THE PORTRAITIST

Dunlap offers a historical novel loosely based on the life of French miniaturist painter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, who forged a career even though the odds were against her.

This sweeping saga tells a story of a real-life 18th-century woman as she pursues her art against the backdrop of the French Revolution. Labille-Guiard was one of the first women to become a member of the Académie Royale and the first to set up a studio at the Louvre. Dunlap presents this trailblazer’s story, filling in historical gaps with fictionalized elements. The novel opens as Labille-Guiard makes the decision to leave her abusive husband and pursue painting—a career that always interested her but, because of sexist restrictions, eluded her. A shrewd businesswoman, she first paints anonymous erotic works that sell well and allow her to open her studio, and her career as a mainstream artist starts to take off. At the same time, a rival female artist, Elizabeth Vigée Le Brun, has caught the attention of the queen, Marie Antoinette, while general upheaval brews across the country. Dunlap’s expansive novel will have readers constantly guessing as to what’s true and what isn’t. Fortunately, the author does a fine job of clearing this up in an epilogue; for instance, she notes that there’s no proof that the artist created erotic works, but points out that they were a common way for artists of the era to survive. (Indeed, the minimal surviving information about Labille-Guiard allows for a great deal of creative license.) Still, the author manages to generate great tension, showing her subject to be stuck in the middle of the revolution, both literally and spiritually: “Adélaïde was caught between the structure of patronage that supported her career and her desire to embrace radical change.” In the end, the novel can be enjoyed as an intriguing gloss on history, but also as a sweet love story between her and her second husband, painter François-André Vincent, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at the intrigue of the era’s art world.

An imaginative work that brings the story of a little-known artist to vivid life.