A working woman in the Eighteen Century

The inspiration for my novel, The Magic of Moonlight, was a French female aritist, Madame Vigee-Le Brun. Marie Elisabeth Louis Vigee-LeBrun was born in Paris in 1755. Her father, Louis Vigee was a portrait painter and also painted fans.

At age six, Elisabeth was sent to a convent where she stayed for five years. Her father died when she was twelve. Her widowed mother then married a wealthy jeweler.

By the time Elisabeth was a teenager, she was already painting professionally. She applied to the Academie de Saint Luc, which reluctantly allowed her to exhibit her work, and she became a member of that august body.

I have to wonder if they would have been so reluctant if Elizabeth had been a woman.

At age twenty, she married, Jean-Baptiste-Pierr Le Brun, also a painter and and art dealer.

Elisabeth painted many portraits of the nobility, and she was invited to paint the queen, Maire Antoinette. Vigee Le-Brun painted over thirty portraits of the French Queen.

Vigee-Lebrun gave birth to a daughter, Julie, and painted a charming self portrait of herself and Julie in 1786. The portrait reveal how lovely young mother and beautiful child. Vigee Le Brun did another self portrait in 1790, in which she is wearing a white hat and a lovely lace collar on her dress.

The French Revolution caused Elisabeth to flee from France, but because of her talent and connections to the European aristocracy, her career continued to flourish. She painted in Austria, Russia, and Italy. She was admitted to the Roman Accademia de San Luca. While in Russia, she painted many portraits of Catherine the Great's family.

She returned to France when Napoleon became emperor.

Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun died in Paris in 1842 at the age of 86. Her legacy includes over six hundred portraits and two hundred landscapes.

Elisabeth Vigee-LeBrun had a successful international career in a time when most women stayed home and took cared for their families.

I used her as the inspiration for my heroine, Charlotte Purcell, in my novel, The Magic of Moonlight. It couldn't have been easy for Elisabeth to compete in a man's world, and I admire her.