What emotions is this person feeling?
Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun
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Bright emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Quiet emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Heavy emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Sombre emotions
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Not at all Extremely
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Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Date
1782
Description
Creator of the image: Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Date of the image creation: 1782
Medium of the image: Oil on canvas
Person depicted: Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun
The daughter of a prominent French painter, Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842) was born and died in Paris. After establishing herself as an artist, she was invited to the Palace of Versailles where she served as a portrait painter to Marie Antoinette. After the Revolution, she fled the country, and lived in exile for several years working as a sort after painter of portraits of various European aristocrats. Under Napoleon, Vigée Le Brun was allowed to return to France, although she continued gallivanting around Europe and painting the elite.
In this portrait, painted in or shortly after 1782, Vigée Le Brun depicts herself in her late 20s. Her hazel eyes stare directly at the viewer. A smile forms on her small mouth, a smile that shows several of her teeth. While today this expression seems innocuous and sweet, it was not received that way in late-eighteenth century France. Several years later a minor social scandal was sparked by another self-portrait by Vigée Le Brun in which she depicted herself smiling with an open mouth. This was seen as defying a tradition going back to antiquity: smiling with an open mouth was seen as an expression of madness, drunkenness, naivety, anger or ecstasy, and her portrait was condemned.
According to Colin Jones — author of a book called The Smile Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Paris — one reason for the lack of smiles at the time had to do with the rotten state of most people’s teeth. Dental decay was rampant, breath was bad, and mouths were dark, smelly, and cavity-ridden. The state of dental care at the time was abysmal, with various counter-productive remedies, such as honey, and prayer being the main methods for dealing with toothache. However, as Jones notes that the attitude towards the smile would change over the next century: ‘The new type of society that was coming in — more urban centred, more capitalistic, but also by the end of the century more democratic, more egalitarian, less deferential to the royal court — offered a place in which the smile had a sense, had a meaning’. What’s more, France became a leader in a newly sprung profession, dentistry, with new steel instruments, brushes and false teeth entering the scene to cater to the grinning needs of the bourgeoisie. Strangely, an ardent Royalist like Vigée Le Brun can be seen as somehow anticipating the coming regime of the smile.
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