Brushstrokes of Femininity – Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Eva Gonzales and Olga Boznańska: A Birthday Tribute

As April unfolds and brings days of fragrant lilacs, vibrant magnolias, and evenings with soft pink skies, I find myself drawn to things tender, soft and feminine. This post will explore the quiet brilliance of three women artists whose birthdays fall this week: Olga Boznańska, Eva Gonzalès, and Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun was born on the 16th April 1755, Eva Gonzales was born on the 19th of April 1849, and Olga Boznanska was born on the 15th April 1865. This amazing serendipity could not be ignored. Each one, in her own time and in her own way, brings a distinctly feminine vision to her canvases, one which is introspective, elegant, and quietly defiant.

Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun. Self-Portrait at the Age of Sixteen, 1771, pastel

Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun was a painter active in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, famous for her portraits and even self-portraits in which she carefully balanced flattery with psychological depth. Some of her most famous works include potraits of French and Russian aristocracy, notably the portraits of Marie Antoinette. The Rococo exuberance and the Neoclassical grace meet and merge in her paintings. Le Brun was a successful bussiness woman who knew how to navigate the glittering and trecherous world of Versailles. Moreover, she brilliantly navigated the male dominated art world with her poise and strategic self-representation. Her paintings of royalty may shimmer with elegance at first glance, but beneath the powder and pearls is a subtle, psychological depth. I just love her pastel “Self-Portrait at the Age of Sixteen”. The softness is incredible; in the way her curls fall down her neck, in her complexion, so fresh and radiant, in her eyes, the tenderness of youth, fresh as a rose.

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Marie Antoinette in a Chemise Dress, 1783

Le Brun was Marie Antoinette’s favourite painter and it is easy to see why; just how graceful does Marie Antoinette lookin this portrait from 1783. She looks relaxed and quietly happy, wearing a simple white sating chemise dress instead of a heavy and wide brocade dress that would have been the norm at the court. Here, Marie Antoinette, with the help of Le Brun to translate her vision on canvas, is playing out her countryside-idyll fantasy. Straw hat with ribbons and soft curls, a rose in her hand. She is a charming vision of simplicity and innocence.

Eva Gonzalès, Girl Awakening, 1877

Another charming vision in white is here in the painting “Girl Awakening”, painted in 1877, by the Impressionst painter Eva Gonzalès. The awakening girl has just opened her eyes and departed the whimsical world of fantasy and dreams and has come back to the world of reality. This is a tender, intimate moment, and not one that we, or this elegant lady, would share with just anyone. Perhaps she would love to welcome her lover all dolled up, but the intimacy is saved for another woman, the painter. Gonzalès’s canvases often present intimate scenes, tinged with a soft melancholy. Women she paints are often introspective, caught in everyday reverie. Emphasis isn’t on the heat of the moment, in the way the Impressionists loved depicting different states of nature, but rather on emotions and tenderness. Gonzalès was often in the shadow of her mentor Manet, but she deserves to be seen in her own light; the light which may be quiet but is luminous nonetheless. The moment she presents in this painting is one of idleness, of passivity, not of action, and these traits may also be tied with femininity, but I don’t necessarily see it as a bad thing.

Olga Boznańska, Japanese, 1889

Another vision in white, this time coming from the brush of the Polish painter Olga Boznańska who worked mainly in the Symbolist and Impressionist currents, though her art cannot be strictly defined. She often painted other women and these portraits tend to have a subdued tone, and have a haunting, ethereal vibe to them, in a way that can be compared to the paintings of Whistler. Her painting “Japanese” shows a woman dressed in a white Japanese-style costume and is holding a red fan in her hand; a wonderful and an eye-catching contrast of white and red which I always appreciate. The woman’s attire is flawlessly white, but so is her ability to flawlessly conceal whatever is on her mind. Her eyes seem to be staring into the distance, but not at anything precise. She is almost dissolving into the white background. She seems to be looking, not at us, but past us, as if she was caught mid-thought, or mid-feeling.

I find immense beauty in all of these paintings, similar yet different, but always feminine in the most beautiful way. In the brushstrokes of Vigée Le Brun’s there is an elegance and a royal poise, in Gonzalès’s a quiet melancholy, and in Boznańska’s a ghostly introspection. These are not just portraits of women, but reflections of a feminine world which is deep, soulful and rich with subtlety and tenderness, a world that still whispers through the ages.