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Your galleryMadame Grand (Noël Catherine Vorlée, 1761–1835)
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Follow her raised eyes, then look down at the blue ribbons, the sheet of music in her hand and the green velvet behind her.
Vigée Le Brun showed this portrait at the Salon of 1783, the year she joined the French Royal Academy as one of only four women members. The sitter, born in India and later the wife of the statesman Talleyrand, looks up with parted lips as if singing, a sheet of music in her hand. A reviewer that year praised its bewitching sensuality, though the Met finds the singing pose odd in a portrait in modern dress.
Oil on canvas · Oval, 36 1/4 x 28 1/2 in. (92.1 x 72.4 cm · The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Neoclassicism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Madame Grand (Noël Catherine Vorlée, 1761–1835)
- Artist
- Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French, Paris 1755–1842 Paris)
- Date
- 1783
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Oval, 36 1/4 x 28 1/2 in. (92.1 x 72.4 cm)
- Credit line
- Bequest of Edward S. Harkness, 1940
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.