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This vlog written by Nikos Vaggalis is for all you pokemon fans out there, enjoy!

Even AI cannot escape Pokémons Go's viral craze after Human Intelligence readily submitted.That's all due to a bright idea of combining IBM's Watson AI with the gameplay of Pokémon Go.


Michael Hsu, a researcher looking to apply AI to novel uses as part of the AT&T Shape Tech Expo Hackathon, managed to put Watson's intelligence to work in recognizing, tracking and sharing rare Pokémons' locations amongst users around the world.

Surely, tracking and sharing Pokémon locations is not something earth-shattering as there are plenty of apps like PokeMapper that employ crowd-sourcing approaches for filling in the spots. However, that's a manual and time consuming approach that could very well be automated.

Hsu's application makes the difference in that it works behind the scenes, and without human intervention, by consuming intermittent screenshots taken from within the Pokémon Go app, building on Pokémon Go's functionality, that in turn feeds into Watson's engine.

Watson then considers whether there's an actual Pokémon object within the picture and if yes, visually recognizes it and evaluates its rarity through. Of course to do this Watson actually has to be able to perform enough computer vision to be able to recognize Pokémon characters; the use of Watson's Visual Recognition API is what makes that task possible. Watson may have started out as a symbolic reasoner but it now has added other abilities that mean it can take a more sophisticated approach to problems.

In simple terms, the VR API takes in JPEG and PNG images, and as its output emits their class description as well as their taxonomy (gender, age range, kind, i.e celebrity).

To showcase the API's capabilities, a web front end to the service has been made available which allows anyone to supply sample images and let it work its magic.

For example, watch it recognize Whoopi Goldberg as well as classify her as a celebrity:

screencapture-visual-recognition-demo-mybluemix-net-1472030045439



In Pokémons' case, the neural network was trained with sets of Pokémon images, which it processed in the exact same way as the Whoopi Goldberg/Celebrity match, i.e Pikachu/not rare/do nothing, or, Charizard/rare/mark the spot on the map and let other players know about it.

We couldn't resist putting it to test, so we fed it with a second image of Whoopi that diverged from the usual as it pictures her "wearing" a huge smile and sporting a different hairdo, features that would potentially confuse the algorithm into reaching an erroneous outcome. As a picture is worth a thousand words, we'll let you observe the outcome yourselves:

screencapture-visual-recognition-demo-mybluemix-net-1472031408587



For the next test let's see what happens with Pikatchu, but since the engine available was not trained with a Pokémon data set in mind, we wouldn't expect it to reach any accurate predictions:

screencapture-visual-recognition-demo-mybluemix-net-1472030396578



As expected, it did not recover the fact that a Pokémon was depicted, but nonetheless it successfully perceived that the picture it was fed with was an illustration of a cartoon character, backing up that prediction with a moderate degree of confidence, 0.31-0.45 out of a maximum of 1.

If you are thinking of using this service then you will be pleased to know that currently it is offered for free but with the limitation of classifying only 250 images per day and training a custom classifier using 1000 images for one month. More flexibility comes with a subscription model.

At the end of the day, utilizing Watson's power to play with Pokémons might sound a bit silly, but looking at it from another angle, the experiment highlights how far Watson has advanced and the potential such a technology offers. When applied to serious domains such as Health, for example, being capable of visually recognizing and classifying cancer cells according to their malignity could herald a great benefit to the public.

What's more, IBM is looking into sharing that power with the world by letting Watson live in the Cloud and offering it as a service consumable through well defined API's. It's a move that adds one more to the AI-as-a-Service movement, like Hewlett Packard's Haven OnDemand, which we reported on earlier in the year.

The next step would be embedding Watson into Snapdragon 820 CPU (see AI Linux) or Samsung Exynos Mongoose enabled mobile devices, migrating its training and applications offline and in private. That's a powerful prospect; the power of AI in your pocket.

Visual recognition aside, there are many more services available through the IBM Watson DeveloperCloud such as Language Translation, Natural Language Classification, Speech to Text and Data analysis.

It seems like Pokémon has done it again; a novel approach to entertainment, a novel approach to science...

I extracted this poem from poem daily be ause it resonated with me and i wanted to share it with you.

Two Become One Flesh
with apologies to Mark 10:8



He can't hoist either hand above his head.
Her feet won't stand more than a dozen steps.
He's too nearsighted for the DMV.
Her fingers feel like she's got mittens on.
When did his legs get too long for his arms?
When did her arms get too short for her eyes?
He can't smell newsprint pressed against his nose.
She can't hear Thanks while helping with his socks.

