Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France

Marie Louise Élisabeth, Vigée-Le Brun's self-portrait
"Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French, 1755–1842) is one of the finest 18th-century French painters and among the most important of all women artists. An autodidact with exceptional skills as a portraitist, she achieved success in France and Europe during one of the most eventful, turbulent periods in European history. In 1776, she married the leading art dealer in Paris; his profession at first kept her from being accepted into the prestigious Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Nevertheless, through the intervention of Marie Antoinette, she was admitted at the age of 28 in 1783, becoming one of only four women members. ... Independently, she worked in Florence, Naples, Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Berlin before returning to France, taking sittings from, among others, members of the royal families of Naples, Russia, and Prussia. While in exile, she exhibited at the Paris Salons. ..."
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Video)
W - Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
NY Times - Vigée Le Brun: A Delayed Tribute to a French Trailblazer
Khan Academy
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Eighteenth-Century Women Painters in France