Self-portrait Elisabeth Vigée - Lebrun

Painting depicting a young woman standing with her right hand resting on a table, in which she holds a walking stick with a richly decorated handle. It is a self-portrait by the 18th-century French painter Elisabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun (b. in April 1755 in Paris, d. in March 1842 in Louveciennes), known as the portraitist of Queen Marie Antoinette. She travelled extensively throughout Europe with her husband, learning about and copying the works of famous painters. She quickly gained fame and became a portraitist of the aristocracy. After being invited to the court of Louis XVI, she made a portrait of the queen which won the approval of Marie Antoinette and from then on, she portrayed the royal family for the next few years. With the support of the Queen, she was admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, which reluctantly admitted women painters. After the outbreak of the French Revolution, as an enemy of the state (she painted the aristocracy) she went into exile. She returned to the country in 1801, but did not accept Napoleon’s rule and the interest in her paintings declined. Her work slowly became anachronistic after 1810, while the Romanticism began to dominate in painting. The list of clients who commissioned portraits from her include also Poles who paid very high prices. Princess Lubomirska, wife of Marshal, who commissioned several paintings from her, paid for them amounts that the painter would never have received in France. A good portraitist, she also had a significant personality, she knew how to look after her interests and make the most of all the advantages that her long, turbulent life offered. The Łańcut self-portrait is considered to be a replica of the Self-Portrait in a Straw Hat, the original of which can be found in the National Gallery in London. The replica is a painting made by the same author, but in a slightly altered version. At the painting kept in Łańcut, the arrangement of hands was changed, with the painter holding a folded fan and a palette with paints instead of a walking stick. The costume is very similar, but the background is different (in the case of the painting in question it is a park), however the Łańcut painting is inferior to the original in terms of aesthetic values and the way of painting.