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strange but beautiful paintings
Bacchante: copy of a painting by Marie-Louise Élisabeth Vigée le Brun
Detail. Oil on prepared MDF board, 2'6"x2' (760x610mm), 2003-4. See below for the whole painting.
The original bacchante painting from which this copy was made hangs in the Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris.
Marie-Louise Élisabeth Vigée le Brun
Elisabeth Vigee le Brun was a remarkable woman who lived through the time of the French Revolution. Since her subject matter was largely the portraits of female nobility, she was associated with the aristocracy, and during the Terror had to escape with her daughter from Paris at short notice. She had only the clothes she wore, the money in her purse, and some jewels hidden about her person. Nevertheless, her skill as a painter enabled her to get work wherever she went, and she even sent money home to her fairly unhelpful husband. She visited London and Russia, amongst other places, and her works are therefore scattered around the world.
Subject matter
Apart from portraits of female nobility, Vigee le Brun also painted a number of self-portraits, sometimes as self-advertisement (these paintings say, 'look, I'm a great painter' and 'look, I'm pretty with it') and also self-portraits with her daughter. The present subject matter is unusual for her as far as I know.
Maybe the maid was let off cleaning duties in order to pose for this?
A bacchante or maenad was a follower of Bacchus (Dionysos), the god of wine and intoxication. It is said that in ancient Greece women, normally pent up in their houses all day, would once in a while join the cult of Dionysos and go into the countryside, where they would become drunk and frenzied, dance and run wild. Whether this actually happened I have not been able to discover, but it is mentioned by Plato, and described in Euripides's play The Bacchae.
Technical remarks
Vigée Le Brun used to paint on wooden panels. For a painting of this size the panel would have been composed of three or four planks joined together. If the grain was not fine enough there was always the danger of warping over time, which has happened to the portrait in the Wallace Collection, London. For the present copy I have therefore made use of MDF board, partly because panels of seasoned wood are no longer available anyway, and partly because MDF shows every sign of being durable. It is probably very acidic, so I first coated the board with acrylic gesso, in order to protect the pigments from any unexpected chemical changes. I coated both sides in order to minimise the risk of warping, which might have occurred if the two sides had been treated differently.
As to the painting techniques involved, I could write a book. It took ages. Below is the whole painting: my copy of Vigee le Brun's masterpiece.
Images copyright © Martin Dace 2004, 2006. Reproduction is permitted on websites provided a link back to this page or else to my home page is given. Please link to the page, not just to the picture. Please also let me know, because I like to link back to sites that use my work.