Page:Women in the Fine Arts From the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentiet.djvu/462

Rh sentiments of a mother, and their tender devotion diffused a great charm over my life. It is near these two dear ones and some friends who remain to me that I hope to terminate peacefully a life which has been wandering but calm, laborious but honorable."

During the last years of her life the most distinguished society of Paris was wont to assemble about her—artists, litterateurs, savants, and men of the fashionable world. Here all essential differences of opinion were laid aside and all met on common ground. Her "calm" seemed to have influenced all her life; only good feeling and equality found a place near her, and few women have the blessed fortune to be so sincerely mourned by a host of friends as was Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun, dying at the age of eighty-seven.

Mme. Le Brun's works numbered six hundred and sixty portraits—fifteen genre or figure pictures and about two hundred landscapes painted from sketches made on her journeys. Her portraits included those of the sovereigns and royal families of all Europe, as well as the most famous authors, artists, singers, and the learned men in Churdi and State.

As an artist M. Charles Blanc thus esteems her: "In short, Mme. Le Brun belonged entirely to the eighteenth century—I wish to say to that period oi our time which rested itself suddenly at David. While she followed the counsels of Vemet, her pencil had a certain suppleness, and her brush a force; but she too often attempted to imitate Greuze in her later works and she weakened the resemblance to her subjects by abusing the regard noyé