Discover the story of Adelaide Labille-Guiard-a long-ignored artist and feminist of eighteenth-century France-in this imaginative and illuminating biography from an award-winning writer.Summer in Paris, 1783. The Louvre steps, too hot and no breeze, the air electric with the heady anticipation of a coming storm: the year's Royal Salon. Bewigged and powdered Parisians mill amid pigeons, dogs, and detritus; food and flower sellers; pamphleteers and propagandists. Men and women of every estate (clergy, nobles, commoners) are united under art: to love it, to despise it, to gossip endlessly about it. Exhibiting at the Royal Salon was not for the faint of heart, and it was never intended for women. Enter Adelaide Labille-Guiard . . . Born in Paris in 1749, Adelaide Labille-Guiard rose from shopkeeper's daughter to an official portraitist of the royal court-only to have her achievements reduced to ash by the French Revolution. While she defied societal barriers to become a member of the exclu