Madame Molé-Reymond with Muff

By 1786 Vigée Le Brun was the most sought-after portraitist in Paris and the favourite painter of Queen Marie Antoinette. Here she paints not a courtier but an actress, Élisabeth Molé-Reymond of the Comédie-Italienne, one of the popular theatres of the city. Rather than a stiff pose she caught her mid-movement, turning with a laugh, her fur muff lifted as though she had just swept in from the cold. It is the liveliness of the stage brought straight onto the panel. Three years after this the Revolution broke out, and Vigée Le Brun, bound so closely to the queen, fled France the very night the royal family was taken from Versailles. She would go on painting her way across Europe for the next 12 years.