text: Friendship with Antoine Jean-Gros The artist formed an intimate friendship with Antoine-Jean Gros, whom she had known since he was seven years old and had painted his portrait when he was at that age, during which she had noticed an artistic inclination in the child. Upon her return to France she was surprised to find Gros had become a successful and famous painter, head of his own school of art. Gros was socially reclusive, and often brusque to others, but he formed a close bond with Vigée Le Brun, who wrote: "Gros was always a man of natural impulses. He was prone to feel the keenest sensations and would become equally passionate over a kind action or a beautiful work of art. He was ill at ease in society, rarely breaking the silence in a crowded place, but he listened attentively and replied with his gentle smile, or by a single word, always very apt. To appreciate Gros, one had to know him intimately. Then he would open up his heart, a kind and noble one at that; some people reproached him for having a certain brusqueness of tone, but this disappeared entirely in private. His conversation was even more fascinating because he never expressed himself in the same way as other men; always finding the most unusual and powerful images to convey a thought, you might almost say he painted with words."
  She was greatly affected by his suicide in 1835; she had met him the day before and noted him brooding over criticism he had received over one of his paintings.