Princess Youssoupoff

The princess sits leaning on a marble pedestal, weaving a ribbon into the wreath of flowers in her hands. A sheer veil and pink roses are tied into her blond curls, and over her thin white dress she wears a red mantle with a classical border. The contrast of red and white forms the center of the picture.

The outlines are soft, the coloring bright and splendid, and a pastoral garden spreads in the background. It has more of the flavor of the Rococo (the graceful French style of the eighteenth century) than of the strict Neoclassicism seen in the work of her contemporary David.

The model, Tatiana Yusupova, was a niece of the Russian statesman Potemkin and in 1793 remarried the great landowner Prince Yusupov. Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun traveled widely after the French Revolution and stayed in Russia from 1795 to 1801. During this time she received many portrait commissions from the Yusupov family and painted this work in 1797.

The work was passed down in the Yusupov family, but it was confiscated in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and later sold to a private collector. It subsequently came into the collection of the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum.