Franny Moyle

Art historian Franny Moyle explains how two unjustly neglected women painters, Angelica Kauffman and Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, were visionaries who helped to define 18th-century art and feminism before the term was even invented.

Kauffman was a Swiss history painter and Le Brun a French portrait artist. They worked against a backdrop of revolution, empire, and Enlightenment. Moyle says the pair, who met in Rome in 1789, achieved unparalleled success and influence while pushing the boundaries of what women could be as artists and in society. She looks at how they dealt with fame, scandal and exile, their relationships with each other and their peers, and how they were caught up in cross-currents reshaping Europe.

Moyle is an author, art historian, television producer and lecturer curator. Her books include a critically acclaimed biography of Hans Holbein, The King’s Painter, and Desperate Romantics, a serial biography of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood adapted into a six-part drama for BBC 2.