Elisabeth got to work with a vengeance. She’d always been disciplined, but never had she applied herself with such unflinching effort. She hardly left her work except for meals and sleep. Until one day, that is, when her mother came into her studio and forced her to lay down her brush for a while and listen.
“I know you didn’t really need much help from him, but you still owe Monsieur Le Brun some consideration. It was kind of him even to offer to let you use his studio.” Jeanne sat in the upholstered chair draped with silk scarves that Elisabeth used whenever ladies came to her for portraits.
She is still so beautiful, Elisabeth thought, her painter’s eye appreciating her mother’s smooth skin and and almond eyes. “What would you have me do?”
“Just permit him to enjoy the pleasure of our company once in a while. You have to eat, after all!” Jeanne rose and approached Elisabeth, laying her cool hand on her cheek. “You must become accustomed to admiration, my dear.”
Hah! Elisabeth thought. Not so long ago, her mother had despaired of her ever growing out of her awkward phase, constantly reminding her that she was no beauty and had better make the most of what she had if she ever wanted to attract a husband. Now? Suddenly she merited compliments. And not for her talent.
Ah well. Jeanne had made up for her previous scorn and did as much as any mother would to advance Elisabeth’s career. What harm could there be in humoring her in this request?
After that, every few days, Elisabeth and her mother took tea with Le Brun. Each time, he showed Elisabeth some new painting or sculpture he’d purchased for a song, he said, and spoke about the importance not just of the Italians, but of the masters in Flanders and the Low Countries. Elisabeth listened—how could she not?—and had to admit he widened her taste and opened her mind. Although he possessed little talent himself, his knowledge of art, his ability to appreciate it, was vast. Despite herself, Elisabeth began to look forward to their teas.
But she couldn’t let such matters distract her from her pressing need to finish the work for the salon. It was hard enough keeping everyone else at bay. The scandal of the raid had made her a cause célèbre. Invitations to salons and concerts had flooded in as a result, at first expressing sympathy, and then congratulating her on her election to the Saint-Luc and assuring her of their deep desire to see her at such-and-such a gathering. She refused them all.
When at last the day of the salon arrived, she received a request she could not refuse. Le Brun asked to accompany them to the exhibition. Elisabeth couldn’t help thinking that he’d planned it all cleverly, to entertain them enough so they would feel obligated to accede. No matter. His discerning eye might be an advantage there.
They had arranged to meet Rosalie at the salon—Doyen had come through a second time. She had also been elected and sent several of her pictures to be displayed. Elisabeth was relieved that Rosalie was pleased rather than vexed at her bold assumption.
Her first public exhibition. Elisabeth stood in front of her pier glass for a long time, assessing the effect of her chosen costume. She had decided to wear her finest ensemble to the opening day, a pearl brocade sacque dress with Chantilly lace on the sleeves and at the décolletage. She paid no attention to her mother’s objection that the gown was more suitable to evening, that such a deep neckline in the daytime would expose her to unsavory comments. “Nonsense, Maman!” she had said. “Everyone will be looking at the pictures.” But she knew people attended these salons as much to be seen and to see others as to examine the art, and she wanted to make an indelible impression—on or off the walls.
Her mother was still frowning as they climbed into the hired carriage that would take them to the salon. Once they’d settled in their seats and the carriage set off over the bumpy cobbles Jeanne said to Le Brun, “Don’t you think Elisabeth is a little overdressed for day?”
Elisabeth widened her eyes in a silent signal to her mother, but it was too late. Le Brun, who faced backwards so that the two ladies could have the better seat, allowed himself the liberty of letting his eyes travel the length of Elisabeth’s body, from her hat to her slippers. When he finally tore them away, he said, “Mademoiselle Vigée is beautiful no matter what she wears,” skillfully avoiding a direct answer to Jeanne’s question.
Elisabeth never knew whether to be pleased or annoyed at Monsieur Le Brun’s compliments, which had increased in both quantity and frequency of late. She had to admit she was happy to be admired, but uneasy at his increasing familiarity. There was no mistaking the look in his eyes. Having a man gaze at her with such intent unsettled her. She wasn’t ready for it. Although many women married at nineteen, she had too much to do, and no intention of allowing a husband to dictate her life. “I chose to dress this way because we might encounter some influential people there, some who might commission portraits,” she said, turning to her mother, “and I want to make sure they remember me.”
