"[6] During this period, Élisabeth benefited from the advice of Gabriel François Doyen, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and Joseph Vernet, whose influence is evident in her portrait of her younger brother, playwright and poet Étienne Vigée.

[8] After her father's death, her mother sought to raise her spirits by taking her to the Palais de Luxembourg's art gallery; seeing the works of Peter Paul Rubens and other old masters left a great impression on her.

[citation needed] After two years of marriage, Vigée Le Brun became pregnant, and on 12 February 1780, she gave birth to a daughter, Jeanne Lucie Louise, whom she called Julie and nicknamed "Brunette".

More rumors and scandals followed soon after as, to the painter's dismay, M. Le Brun began building a mansion on the Rue de-Gros-Chenet, with the public claiming that de Calonne was financing the new home - although her husband did not finish constructing the house until 1801, shortly before her return to France after her long exile.

[citation needed] In 1787, she caused a minor public scandal when her Self-portrait with her Daughter Julie was exhibited at that year's Salon showing her smiling and open-mouthed, which was in direct contravention of traditional painting conventions going back to antiquity.

The court gossip-sheet Mémoires secrets commented: "An affectation which artists, art-lovers and persons of taste have been united in condemning, and which finds no precedent among the Ancients, is that in smiling, [Madame Vigée LeBrun] shows her teeth.

"[13] In light of this and her other Self-portrait with her Daughter Julie (1789), Simone de Beauvoir dismissed Vigée Le Brun as narcissistic in The Second Sex (1949): "Madame Vigée-Lebrun never wearied of putting her smiling maternity on her canvases.

[19] Vigée Le Brun was initially refused on the grounds that her husband was an art dealer, but eventually the Académie was overruled by an order from Louis XVI because Marie Antoinette put considerable pressure on the King on behalf of her portraitist.

Later in her life, in a letter to the Princess Kourakin, the artist wrote: Society seemed to be in a state of complete chaos, and honest people were left to fend for themselves, for the National Guard was made up of a strange crew, a mixture of bizarre and even frightening types.

Porporati and his daughter received the artist for five or six days until she resumed her journey southwards to Parma, where she met the Comte de Flavigny [fr] (then minister plenipotentiary of Louis XVI) who generously accommodated her during her stay there.

The Comte de Flavigny then introduced Vigée Le Brun to Marie Antoinette's older sister, the bereaved Infanta and Duchess of Parma, Maria Amalia, while she was in mourning for her recently deceased brother Emperor Joseph II.

Vigée Le Brun despaired at this news, and was fearful when a man clad in black arrived at the inn whom she recognized as a papal messenger, and assumed he was delivering an order to leave within the next twenty-four hours, She was surprised and elated when she realized that the missive he carried was permission for her to stay in Bologna as long as she pleased.

She also visited the Palazzo Altoviti, where she saw the self-portrait of Raphael, praising his countenance and expression as that of a "man who was obviously a keen observer of life", but also stated that the painting's protective glass had made its shadows darker.

Vigée Le Brun was very sensitive to sound while sleeping; this was a lifetime burden for her, and when traveling to new locations or cities, frequent moving of lodgings was customary until she found a suitably quiet residence.

She worked hard during her three-year residency in Rome, painting numerous subjects including Miss Pitt,[f] Lord Bristol, Countess Potocka, Emma, Lady Hamilton, Hyacinthe-Gabrielle Roland and many others.

Vigée Le Brun was nearly sick at this sight, and was haunted by it for a long time, later writing to Fontana for advice on relieving herself from the stress and consequences of having seen the internal anatomy of the human body, to which he replied to her; "That which you describe as a weakness and a misfortune, is in fact the source of your strength and talent; moreover, if you wish to diminish the inconvenience caused by this sensitivity, then stop painting".

She subsequently rented a small home on the Moncalieri hillside, overlooking the Po river with M. de Rivière, who had arrived recently and narrowly escaped revolutionary violence as it swept the countryside, in solitude.

In Art nothing can compete with noble simplicity, and all the faces I viewed subsequently seemed to wear a sort of grimace.In Russia, where she stayed from 1795 until 1801, she was well-received by the nobility and painted numerous aristocrats, including the former King of Poland, Stanisław August Poniatowski, whom she became well acquainted with, and other members of the family of Catherine the Great.

Vigée Le Brun was greatly worried by this and considered it a hurtful remark and replaced the tunics with the muslin dresses the princesses wore, and added long sleeves (called Amadis in Russia).

However, as Julie's remonstrations and pressure on her mother grew, Vigée Le Brun relented and gave her approval for the wedding, though she was greatly distressed at the prospect, and soon found her stay in Russia, hitherto so enjoyable, had become suffocating and decided to return to Paris.

The artist was still adamant about leaving Russia, despite her closest friends, the Count Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov, M. de Rivière and the princesses Dolgoruky and Kourakina and others attempting all they could to make her stay in Saint Petersburg, she left after residing there for six years.

She soon visited the famous painter Joseph-Marie Vien, who was the former Premier peintre du Roi; then 82 years old and a senator, he gave Vigée Le Brun an enthusiastic welcome and showed her some of his newest sketches.

She also went to the home of Lord Moira and his sister Charlotte Adelaide Constantia Rawdon, where Vigée Le Brun further experienced the stern social milieu of English aristocracy; she spent some of the winter there.

Eventually all these irritations reached a pitch, and I became very bad tempered as a result; one day she happened to be in my studio and I said to M. Denon, in a voice loud enough for her to overhear: 'When I painted real princesses they never gave me any trouble and never kept me waiting.'

She also met the seven-months pregnant Mme de Brac, who accompanied her to Thun, and then to the Lauterbrunnen Valley, which she found dark and grim due to its being hidden from sunlight on both sides by steep mountains.

After taking the young daughter-in-law of de Salis with her, she departed for the small island of Ufenau in Lake Zurich, then visited Rappercheld [sic] where she continued to be mesmerized by the beauty of the countryside and the "native innocence" of the locals.

After returning from Coppet to Geneva, where she was made an honorary member of the Société pour l'Avancement des Beaux-Arts,[8] she departed in a group with the de Brac family for Chamonix, intending to visit the Sallanches mountains, the Aiguille du Goûter, and Mont Blanc.

After returning to Paris from her second visit to Switzerland, Vigée Le Brun purchased a house in Louveciennes, Île-de-France near the Seine, and invited her niece (daughter of her brother Étienne) Caroline Rivière and her husband to live with her.

More than once I saw Bonaparte appear at his window and then retire immediately, furious no doubt, for the acclamation of the crowd was limited to the shouts of a hundred or so boys, paid, I believe, as an act of derision to chant long live the Emperor!

[34] Vigée Le Brun is one of only three characters in Joel Gross's Marie Antoinette: The Color of Flesh (premiered in 2007), a fictionalized historical drama about a love triangle set against the backdrop of the French Revolution.