Art History News: The Hood Museum's "Portrait of Madame Aignan de Sanlot"
LEFT Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Le Brun, Portrait of Madame Étienne-René Aignan Sanlot, née Marie-Rose Savalette (1745–1812), 1776, pastel on paper pasted on canvas. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased with a gift from Julia and Richard H. Rush, Class of 1937, Tuck 1938, by exchange; the Jean and Adolph Weil Jr. 1935 Fund; a gift from William Olden, by exchange; and a gift from Ann and Joel Berson, Class of 1949, by exchange; 2022.78.
LEFT Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Le Brun, Portrait of Madame Étienne-René Aignan Sanlot, née Marie-Rose Savalette (1745–1812), 1776, pastel on paper pasted on canvas. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased with a gift from Julia and Richard H. Rush, Class of 1937, Tuck 1938, by exchange; the Jean and Adolph Weil Jr. 1935 Fund; a gift from William Olden, by exchange; and a gift from Ann and Joel Berson, Class of 1949, by exchange; 2022.78.
LEFT Elisabeth Louise Vigée-Le Brun, Portrait of Madame Étienne-René Aignan Sanlot, née Marie-Rose Savalette (1745–1812), 1776, pastel on paper pasted on canvas. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased with a gift from Julia and Richard H. Rush, Class of 1937, Tuck 1938, by exchange; the Jean and Adolph Weil Jr. 1935 Fund; a gift from William Olden, by exchange; and a gift from Ann and Joel Berson, Class of 1949, by exchange; 2022.78.
LEFT Elizabeth Rice Mattison, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programming and Curator of European Art. Photo by Rob Strong.
ELIZABETH RICE MATTISON, Andrew W. Mellon Academic Programming and Curator of European Art
Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842) was one of the most renowned artists in late eighteenth-century France. Her work has been celebrated in several landmark publications and exhibitions over the past thirty years.She is best known for her paintings made at the court of the French queen Marie Antoinette, as well as for her travels to paint nobility in the Italian peninsula, Russia, Prussia, and England just prior to the French Revolution and through the Napoleonic era. Study of Vigée Le Brun's career before her marriage and introduction to royalty, however, has been overlooked, perhaps due to her sitters' relative humbleness compared to her later aristocratic subjects. Vigée Le Brun'sPortrait of Marie Rose Sanlot, likely the last work completed before the artist's marriage and recently acquired by the Hood Museum of Art (Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire), offers insight into her early work, including her networks of clients and suppliers.Click here to read Dr. Mattison's full article.