“I thought you said the art should speak for itself,” said Jeanne.
Elisabeth flinched inwardly. Her mother’s remark hit home. All morning, as the realization that this salon would be the first time her paintings had ever been directly compared to those of other artists suddenly became real to her, Elisabeth’s heart had been fluttering. She knew that her technique was close to flawless. But she also knew enough not to trust the encouragement and adulation heaped on her by biased friends and flattered clients.
She remained silent for the rest of the way through the busy streets and over the crowded Pont au Change, with its tall houses blocking any view of the Seine and shops spilling over into the street in an effort to attract customers. When the smell of decay from the river mingling with the stronger odors of unwashed bodies surrounding the carriage became overpowering, all three of them pressed their scented handkerchiefs to their noses.
Rosalie had already arrived at the salon, and together they entered the exhibition rooms in the Hôtel Jabach. Elisabeth plastered a mile on her face and tried to drive all anxious thoughts out of her head as they sauntered through from one room to another. She pretended to examine every painting with equal interest when, in reality, she was desperate to see where her seven entries had been placed. One she spotted right away, but the others were nowhere near. So, she thought, they would not be shown all together, as she had hoped. She wanted viewers to be impressed by her body of work and recognize her style, even those who didn’t know her and had never seen one of her portraits before. Especially those.
“Perhaps we should each go into a different room and look for your pictures,” Le Brun murmured into her ear.
Good idea though it was, Elisabeth was loath to isolate herself from the knot of supportive friends around her. Uncanny, though, that Le Brun had somehow guessed what she was thinking.
He went off in another direction, but soon returned. “I found one,” Le Brun said, beckoning them all to follow him. “Up there,” he said, pointing.
It was her three-quarters portrait of Monsieur Dumesnil, the rector of the Académie de Saint-Luc, executed from an engraving. The man was not handsome, but Elisabeth had done what she could to emphasize his good features. No one, after all, would want a portrait that made him look ugly. What did it matter if she embellished ever so slightly on the attributes nature supplied? The women she painted appreciated her efforts. No doubt that skill was partly responsible for her growing popularity.
The rector’s portrait had been placed in the third row of pictures in the largest exhibition room. Viewers would have to look up as she had to see it, and the man’s body would appear foreshortened, out of scale. She’d painted the portrait to be viewed at eye level. “How unfortunate,” Elisabeth said. “It’s only a small work. You’d think they could find a more suitable spot for it.”
“Be grateful you’re represented here at all,” her mother said. “You have Doyen and Vernet to thank for that.”
And my own ability, Elisabeth thought but did not say. “I will paint portraits of both of them, to thank them. I want to do it from life, though, not from someone else’s idea of what they look like.”
They passed together into another room. “Ah look! They’ve at least placed the allegories together.” Elisabeth hurried forward to stand in front of her three favorite entries in the salon: Painting, Poetry, and Music. She had managed to persuade her stepfather to give her money to hire models for these paintings, but she had to take what she could get, and only had each of them for a single day. Elisabeth longed to earn enough to hire more models whenever she wanted, so she could execute more allegorical and historical paintings. Portrait painting was considered a lesser art than history painting, grand canvases where events from the past played out in dramatic tableaux. No woman painter had ever been elected to that highest rung of the Académie Royale. Without being able to study the male nude, election was thought to be impossible. Elisabeth wanted to prove them all wrong.
As the group wandered through the exhibition and she saw that her portraits more than measured up to the other paintings and drawings hanging on the wall, Elisabeth’s shoulders relaxed. Many potential customers would attend the salon. She would get more commissions, and her fame would grow. The Châtelet could not touch her now.
“Lisette, come and look at this.” Jeanne had stopped in front of a miniature portrait of a woman on the far wall.
From a distance, Elisabeth thought it must be a miniature oil painting, a little less expertly executed than hers. But when she drew closer and saw that it was watercolor on ivory, she paused and examined it with care. To capture so much detail in miniature with the notoriously imprecise medium of watercolors on such a slick support lifted the work well above the ordinary. And the sitter was posed with items to indicate she was a painter. Elisabeth referred to the printed catalogue for the first time, looking for the name of another female artist. It was a self-portrait. By Madame Adélaïde Labille-Guiard. From what Doyen had told her, she thought this Madame Guiard was only a pastellist, and imagined her an elderly lady. It seemed that if she was older than Elisabeth, it wasn’t by very many years. And there was something familiar about the face, as if she’d seen it before. “An interesting portrait.” Elisabeth didn’t want to say anything that would give away the least sense that she might be curious, or just a little envious.
