Chronicle Books - Portrait of a Woman

Discover the story of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard—a long-ignored artist and feminist of eighteenth-century France—in this imaginative and illuminating biography from an award-winning writer. Summer in Paris, 1783. The Louvre steps, too hot and no breeze, the air electric with the heady anticipation of a coming storm: the year’s Royal Salon. Bewigged and powdered Parisians mill amid pigeons, dogs, and detritus; food and flower sellers; pamphleteers and propagandists. Men and women of every estate (clergy, nobles, commoners) are united under art: to love it, to despise it, to gossip endlessly about it. Exhibiting at the Royal Salon was not for the faint of heart, and it was never intended for women.