The Portraitist - A Novel of Adelaide Labille-Guiard

Based on a true story, this is the tale of Ad--Labille-Guiard''s fight to take her rightful place in the competitive art world of eighteenth-century Paris.

With a beautiful rival who''s better connected and better trained than she is, Ad-- faces an uphill battle. Her love affair with her young instructor in oil painting gives rise to suspicions that he touches up her work, and her decision to make much-needed money by executing erotic pastels threatens to create as many problems as it solves. Meanwhile, her rival goes from strength to strength, becoming Marie Antoinette''s official portraitist and gaining entrance to the elite Acad-e Royale at the same time as Ad--.

When at last Ad-- earns her own royal appointment and receives a massive commission from a member of the royal family, the timing couldn''t be worse: it''s 1789, and with the fall of the Bastille her world is turned upside down by political chaos and revolution. With danger around every co