… Gallery, NG 1653. Abstract Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was the official portraitist of Marie-Antoinette and a worldly artist who excelled at constructing representations of herself and of others. In October 1789, she emigrated to Italy, … Rome to Saint Petersburg, ending with a sojourn in England. Between 1835 and 1837, she published her Souvenirs , weaving artistic sociability into her chronicles of the lives of the European elite. This article discusses the many … propelling her into the limelight of worldly sociability. In 1776, she wed Jean-Baptiste Pierre Le Brun, a talentless artist but skilled paintings and antiquities dealer, who encouraged her artistic endeavours. Though they would divorce in …