Paint Me Like One of Your French Girls: Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun and Adélaïde Labille-Guiard (Part 1)

On the eve of the French Revolution, two women gained access to France's most elite and exclusive community of artists: The Royal Academy. Elisabeth and Adelaide were admitted to the Academy on the same day, during a period when the Academy allowed a maximum of four female members at any given time, and when the minister of fine arts was a raging misogynist. What made these painters so special to deserve this honor? How did they get noticed by famous neoclassical painters and gain the patronage of several members of the royal family? And what was the relationship like between two young, up-and-coming female painters in the man's world of eighteenth-century Parisian art? Find out in this episode of Sistory Untold!