Angelica Kauffman and Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun

At the start of Women's History Month, join Franny Moyle for a beautifully illustrated talk as she revisits and reassesses the stunning work of two of the most significant and innovative painters of the 18th century.

Angelica Kauffman and Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun were the most internationally renowned and successful portrait painters in Europe by the mid 1790’s. She considers how these women artists referenced Old Masters in their work, as a persuasive tool to invite positive comparison, and showcase their considerable talents.

In a world where professional cards were stacked against women, Kauffman and Le Brun boldly and persuasively not only cast themselves as the heirs to the greatest artists of all time but also engaged in robust dialogue with their male contemporaries.

With Vigée Le Brun keeping both Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Jacques Louis David in her sights, whilst Angelica Kauffman engaged with the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds and others, their respective output presents an alternative version of neoclassicism, and allows us to revisit their era through a completely different lens from that offered by their male peers. Lauded and hugely famous in their day, Moyle makes the argument that the work of these groundbreaking painters deserve far wider recognition.

Franny Moyle is an author, art historian, lecturer, curator and former TV producer. Her biography of Hans Holbein, the critically acclaimed ‘The King’s Painter’ was a BBC 4 Radio Book of the Week. She is also the most recent biographer of J M W Turner, whilst her 2009 account of the Pre Raphaelite brotherhood, ‘Desperate Romantics’, formed the basis for a six-part television drama released in the same year.

Her new book ‘Mrs Kauffman & Madame Le Brun’ will be available to purchase before and after the talk.