Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D Part 47

VERELST, MARIAN. Born in 1680. This artist belonged in Antwerp and was of the celebrated artistic family of her name. She was a pupil of her father, Hermann, and her uncle, Simon Verelst. She became famous for the excellent likenesses she made and for the artistic qualities of her small portraits.

Like so many other artists, she was distinguished for accomplishments outside her art. She was a fine musician and a marvel in her apt.i.tude in acquiring both ancient and modern languages. A very interesting anecdote is related of her, as follows: When in London, one evening at the theatre she sat near six German gentlemen, who expressed their admiration of her in the most flattering terms of their language, and at the same time observed her so closely as to be extremely rude. The artist, in their own tongue, remarked that such extravagant praise was the opposite of a compliment. One of them repeated his words in Latin, when she again replied in the same language. The strangers then asked her if she would give them her name. This she did and further told them that she lived with her uncle, Simon Verelst. In the end she painted the portrait of each of these men, and the story of their experience proved the reason for the acquaintance of the artist being sought by people of culture and position. Walpole speaks in praise of her portraits and also mentions her unusual attainments in languages.

VIGeE, MARIE LOUISE ELIZABETH. Member of the French Academy. Born in Paris in 1755. That happy writer and learned critic, M. Charles Blanc, begins his account of her thus: "All the fairies gathered about the cradle of Elizabeth Vigee, as for the birth of a little princess in the kingdom of art. One gave her beauty, another genius; the fairy Gracious offered her a pencil and a palette. The fairy of marriage, who had not been summoned, told her, it is true, that she should wed M. Le Brun, the expert in pictures--but for her consolation the fairy of travellers promised her that she should bear from court to court, from academy to academy, from Paris to Petersburg, and from Rome to London, her gayety, her talent, and her easel--before which all the sovereigns of Europe and all those whom genius had crowned should place themselves as subjects for her brush."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FRENCH PRINCE

MARIE VIGeE LE BRUN]

It is difficult to write of Madame Le Brun in outline because her life was so interesting in detail. Though she had many sorrows, there is a halo of romance and a brilliancy of atmosphere about her which marks her as a prominent woman of her day, and her autobiography is charming--it is so alive that one forgets that she is not present, telling her story!

The father of this gifted daughter was an artist of moderate ability and made portraits in pastel, which Elizabeth, in her "Souvenirs," speaks of as good and thinks some of them worthy of comparison with those of the famous Latour. M. Vigee was an agreeable man with much vivacity of manner. His friends were numerous and he was able to present his daughter to people whose acquaintance was of value to her. She was but twelve years old at the time of his death, and he had already so encouraged her talents as to make her future comparatively easy for her.

Elizabeth pa.s.sed five years of her childhood in a convent, where she constantly busied herself in sketching everything that she saw. She tells of her intense pleasure in the use of her pencil, and says that her pa.s.sion for painting was innate and never grew less, but increased in charm as she grew older. She claimed that it was a source of perpetual youth, and that she owed to it her acquaintance and friends.h.i.+p with the most delightful men and women of Europe.

While still a young girl, Mlle. Vigee studied under Briard, Doyen, and Greuze, but Joseph Vernet advised her to study the works of Italian and Flemish masters, and, above all, to study Nature for herself--to follow no school or system. To this advice Mme. Le Brun attributed her success.

When sixteen years old she presented two portraits to the French Academy, and was thus early brought to public notice.

When twenty-one she married M. Le Brun, of whom she speaks discreetly in her story of her life, but it was well known that he was of dissipated habits and did not hesitate to spend all that his wife could earn. When she left France, thirteen years after her marriage, she had not so much as twenty francs, although she had earned a million!

