After the salon, everything changed for Elisabeth. Portrait commissions flooded through her doors as the wealthy clamored to be painted by the young prodigy discovered by Madame Geoffrin. By the time she was nineteen years old, Elisabeth had become one of the most sought-after portrait painters in the upper reaches of society. But even greater changes were soon to come.
“I have taken a new apartment for us, much larger,” Le Sèvre said one day in August as they were finishing breakfast. “It’s on the Rue de Cléry. In the Hôtel du Loubert.”
If Elisabeth hadn’t been watching her mother, she would have missed seeing her hand pause midair as she reached for a slice of bread and the expression of shock that flitted across her features before she managed to rearrange them. She had no idea, Elisabeth thought. It didn’t surprise her. Le Sèvre appeared to think that when he’d taken Jeanne Vigée as his wife, he was not required to change the way he managed things in the slightest. With the exception of ensuring that Elisabeth had a studio where she could paint her portraits—and enrich him with no effort on his part—he’d continued making all the decisions for the household, down to hiring and firing the servants, ordering the food, and accepting invitations—or not.
Although her mother complained to her privately, Elisabeth chose to ignore Le Sèvre’s need for control because it served her own ends, at least for the time being. She didn’t mind moving at all. Their new lodgings were not as smart as the apartment on the Rue Saint-Honoré, but the accommodations were bigger, and she had a larger studio full of wonderful light on the top floor. And that studio was hers to arrange and furnish exactly as she wanted to.
In their first month in the Hôtel du Loubert, hardly a day went by when Elisabeth didn’t receive a new commission. She was now booking sittings several weeks out, and even had one or two men’s portraits to paint. For those, her mother chaperoned, keeping any flirtation at bay. Elisabeth’s looks as well as her talent had contributed to her growing popularity. She’d not only outgrown her awkwardness, she’d blossomed into a true beauty.
She had so much work, in fact, that she often had to rise before the sun and be ready to start working as soon as the light was right, postponing breakfast until her stomach rumbled its complaint.
On one beautiful September morning, Elisabeth rose extra early with the intent of putting the finishing touches on a portrait of her friend Madame de Verdun—someone she knew from her days in the convent school who had married well. It was still dark enough for her to need a candle to light her way up the stairs. When she reached the top floor, she opened the door of her studio slowly as she always did, savoring the sight of her domain. Was all this really hers? she thought. She wandered around the studio, letting the candlelight flicker over the brushes and pigments arranged by size and color in their neat cubbies, and the palettes she cleaned with turpentine at the end of every day even though they would soon be dirtied again. When she finished her circuit, in one long, gentle breath, she blew out the candle, watching the flame bend and divide and pass through ochres and carmines and ultramarines and last of all violets until it finally expired, releasing twining threads of smoke and plunging her into comforting twilight. Only then did she walk to where the painting of her friend sat on the easel, lifted a corner of the oil-soaked cloth covering it, and touched the surface with her fingertip. Still a little soft, which was good. She didn’t want the late-summer heat to dry it out before it was finished.
A bubble of pleasure rose in Elisabeth’s breast. “Look, Papa,” she whispered as if he might be able to hear her. “Isn’t it wonderful?” He would have been so proud that the daughter he’d taught to draw could rise to such a height, at such a young age. That she could have her own large, well-stocked studio when she was not yet twenty years old, and command as much as a hundred livres for a single portrait.
At that moment, the sun crested the nearby rooftops and pale light washed into the corners of the studio. Without another moment’s hesitation, Elisabeth stuck her arms through the sleeves of a paint-splattered smock, charged her palette, and went to work.
Perhaps an hour passed before she became aware of an unusual sound, a disturbance that wasn’t part of the normal hubbub of awakening Paris, but closer, more immediate. She lifted her brush from the canvas and listened. It was a carriage. No, a cart. But it wasn’t the linener delivering freshly washed clothes; that would have been Tuesday. And wood for the stoves arrived later in the day, and on a Friday. Whatever it was, it drew up to the front entrance of the house and came to a halt. She heard men’s voices speaking in low tones and, a moment later, insistent, rapid knocking on the front door. It was too early for social callers. She could hear the concierge shuffle out from his apartment behind the shops on the ground floor. The heavy oak door creaked open, there was more talking, and the old man’s voice rose above the others.
“Ah non, Messieurs! C’est insupportable!”
Three men, Elisabeth thought, judging by the clomping on the stairs rising from the rez-de-chaussée to the first floor, second, third, and then the fourth. She laid her brush aside and stayed very still. They’d stopped right outside her studio.
A second later the door flew open, startling a little shriek out of her, and the men barged in. The one who appeared to be in charge looked at Elisabeth in her painting smock, cried, “Evidence!” and scratched a quick note on a piece of paper. Another man began picking up all her canvases and the third swept her carefully organized brushes and bladders of paint into a sack. Once the shelves were completely bare, they headed for the door.
