MEMOIRS OF THE EARLY 19TH CENTURY AND ELISABETH VIGEE LE BRUN'S SOUVENIRS

This study deals with the profusion of memoirs which were published in France in the first half of the 19th century, as well as with the reasons for this phenomenon. This will be illustrated by the Souvenirs of Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun (1755-1842) -a celebrated portraitist in Marie Antoinette's court- who was compelled to flee France during the French Revolution. Her Souvenirs are a testimony, amongst other things, of the obstacles she met for being a female painter and of the changes that she witnessed: the transition from the "Ancien Regime" to the Empire and the Restoration.