Louise Elisabeth VIGEE LE BRUN Paris, 1755 - 1842 Portrait of a clergyman, probably Abbé Giroux Oil on canvas (Restorations and missing parts) Portrait of an ecclesiastical, probably abbe Giroux, oil on canvas, by L. E.Vigee Le Brun 81,50 x 65 cm (32,09 x 25,59 in.) Provenance: Pierre de Nolhac Collection (as attributed to Nattier); Private collection, France Bibliography: Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 'Souvenirs de Madame Louise-Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, de l'Académie royale de Paris, de Rouen, de Saint-Luc de Rome et d'Arcadie, de Parme et de Bologne, de Saint-Pétersbourg, de Berlin, de Genève et Avignon', Paris, 1835, vol. I, p. 320 (1774) Joseph Baillio, "Identification de quelques portraits d'anonymes de Vigée Le Brun aux Etats Unis", in 'Gazette des Beaux-Arts', November 1980, reproduced fig. 2 (Portrait présumé de l'abbé Giroux, 1774) Joseph Baillio, "Quelques peintures réattribuées à Vigée Le Brun", in 'Gazette des Beaux-Arts', January 1982, pp. 16 and 26 (note 14) Louise-Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 'Souvenirs' (text of the original edition illustrated with reproductions of the work compiled by Patrick Weiller), Paris, 2015, vol. I, repr. p. 67. Comment: Our painting shows that at just nineteen years of age, Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun had fully assimilated the conventions of French portraiture in the Age of Enlightenment and was beginning to find her own style. She shows her model seated at a flat desk, surprised as she reads a small bound volume, her elbow resting on Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans. A prodigious artist, she had been painting for five years and already had an important social network in Parisian society. In the lists of works published in her 'Souvenirs', the artist mentions a "Portrait of Abbé Giroux", dated 1774. Abbé Giroux should not be confused, as has sometimes been said, with the musician and composer François Giroust (1737-1799), the author of the 'Missa Brevis: Gaudate in Domino semper', premiered at Reims Cathedral on the occasion of the coronation of Louis XVI. She also wrote: "I was not yet married when the Prince of Nassau, who was young at the time, was introduced to me by Abbé Giroux: he asked me for his portrait, which I did full-length". There is a good chance that Abbé Giroux took refuge in England during the Revolution. He could therefore have been the French tutor of the young Frances Winckley, later Lady Shelley (1787-1873) and her sisters, who were born into a Jacobite family in Preston in Lancashire, England. She wrote in her diary: "Our French master, the Abbé Giroux, was a distinguished French émigré, and was devoted to the French Royal family. He predicted the Restoration, tôt ou tard, and often spoke of his adventures during the Terror. He seemed to have been in some way, employed at the Tuileries, and was certainly cognizant of Pichegru's plot, for I well remember his agitation on one occasion when he said he could not possibly give me my French lesson, and that he believed at that moment the tyrant Napoleon had been assassinated. I remember his despair when the news arrived that the plot had failed! In afteryears I had deep cause to thank the Abbé Giroux for having taught me to speak French so correctly, for I was complimented on my accent by the Comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles X, whom I met with the Duc de Berri and the Prince de Condé at Knowsley." (The Diary of Frances Lady Shelley 1787-1873, edited by her grandson Richard Edgcumbe, New York, 1912, p. 16). We would like to thank Joseph Baillio for the valuable information contained in this notice. A more complete certificate of inclusion in the catalogue raisonné of paintings, pastels and drawings by Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun by Joseph Baillio, dated November 2022, will be given to the buyer. 1. The portrait of Prince Charles Henri Othon de Nassau Siegen is in the Indianapolis Museum of Art. See Joseph Baillio, exhibition catalogue, 'Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842)', Fort Worth, Kimbell Museum of Art, 1982, pp. 35-36, no. 4.