Elisabeth Louise VIGÉE-LE BRUN (Paris, 1755 - 1842 ) Allegory of Poetry Oil on canvas Signed and dated 'Melle Vigée / 1774' lower left Allegory of Poetry, oil on canvas, by E. L. Vigée-Le Brun 31.50 x 25.60 in. 80 x 65 cm Provenance: Collection of the Marquise de Jocas, née Isaure de Richard d'Ivry (1876-1963) ; By inheritance to her niece, Camille Frédault; Then by descent; Private collection, Paris ; Anonymous sale; Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Me Delvaux, 19 December 2003, n°115 ; Acquired at this sale by the current owners Exhibitions : Salon de l'Académie de Saint Luc, Paris, Hôtel Jabach, August 1774, n°170 Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Paris, Grand Palais, 23 September 2015-11 January 2016, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 9 February-15 May 2016, Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 10 June-12 September 2016, p. 131, n°31 Bibliography: Observations sur cette exposition des peintures, sculptures et autres ouvrages, Paris, 1774 Lettre à Mr. le Marquis de... sur les peintures exposées à l'hôtel Jabach en 1774, Paris, 1774 Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Souvenirs, Paris, 1835-1837, t.1, p.338 Pierre de Nolhac, Madame Vigée Le Brun, peintre de la reine Marie Antoinette, 1755-1842, Paris, 1908, p.17 and p. 150 Jules Guiffrey, "Les Expositions de l'Académie de Saint Luc et leurs critiques (1751-1774)", Bulletin de la Société de l'histoire de l'art français, 1910, p.116 W.H. Helm, Vigée Le Brun, Her Life, Works and Friendships, London, 1915, p.12 and p. 215 Joseph Baillio, "Quelques peintures réattribuées à Vigée Le Brun", Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 6th per. vol. XCIX, January 1982, p. 17 Joseph Baillio, Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun 1755-1842, cat. exp. Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, 1982, p. 17 Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Souvenirs - Text of the original edition illustrated with reproductions of the work compiled by Patrick Weiller, Paris, 2015, p. 225 repr. Like many women painters of the period, Élisabeth Vigée-Le Brun was a precocious artist who made a living from her art from adolescence, having learned the trade from her father and received advice from a number of masters, but far from any academic training that was forbidden to women. As success came, she was criticised for not belonging to a professional guild. In 1774, she applied to the Académie de Saint Luc, of which her father was a member, and was accepted the same year along with her friend, Rosalie Bocquet, and exhibited at the Salon of this institution, held at the Hôtel Jabach. She exhibited several paintings, including three allegorical subjects: Painting, Poetry and Music, revealing her ambition to be treated as a history painter. Joseph Baillio, a specialist on the artist, believes he has found La Peinture (fig. 1) in an oval canvas formerly attributed to François-André Vincent, La Musique is still unknown (cf. Joseph Baillio, op.cit. 1982). According to Joseph Baillio, this canvas is also oval and forms a triptych, with La Poésie, in rectangular format, as its central element. The paintings were noticed at the Salon and received a great deal of criticism: the anonymous author of Observations sur l'exposition de Peintures... praised the "pleasant colouring (...), the easy brushwork, the sure touch" of the "young virtuoso", but the author of La lettre à Mr. le Marquis de... criticised: "Her poetry, her music and above all her painting are black; the drawing is hard and the draperies heavy: one can see that this young lady, filled with the desire to succeed, consults and seeks to imitate several masters". Although the young Vigée-Le Brun drew her inspiration for the composition here from a work by Annibal Carracci (Venus, Satyr and Two Putti in the Uffizi Museum in Florence), the delicate brushwork and brilliant colours reveal a sensibility shared by contemporary artists such as Jean-Baptiste Greuze. The pearly tones of the flesh, worked in finely coloured glazes, reveal an accomplished artist; this refinement of tones is also visible in the portrait of his mother dated around 1774-1778 (Madame Le Sèvre, née Jeanne Maissin, the artist's mother in a white pelisse, oval canvas, 65 x 54cm, private collection). Elisabeth Louise VIGÉE-LE BRUN (Paris, 1755 - 1842 ) 80 x 65 cm