The kitchen bulb burns out for both and each.

She drives the car. He strides into Best Buy.
Back home, he brings the stool. She stretches high.
He shouts the recipe. She bakes the quiche.
He listens for the ding. She finds the plates.
He cuts. They eat. She tells him how it tastes.

Hello Everyone

Today I woke up this morning slightly stiff but completely happy and fulfilled because yesterday I volunteered all day at Trindledown Farm.

I arrived at my usual time of 10.30 am, signed in and checked with the staff to see if the rabbits were still at the farm and needed mucking out, this is normally my first job since the rabbits joined us a few months ago. As I entered the stables Puddy the black Shetland pony came out of her stable to greet me, she is so sweet she winnies all the while me and the staff are in the stable yard for attention and she loves a fuss being made of her. I spent time with her before attending to the rabbits, George and Oscar. When I entered the the rabbit run, Oscar ran round his pen like a lunatic and settled at my feet waiting to be made a fuss of and to see if I had any treats. I emptied trays and replenished bedding, water, swept the floor and groomed both rabbits, then I sat with them stroking their fur and watching them eat their snacks and play with their toys.

Just after midday I stopped for lunch and roamed around the farm watching the horses graze in the fields at the back of the stables and then I wandered to the front gates and watched the goats, Leo is a large goat who almost appears human at times, he sat in his house with two feet out watching the world go by as the other smaller goats got up to their usual antics, Maple squeezed between the back of one of the sheds and fence and looked surprised when she couldn't move, the others grazed on grass until they saw me then they sauntered up the field to the gate and sniffed my hands looking for food, they soon wandered off when they realized I didn't have anything.

After lunch I sat in with several of the cats and kept them company, cuddled and played with them and changed their litter trays whilst they jumped all over me trying to catch my attention. At 3.30pm I helped the staff feed the farm animals, afterwards I helped clear up, i signed out and drove home satisfied i had made a difference to the animal's lives.

Hello Everyone

I wanted to share with you a brilliant charity I discovered earlier this year.

First of all I have loved animals since I was a toddler, where ever I saw animals growing up I wanted to pet and cuddle them

All the animals are O.A.P's and have ailments just like us in old age and it takes a lot of specialist care to keep them alive as long as possible. The charity hold regular events at their centre and in the surrounding areas and receive donations from other sources to keep the costs covered and the centre open, and most of the animals are rehomed and we receive updates from the newsletter on how they are doing in their forever home.

Over the years I have searched to volunteer my time caring for animals only to come to a dead end, but this year my dream came true.

One February morning I googled animal charities in Berkshire and immediately came across The National Animal Welfare Trust in West Berkshire, after reading the info on the type of volunteering available such as cat cuddling, mucking out farm animals and feeding them, dog walking and keeping them company, this was exactly what I had been after since forever.

I made a call to the centre and arranged an induction for the following day and I opted to stay afterwards and help out. I arrived in the afternoon and one of the staff showed me round the centre and introduced me to the staff and animals. My first job was to pick up donkey poo whilst Noel the white donkey lazed around in his bed and only came out at feeding time where he paced up and down past the gate until he was fed.

Throughout the day I helped staff prepare the farm animals food, prepare hay and muck out the huts of the sheep and goats. At 3.30pm I helped two staff feed the farm animals whilst the other staff members fed the cats dogs and pigs.


I left the centre at 5:00pm filthy dirty and happy knowing I would be returning the next week and I couldn't wait.


Well that's all folks for now watch out for the next installment next week Tuesday at 10.00am and don't forget to subscribe to my blogs for more.

Joanne

Hi Everyone

There is a perception among people that artists magically create work all the time easily and effortlessly, well that is not quite true for most of us, it is exactly the same as writers getting writers block, or an actor having a bad acting moment, things can go wrong sometimes, either a little bit and other times to the point of no return where we end up throwing a painting away and starting again. I have experienced both ends of the spectrum.

Three years ago when I had the idea to create a stunning painting (which turned out to be Ferry Cottage) of a quintissentially English landscape I had the sensation it would stir up in people in my mind and I could feel it inside as well. Full of enthusiasm I found Ferry Cottage and snapped several shots of it at different angles. I stood there for a few minutes taking in the scene and imagining how I was going to paint it, what pastel shades of colour I was going to use etc, this is normal practice for each painting that I create.

