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.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And one of the leitmotifs throughout the memoirs is...
She's ever demonstrating ways in which very high-placed patrons were incredibly kind to her because she was such a sort of deserving person.
So early doors, she talks about missing a sitting with Marie Antoinette because she was heavily pregnant and going to apologise the next day and being so flustered that she drops her paints and that Marie Antoinette herself bends down to pick them up.
And then much later in St.
Petersburg, she talks about Grand Duchess Elisaveta Alexeyevna, who, when Vijay felt faint, you know, brings her water and brings her round.
And then in the least likely of many examples of this, there's a moment when Alexander I comes to the throne in Russia.
And he apparently goes so far as to get off his horse in the street to greet her and say, you must do an equestrian portrait.
Now, she's never done an equestrian portrait in her life.
So the probability of this is really quite low.
It's a complicated history if you're looking for a historical record.
She was competitive.
She was audacious.
She was fearless.
She was self-assured.
She absolutely deserves the rise in interest that is happening now.
Very much so.
And one of the things I think she is unfairly pilloried for, and you made a
Good point earlier, Francesca, about how we hold her to a different standard than we do so often with men.
There's many things she's criticised for, but that was common among people at the time.
But one of the things that she was criticised for was not mentoring other women artists.
Showing 161–180 of 237 · page 9 of 12
← Previous
Next →