Vulgar History Podcast
Marie Antoinette’s Favorite Painter, Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
August 12, 2025
Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. I’m your host, Ann Foster. We are entering a period of time that I call Marie Antoinette Month, where this week and for the next, I think, seven weeks, we’re talking about people who were really close to Marie Antoinette, culminating in a discussion of Marie Antoinette herself. Today, we’re entering Marie Antoinette Month, which again, is a period of seven weeks, with a discussion of Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who was Marie Antoinette’s, I wouldn’t say close friend, but they were certainly friendly. Marie Antoinette didn’t have a lot of friends just because of who she was as the queen, but she had a really close connection to Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. If you imagine Marie Antoinette in your head, what you’re probably picturing is a young woman wearing sort of a big, towering, grey hairstyle; she’s probably wearing a big, broad dress. And that’s probably based on a portrait by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun; she was really instrumental. She was sort of like the Law Roach to Marie Antoinette’s Zendaya in terms of, like, image craft.
Anyway, we’re talking about Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun today to kick off Marie Antoinette Month, which is also, for longtime listeners, a culmination of the past year-and-a-bit of episodes. We were looking at the French Revolution, we were looking at all the other revolutions that were happening in the world to really construct an understanding of what was going on in Marie Antoinette’s life because she was very much a person of her time, and what was happening in her time was not just what was happening at Versailles or in Paris, but it’s a much broader story.
Today’s discussion kind of connects what we’ve been talking about in the past year with what we’re going to be talking about in Marie Antoinette Month because Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, she painted Marie Antoinette, they knew each other pretty well, and then Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was caught up in the French Revolution— Spoiler, she survived, because like everyone else who survived the French Revolution, basically she left and she travelled around. So, she experienced some of what we’ve been talking about was going on in other countries as well, like England.
So, I have a special guest on to talk about Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who is an author, Jordana Pomeroy, who is also the director and CEO of the Currier Museum of Art and former chief curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Art is her thing. So, if we’re talking about Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, who is so well known for her artwork, I really thought this is a perfect person to describe her and to explain the importance of the art, and to talk about the meaning in the artwork. Jordana has just written a book that has very recently come out, that’s called Daring: The Life and Art of Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. And I hope you enjoy this conversation with Jordana Pomeroy as we enter Marie Antoinette Month, talking about Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.
—————
Ann: So, I’m joined today by Jordana Pomeroy, the author of Daring: The Life and Art of Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. Am I pronouncing her name correctly?
Jordana: You are. You are.
Ann: Okay. I’m always, I’m never sure about French name pronunciation.
Jordana: Le Brun, Le Brun. You did a very good job. [laughs]
Ann: Okay. I’m Canadian, so I speak French with a Canadian accent. So, tell me, actually, first of all, what is your history with her life and her art? Do you remember when you first encountered her work?
Jordana: I do. I was the chief curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, for many years, and that is likely the first time I saw her work because we had two works in our collection by her. In fact, that’s eventually how I met the editor because she was an editor at that time at the museum many years ago, who said, I know that you know Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun because I used to hang around your tours. And in fact, that was the first time that I encountered Vigée Le Brun, but I then only knew her from her paintings and realized she had this incredible autobiography, and that’s what really makes her an extraordinary artist.
Ann: And that’s where, like, your book is “The Life and Art.” So, I think it’s a really beautiful combination of… There are so many examples of her work in the book, but her life story is so dramatic, it would make a very, I think, exciting film.
Jordana: Me too. Me too. I’ve already thought about that. [laughs]
Ann: Yeah. So, if we start about… I mean, her life became so, just caught up in so many world events, she met so many celebrities and things. But can you explain what her roots were, where her life began?
Jordana: Yeah, I mean, you know, like so many women artists, her life began with a parent who was an artist. Her father was a very well-known pastel artist in Paris, her mother was actually a hairstylist. I always like to make sure I mention the wives because it’s often, “… and his wife,” you know? But in fact, she had a life too, and they probably met, you know, they were in sort of the same circles, social circles.
So, she was born to them and was kind of trained from a very early age, right? She helped her father; she was in his studio. In the memoir, it’s very clear she has such fond memories of her father. And then early on, this struck me, there’s a lot of social, you know, social history in this book. Right away, she was farmed out to a wet nurse—I have a whole section on wet nursing, which fascinated me, so I figured it would interest everybody else too—which was the style, the fashion, almost the obligation at the time. Everybody, even the working class, had wet nurses. Royalty had, of course, a lineup of wet nurses in the court. Somebody like Vigée Le Brun (or Vigée at the time), she would have, you know, gone to a wet nurse that was somewhat outside of Paris. She came back, she was weaned, and I always thought, she wouldn’t know her parents. It’s really, you know, an odd social sort of aspect of society at the time. I mean, odd to us.