Once at home I drew the cottage out, and it took ages, longer than normal and I just wasn’t feeling it because my mind was elsewhere, as I was more engrossed in the film I was watching, as a result I started the cottage too far out and drew two massive rooftops which covered three quarters of the page and left 8th of an inch for the path and foliage. Realising my mistake I scrubbed it out and started again, and made the same mistake again, I felt disappointed in myself and what I was creating did not live up to the image of the painting in my mind’s eye.

The third time I attempted to draw it out it came together. As I squeezed out the paints I worked out which part of the landscape that I did not feel confident about I would start on first, which was the cottage. Getting the right shade of brick work correct seemed a daunting prospect, but as I mixed the colours it turned out fine. I had fears and doubts about painting aspects of the landscape correctly all the way through the process until it’s completion.

There you go, an insight into the mind of a creative.

Thank you reading and don’t forget to subscribe, like and share. I post every Tuesday at 10.00am

Hello Everyone

Below is a valuable insight into getting what you want from your art career which was written by Maria Brophy sho is married to a successful full time artist. I recommend you read this if you are stuck in achieving in a particular goal or re sear hinges for inspiration in your art career.

When I was working in the corporate world fifteen years ago, I dreamed of leaving my job to work with my artist husband, Drew.

But truth be told, I was afraid to leave the steady paycheck, the comfort of knowing what to expect every day and all of the benefits that came with working for a corporation.

On the other hand, I yearned to create a business that allowed me to live a life of travel and freedom. I was tired of “clocking in” to a job working for people I didn’t really like and selling a product (insurance) that I didn’t love.

My ultimate fear was that I wouldn’t be able to make money on my own, and that I’d end up destitute! Yes, my mind went to the worst possible scenario.

Drew had begged me for years to quit and come work with him, and I truly wanted to.

But for a long time, I only dreamed about it, too afraid to gather up the courage to trust in myself and my abilities.

Then one day, an ugly fight with a difficult boss was the final straw that gave me a kick in butt to quit. And I did. I never regretted quitting. An amazing lifestyle for myself began the day I left the corporate world.

Recently I was interviewed by Entrepreneur Coach Karen Kalis and we discussed the challenge of “WHAT HOLDS PEOPLE BACK”.

Karen has created the Savvy Solopreneur Series for people looking to discover their purpose and create a business they love. (Sign up for the Series and you’ll be able to listen to my full interview where I share more on this topic.)

Karen had some great questions for me and they got me to thinking:

What is it that truly holds people back from doing what they love?

In all the years that I’ve been helping creative entrepreneurs, I have learned:

THERE ARE THREE MAIN OBSTACLES that hold people back from realizing their dreams:

1 – Not BEING CLEAR on what you really want

2 – Not truly BELIEVING that you can have what you really want

3 – Not being willing to make a true 100% COMMITMENT to doing what it takes, to create a life that you love

When I was at that corporate job, I was terrified to quit. And when I reflect back on what held me back for so long, I realize that I didn’t truly believe that I could live the life that I now live. I wasn’t seeing how it was possible. Fast forward to today, and I have proved my old self wrong!

PEOPLE DON’T THINK FOR THEMSELVES AND IT HOLDS THEM BACK:

If I dig deeper into this lack of faith in my own abilities, I realize that I wasn’t doing my own thinking. I was buying into the thinking of many people who warned me NOT to leave my comfortable corporate job.

Digging deeper into this concept of not doing my own thinking, I realized that from a young age, we are conditioned to have others do our thinking for us!

Our parents think for us from the time we are born.
Then we go to school and our teachers think for us.
This continues when we get a job; we are told what to do at work and our bosses think for us.

In that sense, it’s only natural to be fearful of coming up with our own ideas that are different from the norm. Such as the idea of being able to create a business where you can sell art, travel and surf around the world, while supporting a family. Or any other “out of the norm” idea you may have.

Here’s an exercise in thinking that I’d like to ask you to try:

Think for a moment, and ask yourself: “What is one thing that I have dreamed of doing for a long time, but haven’t made it happen yet?”

And now ask yourself: “What has been holding me back?”

Explore these questions, take the time to think and write down your answers as they come to you. You may be surprised at what comes up, and when you go deeper into it, you may discover that the thing that is holding you back isn’t a real threat at all.

Please, share in the comments below, the answer to this question:

If you aren’t yet doing what you love, what is it that is holding you back?

And, if you are doing what you love, did you struggle with it in the beginning?

Please share, I would love to hear your thoughts!

