Page:Woman in Art.djvu/104

WOMAN IN ART known shore because it was not built and furnished like a modern Leviathan? Never slur the ladder whose rungs have aided your upward climbing.

In the year 1755 a daughter was born to an excellent portrait painter in France. The world knows of her today as Mme. Vigee-Lebrun. In after years her advent was spoken of by M. Charles Lebrun—the great painter of his time—as "the birth of a princess into the kingdom of art and around whose cradle fairies gathered. One gave her beauty; one intellect; another a pencil and palette. One prophesied an unhappy marriage; but the fairy of travel to console her, promised she should carry from court to court, from academy to academy, from Paris to Rome, from St. Petersburg to London, her gayety, her talent, and her easel before which the sovereigns of Europe should pose, and also many heads crowned with genius."

The infant was baptized Elizabeth Louise Vigee. Her father was her teacher through childhood, laying a foundation on which future experience and instruction were to build.

The gifted girl was left an orphan at twelve, and soon thereafter came under the influence of M. Gruize, and later was instructed by Joseph Vernet.

"Nature is the best master," said Vernet to her one day "if you study her you will never have mannerisms."

At fifteen she painted excellent portraits, and at twenty-five was received into full membership of the Academy with the exhibition of "Peace Creating Abundance."

The prophecy concerning her marriage came true. M. Lebrun, her husband, was a wealthy dealer in pictures, but dissolute, cruel, and extravagant, and after a few years she obtained a separation.

No one who has visited the Versailles Gallery can ever forget the portrait of Marie Antoinette and her children, done by the hand and sympathetic spirit of motherhood which was strong in Mme. Lebrun. The little Dauphin standing by the cradle of his baby brother makes it difficult to realize that the innocent child was born to political persecution and death at the age of ten, and all because of the selfish and frivolous propensities of his mother.

Nor had she seemingly the wit to realize that the influence of her extravagant social life caused the sacrifice of her husband Louis XVI, her son, and finally her own head. 78