Category: History

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The Court Painter Was A Woman

Self-portrait in a Straw Hat. Painting by Louise Élisabeth Vigée le Brun (c. 1782). PD-100+. National Gallery. Wikimedia Commons
Self-portrait in a Straw Hat. Painting by Louise Élisabeth Vigée le Brun (c. 1782). PD-100+. National Gallery. Wikimedia Commons

I wish I had the money and time to hop on over to Europe every time I see an exhibit, event, or happening that grabs my attention. One such event that I would fly across the Pond to attend is the current art exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris. This special exhibition is dedicated to one of France’s foremost artists, the self-taught portrait painter Louise Élisabeth Vigée le Brun (1755–1842).

The Grand Palais

Vigée le Brun or Madame le Brun as she was known, was a prolific artist painting more than 600 portraits and 200 landscapes. Madame le Brun commanded very high commissions—so naturally she was disliked by many of the male artists of the time (jealousy spilled over into some calling her “feeble and vulgar”). She also happened to be, at the age of 23, the official court painter for Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette. Read More The Court Painter Was A Woman

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London’s Black Death–1665

The Great Plague 1665. Painting by Rita Greer (2009). By permission of the artist.
The Great Plague 1665. Painting by Rita Greer (2009). By permission of the artist.

One of the points I make in my new book Where Did They Burn the Last Grand Master of the Knights Templar? A Walking Tour of Medieval Paris, is that entire cities such as Paris and London are virtual museums—all you have to do is dig.

I also discussed this in my June 6, 2015 blog post Stop the Presses: Skeletons and Not Buildings. A dig in the basement of a Paris supermarket revealed the final resting place (i.e., burial pit) of many medieval citizens (likely from a now defunct hospital located near the pit).

Moving across the Pond, Londoners have been looking forward to their new rail system that goes through Crossrail’s Liverpool Station. That is until they dug up a burial pit containing the remains of 30 plague victims. Plague pits are actually quite common across England. During the 1665 plague, it is estimated that more than 100,000 London citizens (approximately one-fifth of the city’s total population at the time) died of the plague. Read More London’s Black Death–1665