Rosalind Polly Blakesley

speaker

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

Rosalind Polly Blakesley’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

So getting that balance was a really tricky thing to achieve.

It's such a dramatic moment.

Well, initially she takes refuge with family and friends.

She sort of goes into hiding in Paris.

And then at the moment that the mobs are gathering to force the royal family back into Paris from Versailles,

She leaves.

She gets into a carriage with her very young daughter and the governess and off they go.

They just leave.

And I do think it's a moment to sort of pause on.

There she is, this celebrated, established woman artist, woman artist against all the odds.

And as you say, blink of an eye, she's got to move on.

I think she's so strategic is the word that always echoes in my head.

So she goes to the places where she knows other French émigrés are going, but also where there are academies, where there are connections, where there are royal connections.

So she goes to Bologna, she goes to Rome, she kind of gathers up associations with academies and awards as she travels abroad.

And she ends up at the court of Naples and Sicily, where the beloved older sister of Marie Antoinette is queen.

And she becomes a very important sort of facilitator and patron.

And it's while she's in Naples that she begins to meet and paint people who prove very important to her in her further steps.

So she's eventually to move on to Vienna and St.

Petersburg.

But first, she very much wants to go back to Paris in 1792.

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