Bridget Quinn first introduced readers to the eighteenth century French painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard in Broad Strokes, her rollicking account of fifteen women artists “who made art and made history (in that order).”* In Portrait of a Woman: Art, Rivalry and Revolution in the Life of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Quinn returns to her subject in a work that is equal parts biography, historiography, and memoir. She traces not only Adélaïde’s life,** but the artist’s role in Quinn’s own life as art historian and author. She introduces the reader to the broader context of art and artists in pre-revolutionary France and the restrictions on women artists within that context. She examines Adélaïde’s artistic rivalry with the better known artist Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, which was in some ways constructed as a result of those restrictions. She follows Adélaïde’s attempts to navigate the French art world, the royal system of patronage, and the dangers of the French revolution—and her support of other women artists. Along the way, she makes Adélaïde’s mastery as a painter clear for the modern reader/viewer.

Personally, I have every intention of visiting the masterpiece that hangs in the Met on my next visit to New York thanks to Bridget Quinn.

If you are interest in art, women’s history, or the places where they overlap, this one’s for you.

*I just noticed the double meaning of “Broad” in the title. *Duh*

** See my interview with Quinn in my series of interviews for Women’s History Month in 1922*** for her discussion of using first names for women artists. Her article on the subject triggered my own fascination with the subject.

***I’m running the series again this March, featuring some good people doing a wide range of work.