Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun

Here's an interesting artist whose birth anniversary was this past Saturday. Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was born April 16, 1755. She painted 660 portraits and 200 landscapes, many of which are in the Met, the Louvre, Versailles, Uffizi, the Hermitage, London's National Gallery, and others. Here are two self-portraits, one of her portraits of Marie Antoinette, and the landscape "La fête des bergers à Unspunnen" (The Shepherds' Festival at Unspunnen). "There is also a long tradition of great artists– Rubens and Velázquez, John Singer Sargent and Tina Barney – who served as courtiers to the elites of the day, and used the power that intimacy afforded to remake the rules of representation. Vigée Le Brun was an artist at that lofty level, at a moment women weren’t supposed to be artists at all" (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/feb/12/vigee-le-brun-metropolitan-museum-of-art-woman-artist-revolutionary-france).