Portrait of Helena Apolonia Potocka née Massalska

Vigee Le Brun painted this in Paris in 1808. She had fled France in October 1789, on the night the crowd marched on Versailles, and spent 12 years working her way through Italy, Vienna and Russia before it was safe to come back. Her sitter had lost more. Helena Potocka was born a Polish princess in 1763 and raised in a convent school in Paris. Her first husband, a prince of the house of Ligne, was killed in 1792 fighting the French. By the time she sat for this, Poland had been partitioned out of existence, and Napoleon had just carved a Duchy of Warsaw from part of it. Vigee Le Brun never set foot in Poland. She painted more than 30 Polish sitters all the same, most of them met abroad, and Potocka was one of the oldest friends she had.