“Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun” (self-portrait)
Artist unknown
2 x 2.5 in., oil on porcelain
Coppola Collection

Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, also known simply as Madame Le Brun, was a French painter who mostly specialized in portrait painting, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

For 18th-century young British noblemen, no education was complete without a year on the Grand Tour. Although it had no official route, the Grand Tour focused on places foundational to European art, literature and architecture, including sites in France, Germany, Switzerland and, most importantly, Italy. It was an opportunity not just to witness the roots of the classics they had studied but also to take some of it home and resulted in a souvenir trade (although not quite the trinkets and t-shirts we think about today). The souvenirs of 18th century tourists could be anything from large scale oil paintings to classical sculptures and artefacts.

There were basically two types of portrait miniatures. The more important being individual one-of-a-kind paintings of living individuals in their time. The second are these little paintings done for Grand Tour tourist souvenir trade. Paintings such as these date to Victorian era, ca. 1850-1900.

The Grand Tour was vital for many artists. Travelling to Italy allowed them to study not only the work of renaissance masters, but the classical sculptures and ruins that adorned the cities and landscape. By the 18th Century, the study of Hellenistic and roman sculpture was a key principle for artists composing the ‘perfect’ male or female form in their paintings.

Many of the Grand Tour tourists had their portraits painted, too, posing in an idyllic landscape with their favorite artefact or a scholarly item reflective of their character and ambition.