She painted portraits of many eminent people, and was esteemed as a friend by men and women of culture and high position. The friends.h.i.+p between the artist and Marie Antoinette was a sincere and deep affection between two women, neither of whom remembered that one of them was a queen. It was a great advantage to the artist to be thus intimately a.s.sociated with her sovereign lady. Even in the great state picture of the Queen surrounded by her children, at Versailles, one realizes the tenderness of the painter as she lovingly reproduced her friend.

Marie Antoinette desired that Mme. Le Brun should be elected to the Academy; Vernet approved it, and an unusual honor was shown her in being made an Academician before the completion of her reception picture. At that time it was a great advantage to be a member of the Academy, as no other artists were permitted to exhibit their works in the Salon of the Beaux-Arts.

Mme. Le Brun had one habit with which she allowed nothing to interfere, which was taking a rest after her work for the day was done. She called it her "calm," and to it she attributed a large share of her power of endurance, although it lost her many pleasures. She could not go out to dinner or entertain at that hour. The evening was her only time for social pleasures. But when one reads her "Souvenirs," and realizes how many notable people she met in her studio and in evening society, it scarcely seems necessary to regret that she could not dine out!

Mme. Le Brun was at one period thought to be very extravagant, and one of her entertainments caused endless comments. Her own account of it shows how greatly the cost was exaggerated. She writes that on one occasion she invited twelve or fifteen friends to listen to her brother's reading during her "calm." The poem read was the "Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grece," in which a dinner was described, and even the receipts for making various sauces were given. The artist was seized with the idea of improvising a Greek supper.

She summoned her cook and instructed her in what had been read. Among her guests were several unusually pretty ladies, who attired themselves in Greek costumes as nearly as the time permitted. Mme. Le Brun retained the white blouse she wore at her work, adding a veil and a crown of flowers.

Her studio was rich in antique objects, and a dealer whom she knew loaned her cups, vases, and lamps. All was arranged with the effect an artist knows how to produce.

As the guests arrived Mme. Le Brun added here and there an element of Grecian costume until their number was sufficient for an effective _tableau vivant_. Her daughter and a little friend were dressed as pages and bore antique vases. A canopy hung over the table, the guests were posed in picturesque att.i.tudes, and those who arrived later were arrested at the door of the supper-room with surprise and delight.

It was as if they had been transported to another clime. A Greek song was chanted to the accompaniment of a lyre, and when the honey, grapes, and other dishes were served _a la Grecque_, the enchantment was complete.

The poet recited odes from Anacreon and all pa.s.sed off delightfully.

The fame of this novel supper was spread over Paris, and marvellous tales were told of its magnificence and its cost. Mme. Le Brun writes: "Some ladies asked me to repeat this pleasantry. I refused for various reasons, and several of them were disturbed by my refusal. Soon a report that the supper had cost me twenty thousand francs was spread abroad. The King spoke of it as a joke to the Marquis of Cubieres, who fortunately had been one of the guests and was able to convince His Majesty of the folly of such a story. Nevertheless, the modest sum of twenty thousand at Versailles became forty thousand at Rome; at Vienna the Baroness de Strogonoff told me that I had spent sixty thousand francs for my Greek supper; you know that at Petersburg the price at length was fixed at eighty thousand francs, and the truth is that it cost me about fifteen francs!"

Early in 1789, when the warnings of the horrors about to take place began to be heard, Mme. Le Brun went to Italy. In each city that she visited she was received with great kindness and many honors were shown her. In Florence she was invited to paint her own portrait, to be hung in that part of the Uffizi set apart for the portraits of famous painters. Later she sent the well-known portrait, near that of Angelica Kauffman. It is interesting to read Goethe's comparison of the two portraits.

Speaking of Angelica's first, he writes: "It has a truer tone in the coloring, the position is more pleasing, and the whole exhibits more correct taste and a higher spirit in art. But the work of Le Brun shows more careful execution, has more vigor in the drawing, and more delicate touches. It, has, moreover, a clear though somewhat exaggerated coloring.

