Idealized visions of young women seated in or strolling through the gardens were a standard motif of aristocratic portraiture. It is easy to see why these are often summarized today as “showcasing their status and wealth,” as much as anything else. The sitters wear beautiful gowns of satin and silk, hair ever-so-slightly windswept, and the gardens always verdant and full of life. The beauty of the natural scenery was not only meant to evoke paradise, but some similar comparison to the goodness of their soul. All seemed well in these magical moments, transcending the mundane moments of everyday life. Often enough, however, these portraits belied more complex realities than the Neverlandish dreamscapes portend, and it seems the heartbreak, loneliness, war and poverty could even affect those privileged souls who continue to haunt the halls of museums today.
Elisabeth Vigée LeBrun’s gift for capturing aristocratic elegance while imbuing her subjects with warmth and psychological presence finds exquisite expression in her Portrait of Theresia, Countess Kinsky. The Countess gazes directly at the viewer, a commanding presence in the 18th-century galleries of the Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena. Her expression is a balance of formal decorum and intimacy—the signature quality that made Vigée LeBrun among the most sought-after portraitist in pre-Revolutionary France and throughout Europe during the years of her exile. It was then that she met the countess and painted this haunting portrait of the young and recently married woman in this grand style. Her costume is pure elegance from the golden headdress to the sheer embroidered scarf, and deep Prussian blue of her gown, the sumptuous fabrics embody refinement and position. Yet, as she holds the fabric in her hand, as if about to cover her face, something in her direct gaze suggests an individual and her sorrowful legacy rather than offer a symbol of prestige.
Elisabeth Louise Vigée LeBrun, Oil on canvas, 54 x 39 inches
Vigée LeBrun’s exile began in October 1789, when she fled France at the outbreak of the Revolution with her daughter. She first traveled to Italy, where she spent three years moving between Rome, Naples, and other cities, absorbing the works of the Old Masters and securing commissions from Italian aristocracy and the exiled French nobility. In 1792, she moved to Vienna, where she would remain for nearly three years, painting members of the Austrian court and aristocracy—including the captivating Countess Kinsky, whom she encountered in the salons of Viennese society.
The Countess, a renowned beauty nicknamed “La Céleste Thérèse,” had become the object of the married Emperor Leopold II’s infatuation, leading to a hastily arranged marriage to Count Philip Kinsky in an effort to prevent social scandal. As described on the Norton Simon Museum of Art’s didactics, her husband abandoned her almost immediately following the ceremony, returning to his mistress. The couple formally separated the following year, but both parties remained legally bound for years to come. When Vigée LeBrun painted this portrait in 1793, the Countess remained trapped in this liminal state—neither married nor free—a predicament that would endure until 1807, when the Vatican finally annulled the marriage. It was during this period of enforced waiting, her beauty and grace shadowed by circumstances beyond her control, that Vigée LeBrun created this haunting portrait.
“Her person was perfection
and in no need of improvement”
In the iconography of eighteenth-century portraiture, every detail carries social meaning. Her costume, rendered with Vigée LeBrun’s characteristic attention to textile surfaces, demonstrates both wealth and taste and signals her status and cultivation. Yet the artist avoids the rigid formality that could make such portraits feel like mere inventories of luxury goods. The natural light illuminates the Countess’s face and décolletage while allowing hazy atmospheric effects to fade into the background, defining the compositional depth. The Countess’s long brunette hair cascades, windswept, down her back and cheeks reddened by the exercise of an afternoon stroll. As the artist noted, “Her person was perfection and in no need of improvement,” and Vigée LeBrun’s cultivated, soft brushwork and subtle color transitions—particularly in the treatment of skin tones—create a sense of her subject’s grace and famed beauty. But it’s those eyes that hold our attention, those patient eyes waiting for the true freedom still years away.
By 1798, Theresia had fallen in love with Maximilian, Count of Merveldt, a General of Cavalry and Imperial ambassador—just his title sounds like a step up!—but their path to marriage was blocked by two separate obstacles. As a Teutonic Knight, Maximilian was bound by religious vows, while Theresia remained legally tied to Count Kinsky despite their years of separation. Both impediments were finally resolved in 1807: Maximilian obtained release from his vows, and Theresia successfully petitioned for annulment, arguing she had been forced into marriage while in a “lethargic” state. After nine years of waiting, they married on February 16, 1807, in St. Petersburg, where Maximilian served as ambassador. Their happiness proved tragically brief. Maximilian died just eight years later in 1815, and Theresia spent her final seven years as a widow. She died in 1822 at the age of 54.
Vigée LeBrun’s own story adds another dimension to viewing this work. As a woman painter who achieved remarkable success in a male-dominated field, she navigated complex social and professional terrain with the same grace her portraits embody. Her marriage to the influential art dealer Jean-Baptiste LeBrun, a union heartily promoted by her mother, had provided the artist access to collections of art and important connections in the upper echelons of French society, including the controversial Queen Marie Antoinette, for whom she painted 30 portraits and to whom she will forever remain tied in the pages of art history. Elisabeth’s own marriage had already fractured when she fled France in October 1789, taking only her daughter and leaving her husband behind in Paris. Their divorce in 1793 was a political necessity for Jean-Baptiste, allowing him to sever ties with his “royalist” and by extension traitorous wife. It is worth remembering, however, that they remained on good terms, and he proved instrumental in helping her return to France later, after Napoleon had gained power.
So the truth in this painting lies beneath the sumptuous fabrics and windswept hair, beyond the verdant paradise and carefully arranged posture. It exists between two women—painter and subject—who understood precisely what it meant to maintain composure while the ground shifted beneath them. When they met in Vienna in 1793, they were both in the early years of their respective displacement—for Kinsky it had been six years since the abandonment, Vigée LeBrun was only four years into her exile that would last until 1802. Beneath the wealth, status and idealized beauty, exists something worth much more: resilience, patience, and the dignity of endurance.
Sources:
- Didactic Panel, Portrait of Theresia, Countess Kinsky
https://www.nortonsimon.org/art/detail/M.1969.03.P/ - Quote from Vigée LeBrun from: Michelle Brenner, Encounters with the Collection: Vigée-LeBrun’s “Portrait of Theresia, Countess Kinsky”
https://www.nortonsimon.org/learn/watch-and-listen/videos-podcasts-and-lectures/vigee-lebruns-portrait-of-theresia-countess-kinsky - “Theresia of Dietrichstein.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 Mar. 2024,
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresia_of_Dietrichstein. Accessed 15 Jan. 2026. - Biographical Dictionary of the Austrian Soldiers during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (whew!)
https://www.napoleon-series.org/research/biographies/Austria/AustrianGenerals/c_AustrianGeneralsK.html#K28