Elisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun

Among the greatest and most celebrated female artists living between the second half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, Madame Vigée Le Brun, was widely travelled. At the peak of her career, however, having established herself as a leading portrait artist of Ancien Régime society and at Court, and having become one of very few female artists admitted to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, the start of the French Revolution caused her to flee France for Italy, together with her young daughter Julie. She was to be absent from France for twelve years, during which time she sought commissions throughout Europe, working in Italy, Austria, Russia and Germany, everywhere enjoying the patronage of distinguished members of the aristocracy. Madame Vigée Le Brun was finally able to return to France in January 1802. Subsequently she travelled to Great Britain, between 1803 and 1806, and twice to Switzerland, in 1807 and 1808.

In the third volume of her Souvenirs, Vigée Le Brun wrote that she had executed about two hundred landscapes during her trips to Great Britain and Switzerland, specifying that she made 'Près de cent paysage suisses au pastel, fait dans mes deux voyage' ('About one hundred Swiss landscapes in pastel, done during my two trips').¹ Perhaps due to their surprising modernity, which may have led to later misattributions, relatively few of these Swiss views are known today. Just under ten sheets have been identified that represent the massif of the Mont-Blanc, while others show the Aiguille du Goûter, and several Swiss lakes, including Lucerne, Thun and Geneva.² The specific location depicted in this work has not, however, so far been identified.

This spectacular work, a broad Alpine view on blue paper, is one of the largest of her surviving landscapes, which are generally on sheets half this size, but it is executed in the same technique and with very similar nuances and subtle tonalities of green and blue, in a mood of absolute calm. Surely executed on the spot, this view reflects Vigée Le Brun’s great ability to convey spatial recession and her command of grand elaborate vistas. She would have carried a large sketchbook, positioning herself between the two slopes surrounded by imposing mountains, with at the edges some pine forests.

The general palette is dominated by a subtle variety of blues and greens with touches of brown to indicate the forests. The sky and a distant river add touches of pink and white, enhancing the romantic feeling pervading this timeless landscape. Surely a work done in its own right and for the artist's pleasure, this landscape is testimony to the spontaneity and freedom of execution that could be achieved using the medium of pastel, and to Madame Vigée Le Brun’s remarkable assimilation in her art of the grandeur of nature. 

The daughter of the pastellist and portraitist Louis Vigée (1715-1767), Louise-Élisabeth received her first training from her father, though he died when she was around twelve years of age.

1. Louise-Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Souvenirs de Madame Louise-Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Paris, H. Fournier 1835-37, vol. III, p. 354

2. Xavier Salmon, in Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, exhib. cat., Paris, Grand Palais et al., 2015-16, p.324