Brief Biography-Louise Élisabeth Le Brun (Maiden name Vigée) was born in Paris in 1755. She received her first lessons from her mother, a painter of fans. Her father was a portraitist who died when Louise was twelve, and her mother married a vagabond who robbed her money and took her possessions. She later received instruction from Claude Joseph Vernet and was influenced by Jean-Baptiste Greuze. Louise Élisabeth painted copies of masters to support herself and her mother. In 1779, Versailles summoned her where she painted Marie Antoinette, who befriended her and made her painter to the Queen. She painted the Queen twenty-five times. In 1776, she married the grandnephew of Charles le Brun, and she kept a successful Salon in Paris. The Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture elected her in 1783. When the revolution occurred in 1789, she went to Italy, Austria, Germany, and Russia, becoming a success in each country and returned to Paris in 1802. However, she spent three years in England to escape the political turmoil in France at the time. When back in France in 1814, waring armies ransacked her country house, and she settled in Paris, where she continued her Salon for the remainder of her life, painting portraits of nobility and writing her memoirs.