With Love,

Maria

Hello Everyone

We are back at Cliveden House for the story behind my painting of Spring Cottage. I walked down some steep wooden steps set off the side of the garden , which led me down to the gardens on the lower ground which was level with the Thames. I passed a cottage set back from the river which looked unoccupied i thought as i moved on, and asked the boat keeper where spring Cottage was situated. He pointed behind him and said "here, next door". I boarded the boat with camera at the ready, to snap at the cottage as soon as we moved off from our starting point. I couldn't see a thing on my screen because the sun reflected off of it ,so I just snapped away hoping to take at least a couple of decent pictures. After we finished our boat trip I made my way to the main house via the same route I had taken to get there, my legs were killing me when I reached the top. After a rest I replenished my fluids and ate in the cafe situated in the grounds at the front of the house, and day dreamed what it would feel like to be able to stay in one of Cliveden 's magnificent rooms for a few days and to swan around the swimming pool on a hot day, and to be waited on hand and foot.

I explored the gardens near the front entrance and took many more pictures just incase I wanted to use different scenes later on. A band played on the band stand and a tea party was in full swing. All in all it had been a satisfying and beautiful day, and i returned home exhausted and completely inspired about the new scene I had discovered. The whole reason I chose Spring Cottage is because a few years earlier I read about the profumo affair that took place there in 1960's before I was born. I was fascinated by the turn of events that were played out in private at the cottage over a weekend and in front of the world at the same time because some how a journalist got hold of the story. After reading about the scandal I felt compelled to paint an iconic cottage, and I have to say I am pleased how the panting turned out. With every brush stroke I imagined how the lawn felt soft and luxurious under my feet, which I painted in pastel shades of yellow and white.

Once it was completed I moved onto painting in the river using pastel shades, of yellow ochre, greens, blues, browns and white, the swishing of the brush back and forth imitated the quiet rush of the water.

I hope you enjoyed this story and don't forget to subscribe to receive more stories behind each of my paintings.

Joanne

Hello Everyone

Spring is here and so is the Henley Arts Trail at Bix Six village hall venue 4 on 30April - 2nd May 10.00am - 5pm. Arrive hungry as there is plenty of refreshments and cake to enjoy. My stand is in the middle of the hall so stop by and say hello, and own an original hand painted scene of Berkshire at an affordable price.

see you there

Joanne

Francis Bacon in his studio
Due to his asthma, Bacon was unable to join the armed forces during WWII. He was accepted as a member of the Air Raid Precaution sector, which involved non-military search and rescue, only to be discharged when he fell ill from the dust and rubble. "If I hadn't been asthmatic, I might never have gone onto painting at all," he admitted. After the war, he took up painting with a renewed passion, regarding Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) as the true beginning of his work. The long necks, snapping mouths and contorted bodies featured in the painting express horror and suffering, a forceful commentary on the aftermath of the war. Bacon modeled the figures after photos of animals in motion, showing an early interest in the movement of the body that became a strong theme in his later painting. During its exhibition at Lefevre Gallery critics were mostly shocked by the blatant imagery, but the numerous reviews put Bacon into the spotlight.

Mature Period

His breakout success at the 1944 exhibition gained him further opportunities to show with Lefevre. Graham Sutherland, a friend and fellow exhibitor, also recommended him to the director of Hanover Gallery, where Bacon had his first solo exhibition in 1949. For this show Bacon painted a series entitled Heads, significant for being the first series to introduce two important motifs: the first was the scream, derived from a film still drawn from Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin in which an injured schoolteacher is shown screaming [in pain?]; the second is Diego Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X (c.1650), a painting Bacon only knew through reproductions (and which he would always maintain never to have seen in the original). The Heads series also made greater use of enclosing devices that suggest a pervasive sense of claustrophobia and anxiety, in this instance a shallow cage-like outline which Bacon had also employed in Three Studies from 1944.

Francis Bacon Biography
In 1953, Hanover held an exhibition of Bacon's paintings that included Two Figures, a depiction of two men embracing in bed, an image that created a huge scandal. The composition was based upon photographs of wrestlers taken by the Victorian photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904). Bacon preferred to work from photographs, relying on his friend John Deakin to take pictures of his subjects, but he was fascinated by Muybridge's attempts to capture and record bodies in motion. Bacon kept a collection of Muybridge's books in his studio as a constant source of reference, and even suggested that his intensive study of these sequential photographs triggered his own interest in working in series.

