Having the last laugh

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

Anthony Lawrence, a New Forest artist, painted everything from Dante’s Inferno to portraits of Ian McKellen and Yehudi Menuhin. This October, Palais des Vaches presents the first major retrospective o

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

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

WITH more than a hint of nerves, I slide into an empty seat in the auditorium for my first university lecture. I look down the aisle hoping to see a friendly face, but there is no-one I recognise, whi

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