Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun, Madame Perregaux, 1789, oil on oak panel, 99.6 x 78.5 cm (Wallace Collection, London)
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:05] This is a remarkable portrait. It’s so lifelike. I love her dress, and her collar, and her bow, and her hat, and the feather, and the curtain she pulls away and how she peeks out at something.
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:19] It’s so animated. It’s really wonderful. For all of the artifice, all of the complexity and the attention to costume, it’s not only very natural, but she comes through full of energy and curiosity. You feel as if you really get a sense of who she is.
Dr. Harris: [0:33] Oh, completely. This was commissioned by her husband, here on the eve of the French Revolution. Her name is “Madame Perregaux,” and this is a portrait by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.
Dr. Zucker: [0:44] I think it’s really interesting to look at the way the painting is constructed. She’s taken a very simple composition and a very traditional one of a woman — sort of a half-length portrait with a curtain on one side and an open space on the other — at a balcony. She’s created, first of all, the sense of the revelation by pulling that curtain back.
Dr. Harris: [1:02] Right, a little drama.
Dr. Zucker: [1:03] Absolutely, but then she’s also formally constructing that lovely arc on the lower right that begins to then set off a couple of other arcs, the arcs of her arms, of her collar.
Dr. Harris: [1:14] Of her hat.
Dr. Zucker: [1:14] Of her hat, and then again of that lovely red ribbon that just trims her waistcoat.
Dr. Harris: [1:21] She’s taken a formal element of that Baroque curtain that we see behind figures in portraits and made it something much more playful.
Dr. Zucker: [1:30] Yeah, really engaging it. It’s just, I think, a masterful example of how the portrait can be brought to life.
[1:36] [music]
