Self Portrait in a Straw Hat

In 1782 Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun travelled through the Low Countries and stopped in front of a Rubens portrait then called the Straw Hat, of a young woman lit by soft daylight. She was so taken with how Rubens caught outdoor light on skin that she set out to paint herself the same way, in a broad straw hat trimmed with a feather and wildflowers. She was already the favourite portraitist of Queen Marie Antoinette, and she gives herself the ease of a fashionable woman. But she also holds a loaded palette and brushes and turns to meet your eye, a working painter at the top of her trade. This canvas is her own repetition of that first Brussels portrait, made to carry the idea back to Paris.