughts. [Source: museodelprado.es] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Charles III Dining Before the Court | c1775 | Oil/Panel | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Alcázar, Luis Paret y | 1746-1799, aged 53 | Spanish painter | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-55] | |
| Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid Spain | 50 x 64 |
| The Bolt (French: Le Verrou), also known as The Lock, is a 1777 Fragonard painting. It is one of the most famous paintings by the painter. The common interpretation suggests that the scene depicts two lovers entwined in a bedroom, while the man is locking the door. [Source: Wikimedia commons] | ![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Lock, The (aka The Bolt; Le Verrou) | 1777 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Fragonard, Jean-Honoré | 1732-1806, aged 74 | French painter Paris | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-56] | |
| Musée du Louvre, Paris France | 71 x 92 |
![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons | This is one of Gainsborough’s finest full-length portraits. The costume and accessories evoke the era of King Charles I and the opulent court portraits of Sir Anthony van Dyck. The sitter was born the Honourable Mary Cathcart, daughter of 9th Lord Cathcart, who was Ambassador to Catherine the Great. She married the Perthshire landowner Thomas Graham in 1774, and they bought Lynedoch House near Methven, Perthshire in 1787. The portrait was highly acclaimed when exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1777. Thomas Graham, devastated by his wife’s premature death in 1792, passed the painting to her sister. It was bequeathed to the National Galleries of Scotland by one of their descendants on condition that it never leaves the country. [Source: nationalgalleries.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Mrs Mary Graham, Portrait of the Honourable | 1777 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Gainsborough, Thomas | 1727-1788, aged 60 | English painter | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-57] | |
| Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 75 Belford Rd, Edinburgh EH4 3DR | 237 x 154 |
| In 1777, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria wrote to her daughter Marie Antoinette asking for a portrait. Vigée Le Brun received the commission, her first from the queen. She recalled that the queen ‘walked better than any other woman in France, holding her head very high with a majesty that singled her out in the midst of the entire court.’ [Source: metmuseum.org] | ![]() Image source: Wikimedia Commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Marie Antoinette in a Court Dress | 1778 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Le Brun, Élisabeth Louise Vigée | 1755 – 1842, aged 88 | French artist | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-58] | |
| Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna Austria | 273 x 194 |
<![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons | Gainsborough’s portrait of this unknown lady is rightly regarded as one of the most charming and excellent works in the Hermitage collection of English painting. Although the artist did not in fact like painting portraits, preferring to work on landscapes, it is for his portraits that he was best loved and is best known today. Here he created an image of great elegance and beauty, a painting dominated by a mood of romantic dreaminess. The light, mobile, melting brushstrokes convey the soft skin, the greyish-blue silk of the shawl, and the luxuriant feather of the headdress which surmounts the powdered wig. Free, sketchy painting is combined with fine transitions of colour to create an effect something akin to pastel. Gainsborough’s style was noted and much admired by contemporaries, and even his great rival, the President of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds, admitted his skill. [Source: hermitagemuseum.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| A Lady in Blue, Portrait of | 1770s | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Gainsborough, Thomas | 1727-1788, aged 60 | English painter | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-59] | |
| State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia, 190011 | 77 x 64 |
| José Campeche was born in San Juan de Puerto Rico in the quarter of Calle San Sebastian Cruz. He is known as the first Puerto Rican artist and founder of the Puerto Rican national school. Belén is the Spanish for Bethlehem. [Source: artsandculture.google.com] | ![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Virgin of Belen, Nuestra senora de Belén/Virgen de Belén | late 18th | Oil/Copper | History Painting |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Campeche, José y Jordán | 1751-1805, aged 57 | Puerto Rican artist | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-60] | |
| Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC 20004, USA | 24 x 19 |
![]() Image source: Wikimedia commons | Reynolds was particularly skilled at choosing poses and actions which suggested a sitter’s character and which also created a strong composition. Here, three sisters, the daughters of the 2nd Earl Waldegrave, are shown collaboratively working on a piece of needlework. The joint activity links the girls together. On the left, the eldest, Lady Charlotte, holds a skein of silk, which the middle sister, Lady Elizabeth, winds onto a card. On the right, the youngest, Lady Anna, works a tambour frame, using a hook to make lace on a taut net. [Source: nationalgalleries.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Ladies Waldegrave, The | 1780 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Reynolds, Joshua | 1723-1792, aged 69 | English painter | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-61] | |
| Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 75 Belford Rd, Edinburgh EH4 3DR | 144 x 168 |
| Portrait of Sir Charles Gould, full-length, in a brown coat and breeches and a white waistcoat, holding a tricorn in his right hand, his left hand on the hilt of a sword, in an architectural interior, 1782. [Source: artnet.com] | ![]() Image source: Wikimedia Commons |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Sir Charles Gould, Portrait of | 1782 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Gainsborough, Thomas | 1727-1788, aged 60 | English painter | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | [1340-62] | |
| Unknown | 228 x 153 |
![]() Image source: Wikimedia Commons | Here, the artist’s daughter Julie represents Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, to symbolize youthful beauty. The flowing drapery was inspired by Greco-Roman attire. Vigée-Lebrun spent four years in Italy. She lived for a time in Naples, near the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, which fueled the imaginations of many artists during this period. The landscape here recalls the area’s mountainous coastline. Vigée-Lebrun was one of the few women elected to the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture (1783). Patronized by Queen Marie-Antoinette throughout the 1780s, Vigée-Lebrun fled France following the Revolution of 1789. From Italy, she traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, where this work was created. There, Julie met and married a man of whom her mother deeply disapproved, shattering their relationship. This is perhaps the last of many paintings she made of Julie. [Source: mfastpete.org] |
| TITLE: | YEAR: | FORM: | GENRE: |
| Julie Lebrun as Flora | 1799 | Oil/Canvas | Portrait |
| ARTIST: | DATES: | ORIGIN: | MOVEMENT: |
| Le Brun, Élisabeth Louise Vigée | 1755 – 1842, aged 88 | French artist | Rococo |
| LOCATION: | SIZE (cms): | ||
| Museum of Fine Arts, 255 Beach Dr NE, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, USA | 130 x 98 |
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