The rake’s progress

With a strength of character that belied her fragile looks, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun pushed the boundaries of royal portraiture and, after the French Revolution, challenged the loss of female influence via every frill and fold in her work

Does a newly found Nicholas Hilliard miniature portray Shakespeare’s patron the Earl of Southampton?

When COUNTRY LIFE’s Henry Avray Tipping spotted a 17th-century four poster languishing in a Herefordshire attic in 1911, he set off a chain of events that saw the bed leave its ancestral home and land at The Met in New York

Marie Antoinette’s passion for furniture and genius for bagatelles, however evanescent their purpose, filled the French royal palaces with beauty and charm, as Matthew Dennison reveals

There are many reasons that an artist’s ambitions can be thwarted, including the decision to become a teacher. Later this month, an exhibition will shine a light on talent obscured by a career in the classroom

IT was a fine, windy day in September, and Rosalind Aston had an odd feeling that she was in love. The emotion was new, and she could not be sure, but she luxuriated in it as she walked towards the ha