Elisabeth Villegas Le Berne was one of the most talented painters of the 18th century. She was a woman of the great world, a painter who traveled alone throughout Europe, at a time when it was not acceptable for women to do so. A woman who succeeded against all the accepted political and social odds to become the most sought-after portrait painter of her time. She painted the rulers of European royalty and nobility: the King of Poland, the Tsarina of Russia, and even the Queen Marie Antoinette The notorious, approached her to try to change her image.
The early years
Elisabeth was born in Paris on April 16.4.1755, 3, to Louis Viger, a minor but well-connected portrait painter, and Jeanne Maissin, a beautiful and devout bookbinder. As was the custom of the time, at the age of XNUMX months, Elisabeth was placed in the care of a peasant nurse in the village of Epernon, near Paris, where she spent five years of her life. At the age of 6 her parents sent her to a convent, where her talent for painting was discovered. At the age of 11 she returned home. Her father began teaching her to paint, but unfortunately a few months later he died from swallowing a fish bone. After his death, Elisabeth's mother married Jean-François Le Sevre, a diamond merchant who owned an elegant shop.
As a woman, she could not enroll in an academy, so she studied drawing with the painter Gabriel Briard. To practice, Elizabeth painted first-degree family members. Although she did not have a business license, she opened an independent studio at the age of 19 but was forced to close it a few months later. Immediately after the studio closed, she gathered courage and applied for membership in the Academy of St. Lucas, of which her father had been a former member, and was accepted.
As a beautiful, charming, and talented single painter, she was invited to dinners and conversations in the fashionable salons of the period and even received commissions to paint portraits of high society figures. At the age of 20, her stepfather retired and the family rented an apartment in a house on Rue de Clergy in Paris, at the Hôtel de Loubert, where the painter and art dealer Jean-Baptiste Pierre Le Bern (1748–1813) lived.
Le Berne was charmed by the beautiful young painter, and soon after they met, he proposed marriage to her. The couple had one daughter, Julie, but the marriage ultimately failed: Le Berne was a spendthrift, a womanizer, and a gambler. Elizabeth decided to move forward and applied for membership in the Royal Academy of Painters and Sculptors, so that she could exhibit her paintings at the biennial exhibition at the Salon at the Louvre. To be accepted, she presented the judges with the painting Peace Returns Abundance, 1780.
Elisabeth Villegas Le Berne and Marie Antoinette
On May 31.5.1783, 23, Elisabeth Vieux-Le-Bern was granted full membership thanks to the direct intervention of Marie Antoinette, and the painting was hung in the gallery of the Académie at the Louvre. When she was only 6 years old, Queen Marie Antoinette commissioned her to paint her portrait. Elisabeth became the queen's favorite and official painter. Over the course of 1787 years, she painted more than thirty portraits of the queen and her family, but the queen's condition deteriorated. Elisabeth attempted to rehabilitate Marie Antoinette's tarnished image and help her ward off the growing public hostility towards her, and painted the famous painting Marie Antoinette and Her Children, XNUMX.
Exile and glory
With outbreak French Revolution Elisabeth Villegas Le Berne realized that as the portrait painter of the hated Marie Antoinette she had to leave Paris. She boarded a public carriage with her nine-year-old daughter, Julie, and her governess. Her brother and husband decided to stay in France. She was 34 at the time, and she did not think that her exile would be long and would last 12 years.
Elizabeth wandered around Italy, in each city she was received with great respect by the local nobility, in Rome she was elected a member of the Roman Academy of St. Lucas and received many commissions for portraits. After three years in Italy she learned that in Paris her name had been added to the list of emigrants, that is, she had lost all her rights as a citizen. French. Her husband filed a formal petition to have her name removed from the list, but his petition was rejected. A year later, at the height of the Reign of Terror, in order to protect himself and his property, her husband filed for divorce, which was granted. In view of the danger of returning to France, Elisabeth moved to Vienna at the invitation of the Austrian ambassador, Count Wilczek.
At the age of 40, she moved to St. Petersburg in Russia, stopping along the way in Prague, Dresden, and Berlin, where she received numerous portrait commissions and became wealthy. With the end of the French Revolution, her husband, friends, and admirers tried to clear her name. A delegation of artists submitted a petition in her favor with 255 signatures from artists, writers, and scientists. The petition was accepted, and she was finally able to return to Paris.
Elisabeth Villegas Le Berne returned to Paris in 1802, at the age of 47, and was received with great respect. A year later, she felt the need to wander again and traveled to London, returned to Paris, and again traveled through Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, and South France Everywhere she was respected and invited. At the age of 64, she finally settled in France, and also bought a large house in the village of Louvain near Versailles (In the future, the Impressionist painters would paint there.) From then on, she divided her time between the apartments in Paris and the country house, and hosted famous figures from the Romantic movement in her aristocratic salon. At the age of 74, she wrote her autobiography, called “Memoirs.”
Elisabeth Villegas Le Berne died at the age of 87, in her apartment in Paris and was buried, according to her request, in the old cemetery in Louvain. This year, they finally realized that it was time to hold a funeral for her. Retrospective exhibitionThe exhibition was presented in Paris, from where it moved to New York and is on display in Ottawa until September 2016. The exhibition features 160 paintings out of the 900 she produced during her lifetime. A film about her life was also made in honor of the exhibition and screened in France.
Beautiful and interesting articles
Thank you very much 🙂