Drafting an image of success: the Russian patronage of émigré Elisabeth Louise Vigée Lebrun

Abstract Painted as a stipulation of her honorary admission into Russia's Imperial Academy of Arts, Elisabeth Louise Vigée Lebrun's (1755–1842) Self‐Portrait of 1800 is notable for having been produced at the culmination of a decade spent in exile. It depicts a strong, triumphant woman at the height of her career. Despite substantial research into other areas of her life, Vigée Lebrun's time spent as an émigré has been little studied. Fleeing France at the onset of the Revolution in 1789, she travelled extensively throughout Europe. Although her early years abroad, from 1789 to 1795, are marked by a sense of constant relocation, her later years in Russia are notable for her prodigious output and her stable existence in Saint Petersburg. This article seeks to highlight the importance of Vigée Lebrun's time at the court of Catherine the Great and her son Paul I in relation to her broader émigré experience. It illuminates how exile in Russia, far from condemning Vigée Lebrun to obscurity, fostered her career in ways that other countries had not.