Le Brun joined them. “There’s another work of that lady artist’s in the other room. A larger portrait, of a magistrate, a pastel.”
“Is it worth looking at?”
He shrugged.
Elisabeth decided to leave the exhibition after they’d admired Rosalie’s entries without seeing what else Madame Guiard could do.
* * *
A long, hot summer threatened following the Saint-Luc salon, and most of Elisabeth’s potential clients decamped to their estates outside of Paris. The stench of the river permeated even indoors during those months, and anyone who could afford to would leave.
Rosalie’s wedding occurred a few short weeks after the salon and she and Monsieur Filleul had gone off to travel around the Continent on their wedding journey. She hadn’t taken any of her pastels, or even so much as a sketchbook with her. Elisabeth feared that even with the accolades they’d both earned after the salon that Rosalie would abandon art for domestic life.
So when her mother informed her that Le Sèvre had taken a house outside of Paris for the remainder of the summer, Elisabeth was relieved. It would remove them from Le Brun’s increasing attentions, and perhaps afford her some much-needed rest.
Elisabeth packed up her sketching things and a few oil colors and brushes, aware that there was no studio in the house her stepfather rented, so any drawing or painting would have to be done outdoors. Le Sèvre hadn’t been specific about where they were going, but Elisabeth assumed they would settle in some country village well outside of Paris. When they passed through one of the city gates and then stopped not long after at a little cottage that shared a wall with another cottage, on a street where houses were close together, she cast a questioning glance at her mother. Jeanne refused to meet her eyes. Elisabeth suspected that she had known about this plan all along and hadn’t wanted to disappoint her.
The cottage had two bedrooms on the first floor, two rooms on the ground floor, and a kitchen hut and servant’s room at the back of a small, fenced-in garden with no trees, only a patch of dirt with weeds poking up here and there. Worst of all was that they weren’t really in the country, but in one of the suburbs close to Paris.
“Well, at least it doesn’t smell as bad here, and we’ll have clean well water.” Jeanne threaded her arm through Elisabeth’s and led her into the house while Le Sèvre settled with the carriage driver and dealt with the luggage.
Although fresh air and water were in plentiful supply, sleep was not. On the day after they moved in, their close neighbors set up targets for practice with pistols and discharged them until all hours. By the sound of uproarious laughter and shouted crude jokes, Elisabeth assumed these people had consumed a great deal of wine. It was a wonder any of them hit the targets at all, and Elisabeth half expected to be murdered by a stray bullet.
By the end of two weeks, Elisabeth’s head ached and her eyes burned. She hadn’t even bothered to unpack her sketching materials. To what end? The light indoors was hopeless, and outdoors the unremitting sunlight made spending more than half an hour in the garden unbearable.
Elisabeth was prepared to spend another miserable day indoors trying to read a volume of poetry when a courier arrived with a note addressed to her. Her surprise turned to delight when she opened the note and saw that it was from Rosalie.
“Rosalie invites me out for a day in the country tomorrow.” Dress in your best day attire, the note said, without indicating anything more about where they would go.
The next morning, Elisabeth waited by the door until she heard Rosalie’s carriage—her own vehicle, much more comfortable than the hired gig that had brought them out to the suburbs. Seeing Rosalie’s lovely face instantly cheered her. At last! Someone who understood her, who appreciated beauty and art. “You look well! Perhaps marriage agrees with you,” Elisabeth said once they’d released each other from their embrace. Rosalie’s blush said everything Elisabeth could only guess at. “When do you move into the château?”
“We will not stay in La Muette, apparently. We will be at the Hôtel de Travers, opposite the gardens. The queen has ordered it to be refurbished, and it will be ready in a few weeks. In the meantime we are staying at Versailles. Oh Elisabeth! You cannot imagine what it is like!”
How elegant, Elisabeth thought. Monsieur Filleul obviously held a high-enough position that he didn’t have to live like a servant in the attics of the château—a privilege many nobles paid dearly for nonetheless—but was provided with a home grand enough to be described as a hôtel particulier.
The two friends sat as close as possible in the carriage, not caring whether their panniers were crushed together or their skirts rumpled. “You must tell me everything,” Elisabeth said, although she wasn’t entirely certain how much she really wanted to hear. “About your travels, I mean, of course.”
