The Portraitist: A Novel of Adelaide Labille-Guiard
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Susanne Dunlap is the author more than a dozen historical novels for adults and teens. Her work has won and been nominated for many awards, including the Bank Street Books Children’s Book of the Year, the Utah Book Award, and the Missouri Gateway Readers’ Prize. Most recently, her novel The Portraitist won its category in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards, and The Paris Affair won first place in the CIBA Dante Rossetti awards for Young Adult Fiction. Susanne earned her PhD in music history from Yale, and her BA and MA (musicology) from Smith College. She lives and writes in Biddeford, Maine.
2022 Foreword INDIES Finalist in General (Adult Fiction)
"An imaginative work that brings the story of a little-known artist to vivid life."
-Kirkus Reviews
"Written with breathless drama, The Portraitist follows the rise of the gifted portraitist Adéeacute;laïde Labille-Guiard in Paris during the last years of the late eighteenth century. The novel is a luminous depiction of Paris and those terrible times seen through the astute, compassionate eyes of a woman who had to paint. Every bit of lace or royal carriage or bloody cobblestone is alive in the writing. The rain drumming on the skylight and a misbuttoned coat speak. Go to those streets with this book in your hand to follow her footsteps and those long-gone, turbulent times will come alive to you as if they were yesterday."
--Stephanie Cowell, award-winning author of Claude and Camille
--Sandra Gulland, internationally best-selling author of The Josephine B. Trilogy "In The Portraitist, Susanne Dunlap skillfully paints a portrait of a woman struggling to make her way in a man's world--a topic as relevant today as it was in Ancien Régime France. Impeccably researched, rich with period detail, Dunlap brings to life the little-known true story of Adelaide Labille-Guiard, who fought her husband and society to make a name for herself as a painter to the royal family, the very apex of success--only to find everything she had built threatened by the Revolution. A stunning story of determination, talent, and reversals of fortune. As a lifelong Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun fan, I am now questioning my allegiances!"
--Lauren Willig, best-selling author of The Summer Country