Bacon's tendency to derive inspiration from personal experiences also attracted him to portraiture. He often painted close friends (Lucian Freud, Isabel Rawsthorne,Michel Leiris), and the results convey a striking emotional and psychological intensity. One of Bacon's most famous subjects was his friend and lover George Dyer, who he met in 1964. During the course of their relationship, Bacon executed numerous portraits of Dyer that juxtaposed a strong musculature with a feeling of vulnerability, as in Portrait of George Dyer Crouching (1966), suggesting an affectionate yet protective attitude toward the younger man. Dyer suffered from alcoholism and episodes of depression, ultimately committing suicide on the night before Bacon's first retrospective in France in 1971.

Late Years and Death

Francis Bacon Photo
After the Paris exhibition Bacon moved increasingly toward self-portraiture, claiming, "people around me have been dying like flies and there is nothing else to paint but myself." Continuing to work steadily, he completed a number of paintings in tribute to Dyer's memory. Many of these took the form of large format triptychs, including the well-regarded "Black triptych" series that recounted the details of Dyer's passing. In 1973, Bacon became the first contemporary English artist to have a major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His work was exhibited internationally throughout the later years of his life, including retrospectives at the Hirshhorn and the Tate Gallery. In the mid 1970s, Bacon met John Edwards, who replaced both Dyer and Deakin as Bacon's constant companion and photographer. In his last years, Bacon retreated from his formerly boisterous social life, focusing on his work and the platonic relationship with Edwards. He died of a heart attack in Madrid at the age of 81.

Legacy

Bacon's unique interpretations and the intensely personal nature of his work make it difficult to visually trace his influence in contemporary art. Nevertheless, his paintings have inspired some of the most standout artists of this generation, including Julian Schnabel and Damien Hirst.

John Edwards, who inherited the estate, played an important role in promoting Bacon's work until his death in 2003. He was responsible for the donation of Bacon's studio to the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art in Dublin, and this was turned into a permanent exhibition and research archive.

wanted to share an intersting article with you on painters of the past.

Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun: The Avatar Painter Of Marie Antoinette’s Day

Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun created attractive, engaging images that were designed to tell the viewer what the sitter wanted them to know.

By William Newton

MARCH 5, 2016

Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755-1842) is best known today as the favorite court painter of Queen Marie Antoinette, whom she painted on no less than 30 occasions, more than any other artist. Her skills as a portraitist brought her to the attention of the ancien régime as a young artist, but during the course of her long career Vigée Le Brun painted dozens of portraits of lords and ladies from all over Europe.

She not only survived the French Revolution, exile, divorce, the Napoleonic wars, and the upheaval of European society, but she lived to write about it, in lengthy and highly interesting memoirs. On the surface, then, she seems just the right sort of artist to be the subject of a major exhibition.

“Vigée Le Brun: Woman Painter In Revolutionary France” opened at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on February 15, as a somewhat pared-down version of a more comprehensive show that appeared at the Grand Palais in Paris between September 2015 and January of this year. Surprisingly, it was the first major retrospective of her work to appear in her native France. Given the perennial popularity of her most famous patroness in film, literature, and fashion, it seems unfathomable that no one until now has taken the time to survey the work of an artist who was so important in forming the way that we picture Marie Antoinette.

Portraits of a Stiff, Bourbon Barbie

Indeed, The Met show contains a number of Vigée Le Brun’s portraits of Marie Antoinette, including the very first the artist painted of the queen. Upon entering the gallery the visitor immediately confronts Vigée Le Brun’s massive canvas, “Marie Antoinette in Court Dress,” (1778) one of many iconic images she would create of the ill-fated monarch. The piece was originally commissioned by the queen’s mother, the Empress Maria Theresa, back home in Vienna, so she could see what her daughter now looked like. That fact gives some element of poignancy to what is otherwise a flashy, stage-managed production piece.

Perhaps the image of Marie Antoinette for which Vigée Le Brun is most famous is “Marie Antoinette and Her Children” (1785), and fortunately it was permitted to leave Versailles for this exhibition. It is a masterpiece of court propaganda, although it only blunted the attacks on the increasingly unpopular queen for a time. If you only ever see one painting by Vigée Le Brun, this is the one you want to see, and spend time looking at.

