LEBRUN, MARIE-LOUISE ELIZABETH Vic-EE. 1755-1842; b. Paris, wife of gen. Lebrun, second duke of Plaisanee; remarkable as a portrait painter, and a charming woman. Her father was a painter of talent. Marie took up the art as a child, and studied with J. Vernet. At the age of 20 she was famous. Her portraits of " Comte Orloff," " Souvaloff," the "Comtesse de Brionne," and the " Duchesse d'Orleans" gave her a high place. In 1775 she married Lebrun. It was an unfortunate marriage. Her husband, she afterwards writes, was quite amiable, but terribly addicted to women of low manners and to gambling; so that he wasted not only his own fortune, but her earnings. She lived apart from him, and by her genius and her beauty and refinement of manners, gathered a little court, comprising the highest rank and talent of France, though her apartments were so modest that there were not half chairs enough for her cherished guests. She made more than 20 portraits of "Marie-Antoinette," and was the court artist of her day. She was admitted, after considerable opposition, to l'Academie in 1783.
Though in the receipt of large sums of money for her work, her husband seems to have had the talent to coax it away from her for "commercial investments," which brought no returns. At the breaking out of the revolution in 1789 she went to Italy,
visited Rome, Naples, Vienna, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, where her fame gave her dis tinguished receptions. She returned to France in 1802, and soon after visited England; here she made a portrait of "Lord Byron." Napoleon requested her to paint his sister Caro line, wife of Murat, but words let slip by the artist about true and false princesses turned Napoleon against her. She then made a journey to Switzerland, where she made f. 1)or trait of "Madame de Stael." On the restoration of Louis XVIII. she was again the painter of the court. Her husband, by whom she had only a daughter, died in 1813, and her daughter, wife of the secretary of the Russian count, Czermtcheff, died in 1818. This remarkable woman, who retained to the last the full possession of her artistic and intellectual faculties, has left most interesting memoirs of her life, under the title of bouvenirs, 3 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1835.