Of foreign artists, she is the most famous and fashionable French painter of the 18th century. She portrayed the largest number of Poles, although she never visited Poland. More than 30 of her more than a thousand works depicted the Polish aristocracy.

Stanisław Poniatowski was of tall stature. The monarch's beautiful face expressed sweetness and graciousness. [... ] He loved the fine arts passionately,' Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun wrote in her memoirs. They met in St Petersburg, where they both shared the fate of exiles from their homeland. She was the famous portraitist of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, and he was the last ruler of the Republic of Poland, deprived of his crown after the Third Partition.

The road to fame of the painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun

Marie-Louise-Élizabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842) was one of the few women who managed to take her own place in the history of European painting in the 18th century. She aroused interest then and today, not only as a beautiful painter, but also as the creator of her own artistic and financial success, writing her legend with brush and pen.

Self-portrait with straw hat, National Gallery, London

Her path to fame was opened by a prestigious commission for a representative portrait of Marie Antoinette. She became the Queen of France's official and favourite portraitist, as well as a member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture.

After the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, the painter found herself on the enemies list of supporters of the new order. Because of her contacts with the court and her friendship with Marie Antoinette, who was hated by the people, she had to flee France in the autumn of 1789. She spent the next 12 years travelling around Europe, painting for new admirers of her talent, eager for the immortal fame of the portrait painted by Madame Le Brun.

St Petersburg - a place of exile for the Polish king and the French painter

In 1795, she arrived in Russia. She loved St Petersburg the most of all the places and courts she visited, and stayed there for 5 years. It reminded her of the splendour of pre-revolutionary France, and legends circulated in Europe about the generosity of its titled inhabitants. She portrayed the court of Emperor Catherine II.

In St Petersburg, she also met Stanisław August Poniatowski (1732-1798), king of a country that did not exist on European maps, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The monarch did not find himself in Russia by choice. After the defeat of the Kościuszko Uprising, he was ordered to leave Warsaw and settle in Grodno. There he was notified of the final division of the Commonwealth between the three partitioning powers. There, at the Russian request, he renounced the crown on 25 November 1795, the 31st anniversary of his coronation. In mid-February 1797, he was summoned by the new Tsar Paul I to St Petersburg. Although he lived in the Marble Palace and was invited by princes and boyars, he knew that he would not be returning to Poland and that he was a prisoner on the Neva.

The friendship of Stanislaus August Poniatowski with a French painter

A month after his arrival, Poniatowski was introduced to a famous painter. The encounters with the king described in her memoirs developed into a friendship between the two, who were deprived of the opportunity to return to their homeland. ' Nothing moved me more than his frequent assurances that he would be very happy if I came to Warsaw during his reign,' she wrote .

Specially for Stanislaus Augustus, Vigée Le Brun organised a show of her works in her studio. The Queen's official painter was once again able to paint a portrait of the monarch. The royal niece, Ursula née Zamoyska Mniszech, commissioned a portrait of her uncle in the fashionable historical manner à la King Henry IV of France (1533-1610), with whom he was compared in the family. Stanislaus Augustus held the French monarch in high esteem. He had in his collection a small portrait of Henry and a series of engravings with scenes from his life (based on paintings by Rubens). As an art lover, the king collected paintings, sculptures, engravings and numismatic and natural history throughout his reign (1764-1795).

Portrait of Stanisław August Poniatowski as Henry IV

The result is an almost psychological portrait of the sixty-five-year-old king. Vigée Le Brun's work is characterised by a fair amount of idealisation, but the royal portrait is not overly embellished or sentimental; on the contrary, it is one of the best male portraits in the artist's oeuvre. We see an elderly serene man, despite the difficult events of recent years, still full of dignity and majesty.

The king is facing right, wearing a feathered hat, a dark blue vest with a wide lace collar and a black coat, with his hand resting on his hip; on his neck is an oval medallion on a gold chain with an image of the eye of providence, emphasising the role of divine intervention in decision-making and the exercise of power.

The fate of the portrait of Stanisław August Poniatowski as Henry IV

The portrait, commissioned for the collection in Wiśniowiec by Mniszchowa and described in the diaries of the period, mysteriously disappeared for over 100 years. Today we know that the work, after being dispersed from the Mniszchowa collection, found its way to the Krzemieniec Lyceum in 1819 and then in 1833 to the collection of St Vladimir's University in Kiev as a portrait of a Russian nobleman, Count Golovkin.

Donated to the Khanenko Art Museum in Kiev in 1918, it regains its proper attribution as a portrait of Stanislaw August in the attire of Henry IV.

In Polish collections, this work can be seen repeated in a replica from the National Museum in Kraków and in miniature from the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

It is the first of two and also the last of the images of the king made by Vigée Le Brun in St Petersburg.

Souvenirs of the friendship between the French painter and the Polish king

The second portrait was particularly precious and close to the artist, as a memento of a recently deceased friend. In her catalogue, the only one bears an annotation as a portrait that I have kept for myself.

Reproduced many times in prints and miniatures, the representative image of the monarch in an ermine coat with the ribbon of the Order of the White Eagle can be admired today in the Palace of Versailles.

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In May 2022, the exhibition Splendour and Knowledge was planned at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The Royal Library of Stanislaw August , where the king's eponymous portrait from the Kiev museum was to be displayed. Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, the exhibition was postponed.