The BBC looks into the Grand Palais exhibition of Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, once France’s pre-eminent court painter.

More than 150 pictures have been assembled from collections all over the world, but that is still only a fraction of the more than 1,000 paintings she made during her long life, from 1755 to 1842. Together they are an overdue tribute to a woman artist, who defied convention and prejudice by dint of hard work and talent. […]

she was the daughter of a minor painter and hairdresser. Her father encouraged her talent, and at 19 she married Jean-Baptiste Pierre Le Brun, the pre-eminent Paris art dealer of the time. By studying and copying the masterpieces that passed through his collection, she taught herself the techniques.

A delayed tribute to France’s most famous woman artist  (BBC News)