French School, 1755-1842
PORTRAIT OF MADAME VIGÉE LE BRUN AND HER DAUGHTER.
AFTER THE PAINTING IN THE LOUVRE,
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAUN, CLÉMENT & CO., PARIS
Madame Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Painter
1755-1842
Of Women Painters in France
By Léonce Bénédite.
Translated into English by Edgar Preston
WOMAN in Art is a fruitful subject. It is both psychological and æsthetic, involving as it does a question of paramount interest. At the same time it includes a special up-to-date character, by virtue of the grave questions arising from the position of woman in our social system of to-day. It is, indeed, the position of woman which has for so long a period set limits to her production of creations of the mind, and her position has had a distinct bearing on her inspiration.
Thus it will be grasped, in these times of ours when the movement for the total emancipation of woman has commenced, and when the first franchises granted to her have already borne conclusive results, how it is that our honoured colleague, the editor of this book, has been led, both as an artist and as a writer on art, to conduct a sort of historical examination enabling one to understand the position woman has won in the realms of art in the past, and permitting one to foresee the place she is called upon to occupy in the future.