The court painter to Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, was the first internationally celebrated woman artist. But only now, more than 170 years after her death, has France got round to dedicating an exhibition to her, reports the BBC.
Probably the most famous of Elisabeth Louise Vigée le Brun's paintings is the monumental portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette and her three children, normally on display at the royal palace in Versailles.
The queen looks serious and demure - nothing like the gadabout many took her to be. Her elder boy - the dauphin - points to an empty crib, where there should have been a baby girl had she not died.
Painted in 1787, two years before the Revolution, Marie-Antoinette and her children was a clear attempt to rehabilitate the image of the unpopular Queen, whose image had just been dragged deeper into the mud by the so-called diamond necklace affair (in which a woman impersonating her had defrauded the crown jewellers).
This was the queen as dynastic mother, faithfully offering her children to the nation.
But it was to no avail. The mood was turning. In 1789 the mob forced the royal family to move from Versailles into Paris. Vigée Le Brun saw that her own life was in danger too, so on 6 October she disguised herself as a maid and fled.
Today Marie-Antoinette and her children is the crowning piece in this first ever exhibition in France dedicated to the country's most famous woman artist, at the Grand Palais until 11 January.
More than 150 pictures have been assembled from collections all over the world, but that is still only a fraction of the more than 1,000 paintings she made during her long life, from 1755 to 1842.