Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun by Gita May

Description

The most charming sociopath in literature — and the novel that invented modern psychological suspense. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) — the first of Patricia Highsmith’s five Ripliad novels — introduces Tom Ripley: small-time con artist sent to Italy to retrieve a rich man’s son, who decides instead to become him.

Highsmith’s genius is making us complicit: Tom is a liar, a forger, a murderer — and utterly fascinating. The sun-drenched Italian settings, the slow tightening of the plot, the moral vertigo as Tom slips deeper into Dickie Greenleaf’s life: this is suspense as seduction, and it has never been surpassed.

Read first, then follow Tom through Ripley Under Ground, Ripley’s Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley, and Ripley Under Water. For thriller readers: the original, the best, the one every psychological suspense novel since is answering — the original, and still the best.

In 1789, she was the most celebrated portraitist in France — the favorite painter of Marie Antoinette. Months later, she was fleeing for her life. Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842) lived through the storm of the French Revolution not as a bystander but as one of its most famous exiles, carrying her brushes from Paris to Vienna, St. Petersburg, and London.

Gita May’s Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun: The Odyssey of an Artist in an Age of Revolution follows this remarkable woman across a continent in upheaval. Drawing on letters, memoirs, and the paintings themselves, May paints a vivid picture of an artist who was a monarchist in politics yet daringly modern in her art — a working mother who built an international career in an age that offered women little room to do so.

From glittering Versailles salons to the uncertainty of exile, this biography brings together art, history, and one woman’s extraordinary resilience. An engrossing read for lovers of art history and anyone drawn to stories of talent triumphing over turmoil.

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