Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Marie Antoinette and her Children, 1787, oil on canvas, 275 x 216.5 cm. Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, France.

In September 1785, when Marie Antoinette’s popularity with the French people was on a dangerous downward slide, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was summoned to Versailles. The brilliant young painter had already been commissioned to paint several portraits of the queen, posing her alone in various elegant gowns. Now, however, she was asked to create something different: something that would restore Marie Antoinette’s image as a loving mother and guarantor of dynastic continuity.

The result, Vigée Le Brun’s Marie Antoinette and her Children (1787), is a masterpiece of portraiture, and is today considered one of France’s most important national treasures. “This is an iconic painting,” said curator Gwenola Firmin of the Musée national des châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon, which lent the work to the exhibition. "It's one of Versailles' best known and most emblematic works." Anne Eschapasse, the National Gallery of Canada’s Director of Exhibitions and Outreach, who grew up in France, adds, “It’s familiar to every French child, because it’s reproduced in all the history textbooks to illustrate the late 18th-century period in France.”