Fearing for her safety after the Women's March on Versailles, Vigée Le Brun fled Paris with her daughter, beginning years of European exile.
On the morning of 6 October 1789, the day after the tumultuous Women's March on Versailles forced King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette back to Paris under duress, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun fled the capital with her young daughter Julie, disguised as a working-class woman to avoid recognition. As the queen's closely identified portraitist and an outspoken royalist, she had every reason to fear violent reprisal amid the escalating Revolution.
This flight marked the beginning of what would become twelve years of exile across Europe, during which she traveled through Italy, Austria, Germany, and eventually Russia, continuing to paint members of the nobility and royalty wherever she settled. Despite the upheaval, her reputation preceded her, and she was welcomed by aristocratic and royal patrons in Rome, Naples, Vienna, and St. Petersburg, allowing her career to not merely survive but flourish even as her homeland descended into revolutionary violence.
The episode illustrates the precariousness faced by artists closely tied to the Ancien Régime; many of her former patrons and subjects, including Marie Antoinette herself, would be executed during the Terror. Vigée Le Brun's ability to reestablish her career successfully in multiple foreign courts during this period stands as a testament to her exceptional skill and adaptability, and it produced some of her most significant later masterpieces, painted far from the political dangers of France.