Autoportrait

When the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg took Vigee Le Brun in as an honorary member in 1800, it expected a work from her in return, and what she handed over was her own face. She had been out of France for 11 years by then. She left Paris in October 1789 with her small daughter, worked her way through Italy, Vienna and Berlin on the strength of her name as Marie Antoinette's portraitist, and had been at the Russian court since 1795. In that same year, 1800, her name was finally struck from the list of emigres in Paris, which meant she was free to go home. She waited until 1802. The portrait hung at the Academy for over a century and was moved to the Hermitage in 1922.