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 · last 12 months

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

I think growing, I think we also have more work to do.

I think actually the more work that is done, the more complexity comes out of Vigée Le Brun.

And I think even if you're looking at her, you know, it's relatively recently that a large group of pastels that she made, pastel landscapes were discovered that she made on her travels, you know, not the kind of flashy court portraits, but actually just, you know, a way of looking at someone who's introduced to art through this medium by her father.

And then, you know,

50 years later is still doing them on her travels in Switzerland.

I think there's a lot more for us to uncover and a lot more to take seriously.

I think, in a way, that's sort of mirrored across her life.

In a way, it's so unusual, actually, to come across someone in the 18th or early 19th century who lives to almost 87.

But then you realise actually that, you know, in the 1810s, she loses her brother with whom she's been very close.

Julie dies, her husband, you know, obviously they do, they separate and there's a financial disentangling.

But, you know, when she returns to France, she goes back to live in the Hotel Le Bon with him.

She loses all these people and then lives for another, you know, 25 years.

Yes.

So I think the husband is, you know, a fantastic art dealer, also likes gambling, also likes prostitutes.

And, you know, as you alluded to, Robert, you know, the nature of the art market is you need a lot of money to make a lot of money.

And so having a wife who's commanding these fantastic prices is very useful for kind of the liquidity purposes of his business, literally kind of keeping the kind of buying and selling going.

in play.

But they're also, I mean, incredibly lavish.

The Hotel Lebrun that they build in Paris is this, you know, vast space, you know, with, you know, grand sort of hallway corridors between his areas and her areas and, you know, fantastic objects and everything within.

It must have been very sumptuous.

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