No time like the past: Manifestations of memory in the life and work of Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun

Abstract

This thesis examines the evolving role of memory in the life and work of Élisabeth Vigée-LeBrun (1755-1842), exploring how her portraits and memoirs negotiate shifting conceptions of temporality, historicity, and identity in response to the French Revolution. Through close visual and textual analysis, the project traces how Vigée-LeBrun’s art transitioned from academic emulation of the past to more personal modes of commemoration. I analyze her pre-Revolutionary engagement with classical antiquity and Renaissance masters as a gendered assertion of artistic legitimacy. I consider her post-1789 portraits of Emma Hamilton, painted during Vigée-LeBrun’s exile, as reflections of spatial and temporal liminality. Chapter 3 explores her posthumous portraits and Souvenirs (1835), arguing that they function as affective responses to grief, trauma, and historical rupture. Drawing on theorists such as Pierre Nora, Reinhart Koselleck, François Hartog, and Dominick LaCapra, the thesis situates Vigée-LeBrun’s work within broader debates about memory, trauma, and representation. I contend that her self-fashioning—across both canvas and memoir—constitutes a deliberate act of memory-making that both resists and reconfigures dominant historical narratives. Ultimately, this study reveals how Vigée-LeBrun’s visual and literary productions became tools for preserving personal and collective memory amid revolutionary dislocation, positioning her as both a witness to and architect of post-Old Regime historical consciousness.