And then, she went to essentially a Catholic school, you know, she was taught by nuns, for girls. And here was also something very interesting, a little point. She says that basically, she just had no ability to sit; she had no attention span for catechism and teaching and math. What she wanted to do was scribble. So, I thought, you know those kids. You know the kids in the classroom who want to either want to run around or they want to make art, but they’re not really good at focus? That’s that kid. That’s who she was. And that’s where I started getting really interested in writing about her, because she tells you so much about her just as an individual, as a person that you can relate to. She’s completely relatable.
Ann: I’m glad you mentioned that, because I found that relatable is the exact right word. You know, I have friends who are very artistically inclined as well, and I remember being in a classroom with them, and they’re just drawing. When you have that artistic sensibility, you can’t turn it off; it’s there with you all the time. So, just picturing her in school, and all she wants to do is art; it’s such a part of her. That’s her identity from a very early age. This wasn’t imposed upon her; this is just who she was.
Jordana: It’s who she was, it’s where she gravitated to. She also had, you know, the ability to learn because her father was there and had a lot of… He even said, or you know, allegedly she recalls him saying, “You are going to be an artist one day, my daughter,” which is really the case for, as I said, for most women artists, frankly, until, you know, the 20th century. There usually was a father, a brother, a husband who was in some way involved in art, so that gave you credibility and mentoring as well.
Ann: So, her father dies at a young age, and she gets this stepfather, who she hates. Can you talk about that?
Jordana: Yeah, and again, this was with a grain of salt. I read these passages over and over. So, she talks about this man that her mother quickly remarries, he’s a jeweller, and well-off. He’s not living in poverty. So, she marries, maybe you could say the same class, maybe even slightly above her class (her mother, that is). But they’re moved promptly, they have to move. And you imagine that she’s in mourning. You know, she still mourns her father, I mean, this again, is very relatable. What she says is that this man starts to wear her father’s clothes without even altering them. So, he’s gone into her father’s closet and is just wearing these clothes. I mean, is that possible? I suppose. I mean, clothing wasn’t inexpensive. Maybe he did see a jacket or two that appealed to him, but you know, it’s not like he couldn’t afford his own clothes. So, it may have been a little metaphorical, perhaps a little exaggerated, just to emphasize that she was not happy at this stage in her life.
Ann: I wanted to kind of show it’s such a demonstration of, like, he was ostensibly filling the role of father, but he was not her father.
Jordana: Correct. Exactly, yeah.
They move into a new neighbourhood, a very active neighbourhood with shops, and you know, her life is turned upside down. She does recount going to a country estate (this is where she first sees Marie Antoinette), I guess it’s for the summer. And she hates it too, because, you know, she’s sitting there and she’s a city girl and she’s stuck out there in the country with these hicks who are, like, shooting off guns and playing with birds. She was probably, I forgot now, 15 or 16, it’s not what you want to be doing. You want to be with your friends, and she’s stuck out there with a stepfather and her mother. But it is when she first sees, she lays eyes on a young Marie Antoinette.
Ann: Which is, you know, in the movie of this, that would be a good, sort of, when they first see each other. Maybe you’d start the movie with that scene. [laughs]
Jordana: We’re going to get that movie done, I’ll tell you.
Ann: I think it’s such a dramatic story. But I like the detail that she’s in mourning, understandably. Her father died, and they were very close, and to cheer her up, her mother takes her to go look at portrait galleries, basically. And I think that’s a mother who knows her daughter. Like, this is going to cheer her up, probably.
Jordana: Yeah. So, she takes her to Luxembourg to see the Marie de’ Medici Cycle, and she sort of falls in love with Rubens. That’s the first time she’s really seen Rubens, and I think, you know, for her, when she’s recounting her life, she has, as memoirs do, these sort of benchmark, or these sea-change moments. That’s when she realizes, like, “This is an incredible artist. I want to be like Rubens.” And there are parts of Rubens that she holds on to throughout her life and her career, including the cover photo of the book. Yeah, because that’s when she— I’m skipping ahead, but when she later does go to visit the Lowlands, she sees one of Rubens’s most famous portraits, Le Chapeau de Paille, The Straw Hat, and she imitates it by putting herself in that very, very same, you know, portrait mode. So, she pays homage to Rubens deeply in that painting.
Ann: And that’s part of what… I mean, your book is designed for ages 13 and up, so it’s written at a very sort of accessible, which I appreciate for myself as a person not— Well, I’m 13 and up, [Jordana laughs] but who doesn’t have an art history background, like, you really explain things like that. So, I really understood from the book how, for an artist at that time, all the artists would know the references the other artists were doing. And so, that she was sort of demonstrating her vocabulary, like, “I’m familiar with Rubens, and you can tell because I’m taking…” So, it’s interesting to see her influences. That’s part of how she sort of reveals her skill.
Jordana: Absolutely. Yeah, she was always a sponge. I think she’s a really wonderful artist because she does even incrementally change her style over the course, and she’s always making reference to other artists and in some ways, I think, trying to fit herself into art history that way, which really good artists do. In a sense, they know how to promote themselves and give themselves that kind of art historical credibility. They want the street cred, right? They want to know that somehow, their legacy is going to be recognized. And so, you know, in her, you know, imitating Susanna Lunden by Rubens, she’s immediately paying homage by putting herself in that lineage.