The Frenchwoman understands the art of adornment--the headdress, the hair, the folds of lace on the bosom, all are arranged with care and, as one might say, _con amore_. The piquant, handsome face, with its lively expression, its parted lips disclosing a row of pearly teeth, presents itself to the beholder's gaze as if coquettishly challenging his admiration, while the hand holds the pencil as in the act of drawing.

"The picture of Angelica, with head gently inclined and a soft, intellectual melancholy pervading the countenance, evinces higher genius, even if, in point of artistic skill, the preference should be given to the other."

Mme. Le Brun found Rome delightful and declared that if she could forget France she should be the happiest of women. She writes of her fellow artist: "I have been to see Angelica Kauffman, whom I greatly desired to know. I found her very interesting, apart from her fine talent, on account of her mind and her general culture.... She has talked much with me during the two evenings I have pa.s.sed at her house. Her manner is gentle; she is prodigiously learned, but has no enthusiasm, which, considering my ignorance, has not electrified me.... I have seen several of her works; her sketches please me more than her pictures, because they are of a t.i.tianesque color."

Mme. Le Brun received more commissions for portraits than she could find time to paint in the three years she lived in Italy. She tells us: "Not only did I find great pleasure in painting surrounded by so many masterpieces, but it was also necessary for me to make another fortune. I had not a hundred francs of income. Happily I had only to choose among the grandest people the portraits which it pleased me to paint." Her account of her experiences in Italy is very entertaining, but at last the restlessness of the exile overcame her and impelled her to seek other scenes. She went to Vienna and there remained three other years, making many friends and painting industriously until the spirit of unrest drove her to seek new diversions, and she went to Russia.

She was there received with great cordiality and remained six years--years crowded with kindness, labor, honor, attainment, joy, and sorrow. Her daughter was the one all-absorbing pa.s.sion--at once the joy and the grief of her life. She was so charming and so gifted as to satisfy the critical requirements of her mother's desires. In Petersburg, where the daughter was greatly admired and caressed, the artist found herself a thousand times more happy than she had ever been in her own triumphs.

Mme. Le Brun was so constantly occupied and the need of earning was so great with her, that she was forced to confide her daughter to the care of others when she made her debut in society. Thus it happened that the young girl met M. Nigris, whom she afterward married. Personally he was not agreeable to Mme. Le Brun and his position was not satisfactory to her. We can imagine her chagrin in accepting a son-in-law who even asked her for money with which to go to church on his wedding-day! The whole affair was most distasteful, and the marriage occurred at the time of the death of Mme. Le Brun's mother. She speaks of it as a "time devoted to tears."

Her health suffered so much from this sadness that she tried the benefit of change of scene, and went to Moscow. Returning to Petersburg, she determined--in spite of the remonstrances of her friends, and the inducements offered her to remain--to go to France. She several times interrupted her journey in order to paint portraits of persons who had heard of her fame, and desired to have her pictures.

She reached Paris in 1801 and writes thus of her return: "I shall not attempt to express my emotions when I was again upon the soil of France, from which I had been absent twelve years. Fright, grief, joy possessed me, each in turn, for all these entered into the thousand varying sentiments which swept over my soul. I wept for the friends whom I had lost upon the scaffold, but I was about to see again those who remained.

This France to which I returned had been the scene of atrocious crimes; but this France was my Native Land!"

But the new regime was odious to the artist, and she found herself unable to be at home, even in Paris. After a year she went to London, and remained in England three years. She detested the climate and was not in love with the people, but she found a compensation in the society of many French families who had fled from France as she had done.

In 1804 Mme. Nigris was in Paris and her mother returned to see her. The young woman was very beautiful and attractive, very fond of society, entirely indifferent to her husband, and not always wise in the choice of her companions. Mme. Le Brun, always hard at work and always having great anxieties, at length found herself so broken in health, and so nervously fatigued that she longed to be alone with Nature, and in 1808 she went to Switzerland. Her letters written to the Countess Potocka at this time are added to her "Souvenirs," and reveal the very best of her nature. Feeling the need of continued repose, she bought a house at Louveciennes, where she spent much time. In 1818 M. Le Brun died, and six years later the deaths of her daughter and her brother left her with no near relative in the world.