Rather than appearing as a fashion plate, Marie Antoinette is here shown as the mother of three small children, all of whom dote on her. The empty cradle is not for the children surrounding her, but rather is symbolic of the queen’s youngest child, who had just died. It was an attempt, albeit an ultimately unsuccessful one, to try to humanize the monarchy, so that those who saw this painting could sympathize with the queen, and consider the fact that she, too, had suffered in life. Yet however sympathetic one may feel toward the family, one cannot help but wonder if creating such an image crossed a dividing line.
Neither a Mere Woman Nor Mostly in France

This line is also a problem with the show itself, as the title of the exhibition shows: “Woman Painter in Revolutionary France.” As an initial matter, while all ladies are women, not all women are ladies (see e.g., Lena Dunham). Had Vigée Le Brun not been a lady, and one with decidedly monarchist sympathies, she would not have been accepted as a regular guest in the homes of the aristocracy.
The informality of “The Duchesse de Polignac In A Straw Hat” (1782) for example, would never have been entrusted to a “woman painter” with whom the very glamorous and fashionable duchess could not relate, on a very real level. Vigée Le Brun hated the caked-on, powdered makeup of the age, and encouraged her sitters, as in this portrait, to be more naturally feminine. To characterize her as a “woman painter” given this context is to attempt to classify her as being akin to an early bra-burner which, politically at least, she most certainly was not.

Moreover, Vigée Le Brun was not exactly “in Revolutionary France,” at least not for very long. The artist and her daughter fled France in 1789, shortly after the revolution began; Vigée Le Brun did not return home for nearly two decades. Thus, there are no portraits of French revolutionaries in this exhibition, only of their victims. Indeed, half of the paintings in the show are of non-French persons. The exiled artist had to earn her living in Italy, Germany, Russia, and England.
One comes away with the impression that the organizers of the exhibition must be indifferent not only to the horrors of the revolution, but to what Vigée Le Brun herself must have suffered personally as a result of it. After all, not only did she have to flee for her life, but many of her friends and patrons were murdered. Perhaps the decision was made that, because so many of the works in the show are the property of the French government, and are rarely allowed to leave France, it would be best to sweep the Reign of Terror under the rug, or at least try to downplay it, as the French somehow find the gall to do every Bastille Day.
Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun Best Paints Women as Themselves

A distinct dumbing down seems to have taken hold of the collective ethos of The Met of late. From its disastrously bad new logo—excoriated to perfection recently by Justin Davidson in Vulture—to its poorly described exhibitions, it is difficult to understand the identity crisis that one of America’s most prestigious institutions is undergoing.
When the placard accompanying a Vigée Le Brun portrait of the “Barrone de Crussol Florensac” (1785), depicted as reading or singing from a clearly legible piece of sheet music, does not even bother to mention anything about the music shown or its significance in the painting, one is left wondering what, exactly, The Met believes its responsibility as an educational institution to be.


Having considered these points, however, the truly important question in this exhibition is: Was Vigée Le Brun a great artist? I think the answer must be: no. Although much of her work is charming, and occasionally even splendid, when she drifted away from portraiture she drifted away from her skills as a painter. The single landscape painting in the exhibition, “Festival of the Shepherds at Unspunnen” (1808-9) is an interesting work, with an amusing “Where’s Waldo?” aspect to it in which the viewer can track down the figure of the artist herself, but it is not a great painting. Similarly, the handful of mythological scenes in the show are populated by rather awkward, unbelievable gods.

Where she excelled, particularly in her self-portraits and in feminine portraiture in general, Vigée Le Brun could turn out truly beautiful, even lively images. The pleasure of the exhibition, as one moves through it, lies in noting how she became more confident and relaxed in her portrayals of her sitters as she gained in experience.
It is hard to believe that the artist who painted the Marie Antoinette mannequin of 1778 is the same artist who painted the arresting, flirtatious portrait of “Isabella Teotochi Marini” (1792) in the same exhibition. With her flashing eyes and daring décolletage, one gets the impression that Isabella was probably the life of the party. It is in these images, of women being themselves, that Vigée Le Brun created her best work.


At the conclusion of the exhibition, one sees the portrait of “Count Emmanuel Nikolayevich Tolstoy” (1823). “He looks like your avatar,” commented the friend who accompanied me to the show. Without meaning to do so, I think he rather neatly summed up the artist’s work

Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun created attractive, engaging images that were designed to tell the viewer what the sitter wanted them to know. In other words, she was an adept creator of avatars. Yet while her artistic skills in creating these images were remarkable, with a handful of exceptions she never really got the knack of how to portray someone who was not only beautiful on the outside, but also on the inside. There is more beauty in a Velázquez portrait of an old peasant woman frying eggs, or a Goya sketch of a crippled beggar, than in most of the pretty, but often shallow paintings in this exhibition.
“Vigée Le Brun: Woman Painter In Revolutionary France” is at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through May 15.