Elizabeth Emma Soyer (1809/1810-1842)

“To Her” | A rediscovered Portrait

Elizabeth Emma Soyer died in childbirth in 1842, just a few months after namesake Vigee le Brun, whose 86 years spanned the indistinct chapter in art history where the education of painters was shifting from apprentices and masters, to professional tutors and paying students.

Soyer caught the end of the transition and though her education began in the private art school of Francois Simonau (1783-1859), he later became her step-father and she his sole apprentice, unconventional in some senses, but resembling the traditional arrangement, which for centuries, had produced great painters, master craftsmen, and the occasional old master.

She exhibited her first painting at the Royal Academy in 1823, when she would have been 12 or 13 and by her early teens had already sold over 100 portrait drawings made from life. Female students were barred from entering the newly-formed RA Schools (Laura Herford was admitted in 1860 on the assumption that she was a man), so Soyer benefitted from an old fashioned education. She would be one of the last to pass through the old master system.

I am grateful to Will Elliott for his advice and encouragement.