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Marie Antoinette Gathering the Brushes of Madame Vigée Le Brun, 1784
Alexis-Joseph Pérignon French
Not on view
Vigée Le Brun and Marie Antoinette were both born in 1755. The queen gave birth to her first child, Madame Royale, in 1778, and Madame Le Brun to her daughter Julie in 1780. Several years later, a pregnant Vigée Le Brun arrived for a sitting at Versailles. In her eagerness to please the queen, she spilled her brushes on the floor. When she leaned down to pick them up, she was stopped by Marie Antoinette, who, as Vigée Le Brun wrote, “insisted on gathering them all up herself.”
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