Boy With A Flintlock Rifle — Elisabeth-louise Vigée-lebrun

Boy with a Flintlock Rifle

Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun’s ‘Boy with a Flintlock Rifle’ (1817) is a Neoclassical portrait of youth & dignity. Explore this striking oil painting's realism, muted tones & symbolic rifle.


Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842) was a leading portraitist of 18th-century French aristocracy, famed for her elegant depictions of Marie Antoinette and other prominent figures. Her Rococo and Neoclassical style captured both likeness and personality with refined beauty.

Children occupied an increasingly important place in Vigée Le Brun’s time, when the relative influence of nature and nurture was a subject of debate. The boy in this portrait is unidentified and could be eight or ten. He wears a gentleman’s coat or jacket and holds a sturdy functional gun, which could have been his own first weapon.