Mrs Kauffman and Madame Le Brun

Franny Moyle

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, Self-Portrait (detail), 1782

Élisabeth Louise Vigée le Brun (1755-1842) provided defining images of Queen Marie Antoinette and a host of influential men and women who dominated French, European and Russian society from the 1770’s through to the early 19th century, evolving portraiture as she did so. Meanwhile, her contemporary Angelica Kauffman (1741-1807) captured the cream of European society, whilst also establishing her own genre of neoclassical ‘history’ painting that explored the image of the heroine. Franny Moyle reveals how these painters invite comparison with Old Masters as part of a shared agenda to establish that female talent could match that of men. Women tended to be downgraded as painters, their efforts often diminished and dismissed without proper consideration.

Moyle shows how the two most successful female painters of their era fought back against ingrained prejudice and engaged in – quite independently of one another – a lively pictorial dialogue with Rubens, Rembrandt, and van Dyck. They also sparred with their most successful male contemporaries, including Jacques-Louis David, Joseph Duplessis and Sir Joshua Reynolds, as a means of reinforcing their claim to a seat in the cultural pantheon.

Franny Moyle is an author, art historian, lecturer, curator and former TV producer. Her publications include a biography of Hans Holbein, the critically acclaimed The King’s Painter (2021) which was a BBC 4 Radio Book of the Week. Her account of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Desperate Romantics (2009) formed the basis of a six-part television drama. Her most recent book, Mrs Kauffman and Madame Le Brun (2025) is a comparative biography of these two painters.