Self Portrait in a Straw Hat, Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun.
A stunning self portrait by one of my favorite underrated painters.
Vigée Le Brun had an uncanny ability to make the fashionably pale skin of her female portrait subjects, herself included, almost luminescent.
This is apparently a copy she made of an earlier version of the same composition, itself inspired by Rubens’ portrait (possibly of Susanne Lunden) titled Le Chapeau de Paille.
This version is in the National Gallery, London. Use the fullscreen arrows and zoom controls to the right of the image to zoom way in on the portrait.
I love the way she has skillfully blended pale yellows and reds with the subtle blue-greens in the shadows, moving effortlessly from warm to cool passages, in modeling her calmly focused and strikingly beautiful face.
Eye candy indeed.