For a time she sought distractions in new scenes and visited the Touraine and other parts of France, but though she still lived a score of years, she spent them in Paris and Louveciennes. She had with her two nieces, who cared for her more tenderly than any one had done before. One of these ladies was a portrait painter and profited much by the advice of Mme. Le Brun, who wrote of this period and these friends: "They made me feel again the 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 a.s.semble about her--artists, litterateurs, savants, and men of the fas.h.i.+onable 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 Vigee 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 Church 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 of our time which rested itself suddenly at David. While she followed the counsels of Vernet, 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 noye_ (cloudy or indistinct effect). She was too early in vogue to make all the necessary studies, and she too often contented herself with an ingenuity a little too manifest. Without judging her as complacently as the Academy formerly judged her, we owe her an honorable place, because in spite of revolutions and reforms she continued to her last day the light, spiritual, and French Art of Watteau, Nattier, and Fragonard."

VIGRI, CATERINA DE. Lippo Dalmasii was much admired by Malvasia, who not only extols his pictures, but his spirit as well, and represents him as following his art as a religion, beginning and ending his daily work with prayer. Lippo is believed to have been the master of Caterina de Vigri, and the story of her life is in harmony with the influence of such a teacher.

She is the only woman artist who has been canonized; and in the Convent of the Corpus Domini, in Bologna, which she founded, she is known as "La Santa," and as a special patron of the Fine Arts.

Caterina was of a n.o.ble family of Ferrara, where she was born in 1413.

She died when fifty years old; and so great was the reverence for her memory that her remains were preserved, and may still be seen in a chapel of her convent. There are few places in that ever wonderful Italy of such peculiar interest as this chapel, where sits, clothed in a silken robe, with a crown of gold on the head, the incorrupt body of a woman who died four hundred and forty years ago. The body is quite black, while the nails are still pink. She holds a book and a sceptre. Around her, in the well-lighted chapel, are several memorials of her life: the viola on which she played, and a ma.n.u.script in her exquisite chirography, also a service book illuminated by Caterina, and, still more important, one of her pictures, a "Madonna and Child," inserted in the wall on the left of the chapel, which is admirable for the beauty of expression in the face of the Holy Mother.

We cannot trace Caterina's artist life step by step, but she doubtless worked with the same spirit of consecration and prayer as did that Beato whom we call Angelico, in his Florentine convent, a century earlier.

Caterina executed many miniatures, and her easel pictures were not large.

These were owned by private families. She is known to us by two pictures of "St. Ursula folding her Robe about her Companions." One is in the Bologna Gallery, the other in the Academy in Venice. The first is on a wooden panel, and was painted when the artist was thirty-nine years old.

The Saint is represented as unnaturally tall, the figures of her virgins being very small. The mantle and robe of St. Ursula are of rich brocade ornamented with floral designs, while on each side of her is a white flag, on which is a red cross. The face of the saint is so attractive that one forgets the elongation of her figure. There is a delicacy in the execution, combined with a freedom and firmness of handling fully equal to the standard of her school and time. Many honors were paid to the memory of Caterina de Vigri. She was chosen as the protectress of Academies and Art Inst.i.tutions, and in the eighteenth century a medal was coined, on which she is represented as painting on a panel held by an angel. How few human beings are thus honored three centuries after death!

VINCENT, MME. See Labille.

VISSCHER, ANNA AND MARIA. These daughters of the celebrated Dutch engraver were known as "the Dutch Muses." They made their best reputation by their etchings on gla.s.s, but they were also well known for their writing of both poetry and prose. They were a.s.sociated with the scholars of their time and were much admired.