ÉLISABETH VIGÉE LE BRUN (Paris, 1755-1842) PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN Oval canvas Signed and dated lower left "Melle Vigée / 1775". Louis XVI period carved and gilded oak frame stamped Letonne and A.Levert Young man's portrait, oval canvas, signed and dated lower left "Melle Vigée / 1775", Louis XVI period carved and gilded oak frame stamped Letonne et A.Levert 58 x 46,50 CM - 22,8 x 18,3 IN. Provenance Collection of the Comte de Montlivault, acquired in the 1930s; Always remained in the family. We would like to thank Joseph Baillio for confirming the authenticity of this work, based on a digital photograph. A certificate, drawn up on 2 February 2024, will be given to the buyer. The work will be included in the catalogue raisonné of Vigée Le Brun's work currently being prepared. Louise-Elisabeth Lebrun painted this portrait in the early years of Louis XVI's reign. By then she had made a name for herself, and her diary records no fewer than seventy-four portraits delivered in 1776. Her first and only real master was her father, the portrait painter Louis Vigée. When he died in 1768, it was Gabriel Doyen, a renowned painter and great friend of his, who encouraged Louise-Elisabeth to take up the brush again. Just fourteen years old, she was already painting portraits in oil and pastel. Her father had left her no money, so it was through her art that she supported herself and her mother. Together they went to see the paintings of Rubens and "many rooms full of paintings by the greatest masters" in Luxembourg, as well as the galleries of major Parisian collectors. In the second letter of her Souvenirs, she wrote: "I copied several heads of young girls by Greuze, because they explained to me the half-tones found in delicate complexions; Wandik also explained them, but more finely. I owe to this work the all-important study of the degradation of light on the protruding parts of a head, a degradation that I admired so much in Raphael's heads? My aptitude for painting was remarkable, and my progress was so rapid that people began to talk about me in the world, which gave me the satisfaction of knowing Joseph Vernet. He advised her: "Above all, do as much as you can from nature: nature is the first of all masters". In 1775, Élisabeth signed her maiden name. She married in 1776. It was in 1778, three years after painting this portrait, that she painted Queen Marie-Antoinette in full court costume for the first time (canvas, 273 x 193 CM, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). The frame is stamped by Henri Létonné, master joiner in Paris on 9 June 1773, and Antoine Levert, joiner and cabinetmaker, master in Paris on 14 December 1774.