Francesca Whitlum-Cooper

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176 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 23 Jul

Francesca Whitlum-Cooper’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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In Our Time · Vigée Le Brun · 23 Jul 2026 podcast

It's one of the first times really that you consistently see someone painting teeth.

I know that sounds bonkers, but it's true.

And I think it's about this kind of studied informality, this

They're not casual because obviously portraits take so long to paint and they're such expensive things and they are still very, very much luxury objects.

But I think there is something that she is bringing in this, whether it's her relationship with the sitter or the kind of rapport they can establish or even a sort of movement in the composition that people are really drawn to, kind of understandably.

I think there are a few things.

I mean, I think one, inevitably, you know, she is an artist, as all artists are, painting in their time and their moment.

And I think the nature of who she's painting and the moment in which she's working means that she does give us this extraordinary glimpse, certainly in the French context, of the last gasp of the ancien regime, if you will.

You know, we just see these incredible likenesses of all these characters who go on, many of them, to have untimely deaths or long periods as émigrés and everything else.

So I think there is this sense that, you know, she kind of captures Europe at this particular moment or whether it's, you know, with Emma Hamilton in Naples or other people across the courts that she travels to.

For me, maybe the slight injustice that we do with Vigée is because these are very dazzling portraits and they're very engaging at a kind of...

surface level I mean literally her painted surfaces she's fabulous at painting fabrics she really does paint these beautiful complexions these very engaging sitters I think there's been a tendency to look at her or treat her as if everything is just surface whereas in fact I do think this is an artist who's thinking very carefully

about what her legacy will be and positioning herself in the sort of continuum, in the canon, if you will, of the old masters.

So we know that she copies old master paintings early on in her career.

We know before she marries the art dealer Lebrun, you know, he's lending her works, you know, even as they're living in the same house for her to copy.

You know, the entrance into the academy is so important to her.

It means so much to her.

that she would be able to do that, you know, and actually when it happens in the end, it's done on order of the king and, you know, she's sort of slightly disparaged for it.

But throughout her career, throughout her compositions, we see this kind of engagement with, you know, old master painting that I think, I do think that is actually something of hers that endures.

I think there is a way of seeing her in this context where she is taking herself very, very seriously and maybe asking us to do the same.

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