Elisabeth dashed forward, caught one man by the arm and screamed, “What are you doing! This is mad!”
He shook her off and continued on his way out the door.
By then, Jeanne and Jacques-François Le Sèvre both stood on the landing outside the studio in their nightcaps and powdering gowns, mouths open, too half-asleep to understand what was happening. The neighbor who lived in the other first-floor apartment, a man who Elisabeth had barely said two words to, also appeared, and said, “Pardon, Messieurs, what—”
The men didn’t pause but started down the stairs while the one in charge spoke over his shoulder. “We are from the court of the Châtelet. Mademoiselle Vigée is painting professionally without a license, and we have been authorized to confiscate the tools of her trade.”
Confiscate? “How dare you!” Elisabeth boiled inside at the injustice of it. A license? How could she ever get a license? Women weren’t allowed to join guilds, and they were the ones giving out those licenses! She tore off her smock and chased after the men all the way down to the ground floor. Her mother caught up with her and grabbed her arm just in time to stop her from running out to the middle of the street in her dressing gown.
“Good day, Mesdames, Messieurs,” the leader of the men said, lifting his hat off his head while the others piled everything they’d taken from Elisabeth’s studio into the waiting cart.
The driver cracked his whip over the horse’s ears and the cart jerked forward, rocking back and forth over the cobbles on the Rue de Cléry. They’ll spoil everything, Elisabeth thought, her whole body wilting. She kept her eyes fixed on them until they turned a corner. “Come back,” she whispered.
Jeanne put her hand on Elisabeth’s shoulder. “Come inside, everyone will see you out here.” In fact, doors and windows on the street had started opening and a few heads poked out to see what was going on.
Elisabeth brushed her mother’s hand away. The gesture of kindness pierced her and only made everything worse. What was the point of kindness when nothing made sense? “Don’t you see what this means? My whole life is ruined!” Why had none of her artist friends warned her that something like this might happen if she continued to rise as a painter? Doyen, for instance. Surely, he must know the rules! Perhaps they didn’t believe this rule would apply to her, that no one would think anything of a young girl doing favors for wealthy friends. What they paid her barely covered the cost of the new studio and the paints and canvas, after all. At least, that’s what Le Sèvre told her. And then it occurred to her that perhaps none of those friends thought she was enough of an artist to be noticed, and that’s why they had said nothing. Well, now they’ll think otherwise, she told herself, trying to derive the tiniest bit of good out of what was otherwise a complete disaster.
“Perhaps I may be of service?”
A male voice, so unexpected, startled Elisabeth. She turned to see that man, their neighbor, standing just beyond her mother and stepfather. He must have followed everyone down. She’d hardly noticed him in her panic. Had he witnessed the entire, humiliating spectacle? Her cheeks went hot. He probably meant well, but something about his tone of voice, so smooth, so calm, made Elisabeth’s stomach clench. When he took a step toward her, she held out her hand, palm facing him in a gesture that said keep away and let all her bitterness pour out in his direction. “Be of service? How? What will you do? Run after them and stop the horses yourself? Or perhaps because you’re a man they’d listen to you. Oh yes, that’s it! This wouldn’t happen to someone like you.” He didn’t deserve such a tirade, but she didn’t care.
“Lisette! Don’t speak that way!” Her mother grabbed her raised hand and tried to draw her toward the neighbor.
Elisabeth shook herself free. “You don’t understand, you never have,” she said. Pushing past the small knot of people, she charged up the stairs to her studio, slammed the door behind her and shot the bolt home, then leaned against the door for a long while, breathing heavily and trembling from head to foot.
The sun was fully up now, cruelly exposing the emptiness in her studio. Elisabeth paced the length of the room and back, again and again, eyes wild. All the men had left her was a few sheets of drawing paper and a stub of a charcoal pencil. There must be someone who can help me, she thought, who could tell the officers they’ve made a terrible mistake, that I meant no one any harm.
She stopped pacing and strode over to the table. Taking a sheet of paper and the pencil, she scribbled a note to Rosalie, the only person in the world she knew would understand how she felt. Her friend would think of something. Rosalie’s mother was a drawing teacher, and she didn’t belong to a guild. There must be a way. Elisabeth had to paint. How could her life as an artist be over so soon, when it had only just started?
She had other friends, too, she realized. Influential friends. I’ll write to everyone. All the artists who knew her when her father was alive, the ones who’d stayed in her life—Doyen, Vernet, Robert—and the ones who hadn’t. Could she remember all the names? Her mother would know. She’d leave the greeting blank for now.
Elisabeth wrote her letters, all versions of the same desperate plea for help. When she finished, she gathered them up, sat on the floor in the middle of her empty studio, and wept.