Rosalie’s always luminous complexion flushed a delicate pink again. “I visited galleries and art dealers while Louis met with his associates, purchasing goods for the chateau that the queen had requested. He really is a very kind man.”
Kind, Elisabeth thought. A word she would never use to describe Le Sèvre. But was Le Brun kind? He had certainly behaved so to her. Something told her that wasn’t exactly the same as what Rosalie was referring to, though.
Elisabeth had no clear sense of how much time had passed as Rosalie told her all about the marvels she’d seen, the balls she’d attended, and the new gowns she’d purchased. She was about to ask whether Rosalie had found any time to sketch while she was away when the driver drew the horses to a stop. “We’re here!” Rosalie said and squeezed Elisabeth’s arm.
They had been so engrossed in their conversation that Elisabeth had forgotten to ask Rosalie where they were going, only happy just to be gone from that miserable little house. When the footman opened the carriage door and helped her out, she gasped. Spread out before them were artfully arranged gardens bursting with fragrant flowers. Elisabeth breathed in deeply. No dusty smell here! And in the midst of it all stood a fine chateau flanked by a dozen pavilions. They weren’t the only ones enjoying the lovely setting, though. Couples and small groups strolled arm in arm, every once in a while pausing to smell a flower or admire a view.
“Are you cross that I didn’t tell you to bring your sketching things?” Rosalie said, pinching Elisabeth’s arm and bringing her back to reality.
She shook her head. All she wanted to do was stare and stare, fill her eyes with enough beauty to last until she, her mother, and Le Sèvre returned to Paris. “Where are we?” she asked.
“We’re in the park at the Château de Marly,” Rosalie said. Elisabeth half listened to Rosalie continue to talk about her wedding journey, about the fashions abroad, about the music and the galleries while her eyes soaked up everything around her. The sky dotted with white, puffy clouds appeared to be arranged with the sole purpose of reflecting the serenity below.
“…And I have a commission myself, for a pastel portrait.”
The word portrait snapped Elisabeth’s attention back to the moment. “So, you haven’t given up your pastels altogether?”
Rosalie smiled and lowered her eyes. “I find that it fills the idle hours and affords me a measure of satisfaction still.”
Fills the idle hours, Elisabeth thought. For a true artist, there were no idle hours. She pondered the difference between her life and Rosalie’s and came to understand that, although they’d always be friends, they were headed in very different directions. The thought saddened her, not as much for herself as for Rosalie. She was about to turn to her friend and tell her about her recent commissions, try to get her to talk about art, when she caught sight of a group of young women emerging from the pretty woods at the end of the path they were on and coming toward them. Something about this group seemed different. They didn’t walk as though afraid to disturb so much as a blade of grass. These ladies were perfectly at ease, as if they belonged in the place. One of them twirled around and plucked a flower off a nearby shrub. “Rosalie, look!” Elisabeth pointed.
“How surprising,” Rosalie said, not as amazed as Elisabeth had been. “It’s the dauphine. I didn’t know they would be here today.”
The dauphine! Marie Antoinette herself? “They’re coming directly toward us. Should we go away? Turn around?”
“No, we should simply curtsy and make way for them when we meet.”
Of course, Rosalie would know what to do. She had been schooled in the ways of royalty by her husband. Elisabeth’s heart fluttered. She gripped her parasol to stop her hands trembling.
When the royal party was near, Elisabeth and Rosalie stepped aside onto the lawn and curtsied deeply. Elisabeth didn’t dare look up.
“Please do not soil your slippers on our account,” said a lovely voice, with the slightest foreign accent.
Rosalie stood and so Elisabeth did as well. “Thank you, Madame,” Rosalie said.
The dauphine’s milk-and-roses complexion, even more porcelain than Rosalie’s, drew Elisabeth’s eye. She realized she was staring. The dauphine smiled and her eyes danced. “Enjoy the gardens on this lovely day,” she said, and then she and her ladies sauntered off.
Someday, I will paint her portrait, Elisabeth thought. It didn’t matter what happened from now on. She could bear the horrid little cottage and Le Brun’s obsequiousness. She had this memory to cherish, and she could dream about the day when the queen might know her not just as a girl strolling in a royal garden, but as an important portraitist. She would make sure that day would come, whatever it took.