' Self Portrait in a Straw Hat' Marie Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun , French (1755-1842) Oil on canvas, circa 1782. The National Gallery, London.

The daughter and pupil of a minor Parisian painter , Louis Vigée , Madam Vigée Le-Brun was an attractive and charming woman, who specialised in the attractive and charming portrayal of women and children while remaining a competent portraitist of men .She was recognised as the most important female painter of the 18th century. After the arrest of the Royal Family and her most illustrious patron , Queen Maria Antoinette during the French Revolution , Vigée Le-Brun fled fled France with her young daughter , Julie . She lived and worked for some years in Italy , Austria and Russia, where her experience in dealing with an aristocrat clientele proved invaluable. Her paintings met with great critical acclaim and she was elected to the Roman Accademia di San Luca . She returned to her native France and to Paris after the restoration in 1814 and gave an account of her early life and later tribulations and triumphs in the highly readable Memoirs published in 1835.