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Exhibited by Madame Lebrun at the French Royal Academy of Painting, on Her Election as a Member of That Institution

Madame Vigée Lebrun and Her Daughter 42

The Dauphin of France 50

The Baroness de Crussol 58

Marie Caroline, Wife of Ferdinand IV. of Naples 64

Princess Christine, Daughter of Ferdinand IV. of Naples 70

Marie Antoinette, Queen of France 76

Queen Marie Antoinette 80

The Princess de Talleyrand 90

Isabel Czartoryska 100

A Polish Noblewoman

The Duchess de Polignac 112

Queen Marie Antoinette 126

Portrait of the Authoress 132

Painted for the Uffizi Gallery at Florence, Where the Picture Now Hangs

Portrait of Mme. Lebrun's Daughter 138

In the Bologna Gallery

Madame Vigée Lebrun 146

Hubert Robert 154

A French Painter of Repute, Born 1733, Died 1808. One of Madame Lebrun's Contemporaries

A Mother and Her Daughter 162

"Woman Painting" 170

(Identity of sitter uncertain)

Madame Courcelles 176

"The Woman with the Muff" 184

Madame Molé-Raymond, of the Comédie-Française

Madame Vigée Lebrun 190

Genevieve Adelaide Helvetius, Countess d'Andlou 202

Louise Marie Adelaide de Bourbon 210

CHAPTER I
Youth

PRECOCIOUS TALENTS MANIFESTED — MLLE. VIGÉE'S FATHER AND MOTHER — DEATH OF HER FATHER — A FRIEND OF HER GIRLHOOD — HER MOTHER REMARRIES — MLLE. VIGÉE'S FIRST PORTRAIT OF NOTE (COUNT SCHOUVALOFF) — ACQUAINTANCE WITH MME. GEOFFRIN — THE AUTHORESS'S PURITANICAL BRINGING-UP — MALE SITTERS ATTEMPT FLIRTATION — PUBLIC RESORTS OF PARIS BEFORE THE REVOLUTION.

I will begin by speaking of my childhood, which is the symbol, so to say, of my whole life, since my love for painting declared itself in my earliest youth. I was sent to a boarding-school at the age of six, and remained there until I was eleven. During that time I scrawled on everything at all seasons; my copy-books, and even my schoolmates', I decorated with marginal drawings of heads, some full-face, others in profile; on the walls of the dormitory I drew faces and landscapes with coloured chalks. So it may easily be imagined how often I was condemned to bread and water. I made use of my leisure moments outdoors in tracing any figures on the ground that happened to come into my head. At seven or eight, I remember, I made a picture by lamplight of a man with a beard, which I have kept until this very day. When my father saw it he went into transports of joy, exclaiming, "You will be a painter, child, if ever there was one!"

I mention these facts to show what an inborn passion for the art I possessed. Nor has that passion ever diminished; it seems to me that it has even gone on growing with time, for to-day I feel under the spell of it as much as ever, and shall, I hope, until the hour of death. It is, indeed, to this divine passion that I owe, not only my fortune, but my felicity, because it has always been the means of bringing me together with the