Detail of Julie LeBrun by Vigee-LeBrun in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2020

Julie Le Brun (1780–1819) Looking in a Mirror
1787


Object Details

Title: Julie Le Brun (1780–1819) Looking in a Mirror

Artist: Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French, Paris 1755–1842 Paris)

Date: 1787

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 28 3/4 × 23 3/8 in. (73 × 59.4 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Bequest of Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, 2019

Accession Number: 2019.141.23


Vigée Le Brun represents her only child, Julie, both in profile and full-face through the inclusion of a mirror and impossible perspective. The resulting double image, which draws on earlier artists’ allegorical figures of Sight, plays on reality versus illusion in painting. Vigée Le Brun submitted three paintings of her daughter, including this work, to the Salon of 1787; approximately two years earlier, she had depicted Julie in a nearly identical composition. These portraits capture a new appreciation in late eighteenth-century Europe of childhood as a unique, impressionable moment of life distinct from adulthood.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/438132