Robert Wenley
speaker
164 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 23 Jul
Robert Wenley’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Wherever she went, she was trying to recreate those golden years at the end of the Ancien Régime, always trying to go back to that golden age for her.
She did meet sympathetic people.
There was a Mrs Chinnery.
She was a sort of patron of the arts.
And she managed to get a commission from the Prince of Wales, which was another big deal, the future George IV.
Yes.
I mean, she didn't stay as long as she did in Russia, and she was partly constrained from leaving earlier because of resumption of hostilities between England and France.
That's not to say that she didn't make some interesting portraits here, and she still was able to command high prices and still met opposition from local artists.
It's interesting where we are with her, actually, because there have been very few exhibitions on her.
There was one in 1982 and one in 2015, neither of which came to this country.
I'm glad to say at the Barber we are doing one next year, 2027, on her work that's in England and her connections with England.
But where she sits in sort of feminist canon is a matter of some debate, because she obviously was remarkably successful.
She was in many ways exceptional, but she was also very much tied to the Ancien Regime.
So that makes it difficult in a political sense.
She was quite dismissive of less wealthy people.
And as I've said earlier, she was always trying to go back, to hark back to that golden time as she saw it.
She was very much pro the Bourbon dynasty.
She didn't like Napoleon and all he stood for.
So I think she's a complex character.
She should be perhaps better known and more widely known in terms of her great masterpieces and the range of her work.
Showing 81–100 of 164 · page 5 of 9
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