Vigée Le Brun's Home Page | Index to Art Pages | Vigée Le Brun's Gallery ART PAGE 191 Madame Bilibin - 1800 Oil on canvas, 89 x 72 cm Maria Ivanovna Bilibina née Kusova (11.6.1784-24.12.1848). M.I Kusova, heiress of a merchant of St. Petersbourg, married Yakov Ivanovich Bilibin (14.3.1779-11.7.1854), son of "Big Bilibin" Ivan Kharitonovich, founder of an industrial empire, mayor of the town of Kaluga twice. Her husband Yakov Ivanovich Bilibin is mentioned several times by Tolstoi in the novel "War and Peace". In 1812 he funded the local Kaluga militia that repelled Napolean's Army. Mme Bilibin is the grandmother of the painter and draughtsman Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin, who sold the Hermitage the of works of Dmitry Levitzky. View a larger image of this painting Madame de Roissy - 1773 pastel, 50 x 49 cm, 19.6 x 19.3 in Daughter of Pierre Jean Baptiste Gerbier de Massilaye the famous Paris Lawyer. From Vigée Le Brun's Memoirs - "From the age of fifteen, I had been widely known in high society, I knew our first artists, so I was getting invitations from all sides. I remember very well that I had dinner in town for the first time at the sculptor Le Moine, then in high reputation. He was extremely simple, but had the good taste to bring home a host of famous and distinguished men. . . . From Le Moine, I met Gerbier, a famous lawyer, and his daughter, Mrs. Charles de Gaulle, who was very beautiful, and who was one of the first women whose portrait I painted." Offered for sale by Sotheby's in Paris on 22nd June 2010. Monsieur de Roissy - 1773 pastel, 50 x 49 cm, 19.6 x 19.3 in Vigée Le Brun's Home Page | Index to Art Pages | Vigée Le Brun's Gallery