Last April, a surprising photograph (see near right) appeared on the Wikipedia page devoted to Jeanne Duval, the long-term mistress of Charles Baudelaire and the “Black Venus” who inspired some of the

A French medieval hilltop town is the location of Toile Blanche, a former 19th-century farmhouse reimagined as a boutique hotel

Georges Seurat spent much of his short life painting the quietude of the Northern French coast, honing his rigorous technique on the play of light, sky and water

Saving the best for last: the author is ...

Train Landscape , 1940, watercolour on paper, 17¼in ...

Simone De Beauvoir The Image of HerTranslated by Lauren Elkin208pp, Penguin Vintage Classics, £14.99 The first reviews of Simone De Beauvoir’s novel Les Belles images (1966) were dismissive. Some crit