Self-Portrait with her Daughter Julie

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was Marie Antoinette's favourite portraitist. She painted herself here holding her six-year-old daughter Julie in her lap, both of them laughing, Julie's small arm around her mother's neck. When it was shown at the Salon of 1787, critics attacked the painting on three grounds at once: the pose was too informal (mothers of quality did not embrace their children in public portraits), the artist wasn't wearing a wig, and — worst — Vigée Le Brun's lips were open in a smile that showed her teeth. She replied that her teeth were the healthy teeth of a rational Enlightenment woman. Two years later she fled Paris the night her friend the queen was arrested. She lived to 86. Now at Musée du Louvre, Paris @museelouvre