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What is even more remarkable was her determination to overcome obstacles hindering her career. These paintings are absolute icons illustrating the joy of life and creative genius, complementing and communicating with each other. As a counterpoint, she painted the Portrait of Hubert Robert.

The culture of the Enlightenment and the influence of Rousseau obliged the artist to take on this role, which she did happily and with resounding success.

The latter is one of the finest and most popular of the many works by this painter owned by the Louvre and has remained the emblem of «maternal tenderness» since it was first exhibited to the public. First, a portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette posing for a portrait surrounded by her children in an attempt to rectify the image of an extravagant libertine secondly, the portrait of a female artist hugging her daughter Julie to her chest in an effusive Raphael-like manner. In this respect, she made her greatest coup de force at the 1787 Exhibition where she presented two paintings that cannot be dissociated. Vigée Le Brun used self-portraits to assert her status, circulate her image and show people the mother she had become despite the constraints of a career. With the Ancien Régime and its School of Fine Arts coming to an end, she supplanted most of her rival portrait artists. Self-portraits by Vigée Le Brun abound: paintings, pastels and drawings that elegantly associate feminine grace and pride.

“This first retrospective devoted to the works of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun presents an artist whose life stretched from the reign of Louis XV to that of Louis-Philippe (one of the most eventful and turbulent periods in European and above all French history of modern times). This retrospective of the works of Élisabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun (1755-1842, retraces the tumultuous life of the greatest portraitist of the court of Louis XVI and the official painter of Marie Antoinette, who miraculously escaped the guillotine, continuing her career in the Royal courts of Europe, and particularly in Russia, until her return to France in 1800, when she began to work for Caroline Murat.