Shown from the knees up, a young woman with pale skin, wearing a short wine-red jacket over an ivory-white gown, gazes out at us from this vertical portrait painting. She sits in a chair surrounded by emerald-green cushions, which are covered with a light green floral pattern. The woman’s shoulders are squared toward us as her knees angle slightly to our right. The skirt of her gown is patterned with coin-sized gold dots against the white background, and the scooped neckline of her bodice is trimmed with gold ribbon. The top of at least four buttons on her velvet jacket are buttoned under her bust, and a cinnamon-brown belt with an iron-gray buckle, perhaps a cameo, cinches her waist. Her long, ash-brown hair is loosely pulled up with curls faming her face and falling to her shoulders. One braided plait is interwoven through a loose white turban, the ends of which drape over her shoulders. She has gray eyes under thin brows, a rose-red bow mouth, and her cheeks are tinged with pink. Gleaming, laurel-green drop earrings dangle from her ears. Her right arm, to our left, rests on an oversized green cushion, which balances on the carved, gold arm of her chair. Soft light from the upper left glints on the gold ribbons of the turban and cushion, and on her earrings and jacket buttons. The wall behind her is mottled with smoke gray and moss green. The artist has signed and dated the painting in the upper right, “Mde Le Brun 1789.”

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   Politics played an important role in the career of Madame Vigée Le Brun. A painter to Marie Antoinette since 1779, she was elected to the Royal Academy of Painting by the queen’s decree in 1783. Her close ties to the royal family put her life in danger during the Revolution and she fled France in 1789, not to return until 1802. Therefore, it is not surprising that her portraits of society ladies reveal graceful poses, finished surfaces, and sweet, but controlled expressions, that both mask and betray the charged political climate surrounding her sitters.

   This young woman’s elaborate costume displays three different foreign cultures. Her turban and jacket recall a Turkish harem outfit. The allusions to the exotic Orient signal an escape from the present as well as an Enlightenment acceptance of non-western ideas. Her flowing white gown recalls the costumes of ancient Greece and Rome, meant to inspire republican virtues. The prominent Wedgwood cameo at her sash is English; at this time British imports represented products of another political system, a parliamentary monarchy, that was considered as a potential model for France. In rigorously detailing the costume, Vigée Le Brun shows how deeply contemporary politics had penetrated daily life. The subject’s engaging expression conveys the nascent tensions of the period.

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