Editing Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (section)

=== Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture ===
[[File:%C3%89lisabeth_Vig%C3%A9e_Le_Brun._La_paix_ramenant_l%27abondance.jpg|thumb|left|''Peace bringing back abundance'', 1783. [[Louvre]]. Vigée Le Brun's submission to the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture upon her admission there |223x223px]]

On 31 May 1783, Vigée Le Brun was received as a member of the [[Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture]].<ref name=Fidière>{{Cite book |title=Les Femmes artistes à l'Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture |url=https://archive.org/details/lesfemmesartist00fidigoog |last=Fidière |first=Octave |publisher=Charavay Frères |location=Paris |year=1885}}</ref> She was one of only 15 women to be granted full membership in the Académie between 1648 and 1793.<ref name=Fidière/> Her rival, [[Adélaïde Labille-Guiard]], was admitted on the same day.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Auricchio |first=Laura |title=Adélaïde Labille-Guiard: Artist in the Age of Revolution |publisher=J. Paul Getty Museum |location=Los Angeles |date=2009}}</ref> Vigée Le Brun was initially refused on the grounds that her husband was an art dealer, but eventually the Académie was overruled by an order from [[Louis XVI]] because Marie Antoinette put considerable pressure on the King on behalf of her portraitist.<ref name=Sheriff>{{Cite book |title=The Exceptional Woman: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and the Cultural Politics of Art |last=Sheriff |first=Mary D. |publisher=University of Chicago |location=Chicago |year=1996}}</ref> As her [[reception piece]], Vigée Le Brun submitted an allegorical painting, ''Peace Bringing Back Abundance'' (''La Paix ramenant l'Abondance''), instead of a portrait, even though she was not asked for a reception piece.<ref name=Sheriff/> As a consequence, the Académie did not place her work within a standard [[hierarchy of genres|category of painting]] — either [[history painting|history]] or portraiture.<ref name=Sheriff/> Vigée Le Brun's membership in the Académie was dissolved after the French Revolution because the category of female academicians was abolished.<ref name=Gardner/>