Ann: And it’s a self-portrait, too. So, it’s like, “This is me! I also painted it. And here’s my references.” Yeah.
Well, can you talk about how she started her career as a portrait painter? Because she was quite young and highly skilled at a young age.
Jordana: Yeah. I mean, because of her father and her father’s connections, which is always how it’s done anyway, she immediately had portrait commissions. So, by 16, she says she was really earning money, and that’s a very interesting comment. You know, that— Oh, this was another thing that her stepfather was taking her money from her. She also talks about this with her husband. So, I think another grain of salt, I mean, there may have been this sense of, you know, everybody’s pitching in to pay for life expenses. But, you know, for her, it was stealing my money.
So, she is earning money. Her father, you know, as I said, had a very, very close circle; he was very well established. So, it was really through a lot of probably these connections that she starts. You know, like the moment she makes her first portrait, early on, she paints her brother. Beautiful, beautiful painting. You can’t believe how young she is when she paints this. So, if you want to say genius, and I really don’t love that word, but in that sense of early on, she’s a talented, talented young woman, and it’s clear that’s going to be her métier. It’s clear she’s going to have a métier, that she’s going to have a career, which is interesting in itself. It almost is like it was predestined. Like, it was never a question in her mind that she would actually have a career. That was not typical of the time.
Ann: And for me, like, looking at the portrait of her brother, which you have in your book, it is! It’s so beautiful, it’s so startling. I would never have thought that she was as young as she was when she was doing that, and she was painting her brother, not some, you know, wealthy patron or something like that. Like, the portraits that she does, like, that one is an early one, but continuing on, just the way that she can portray fabric and, you know, the way that light— Like, you could really almost feel what the clothes are like that people are wearing in these portraits. It’s just… Yeah, it’s such an expertise, and I guess it’s just by using light in the way that she kind of portrays, you know, the fibres. It’s just so impressive. And yeah, that’s a really early portrait.
But let’s talk about her husband, who she married to also really young.
Jordana: Yeah, so they move into a building that’s owned by Pierre Le Brun, who is himself a really interesting character. A colleague of mine recently wrote about him. He’s really important; he was really the first art dealer who was valuing Dutch artists, and bringing our artists from the Lowlands to France, and sort of promoting those as artists that the French should look at and collect. So, he wrote catalogues about these artists, and in a sense, you know, you think about art trends. I mean, the French weren’t collecting Dutch art until really somebody like Pierre Le Brun starts that sort of that trend. So, consequently, he has a museum of Dutch art in his house, and he allows this young woman, who has now moved in or renting, I guess, her family’s renting from him, you know, he allows her access to all the works of art, which must have been a very, very attractive proposition for a very curious young woman. And she ends up marrying him.
But according, again, to her memoir, questioning whether she should or shouldn’t, literally walking to the church— It’s very dramatic, who knows if that really happened. But the point is made that she really didn’t know if she was ready for marriage or marriage to this man. But it was clear, I mean, one thing she did that would have been very difficult is that her mother wanted her to get married for all kinds of reasons, and so, she did. She does say—this also makes her really relatable—not only is she questioning, “Should I or should I not marry this man?” She sort of comments on his physique. You know, you could just see her saying, “Well, you know, he’s pretty good looking, actually. Might as well.” [laughs] I just love the way that, you know, you just feel that she’s sort of, “Yeah, okay. My mother wants me to marry this guy, he’s an art dealer. He’s very good-looking. Let’s go.” So, off to church they go.
And then, she did have a miscarriage, and then she has Julie, who becomes the love of her life, and definitely plays a strong role in my book. Julie has not been discussed much in other books, but I see her as a very, very important person, of course, to her mother and is always talked— I mean, Élisabeth talks about her throughout her memoir. So, Élisabeth had a miscarriage, and then she had Julie— Actually, I may have that wrong. I’m not sure if she had Julie and then had the miscarriage. But in any case, she ends up with one child, Julie, who is a force in her life, a major, major character in her life. And no other art historian focuses on Julie the way I do, partly because I was writing for a young adult audience, but partly because Élisabeth speaks about her so fondly, so admiringly, so lovingly throughout her memoir. It’s clear that Julie played a strong role in her mother’s life. So, I spend a lot of time talking about Julie.
Ann: So, she’s married, she’s got Julie. She’s tutoring, and she hates it; she wants to just paint. And what’s the next big thing that happens with her?
Jordana: Well, the next big thing that happens to her is that she meets Marie Antoinette. I mean, she’s still young, Marie Antoinette is young; they’re pretty much the same age, in fact. And she’s invited to the court to paint her. And there’s, again, very relatable and interesting anecdote about Élisabeth was pregnant at the time (maybe early on, but you could tell, I suppose), and she drops her paints, and the queen bends down to pick them up for her. There’s a comment that they sort of share this. She recognizes that, you know, she’s not feeling well, she drops her paints, and then to have the queen lean down and pick them up, as it was just so out of protocol. And so, it gives you a sense that, you know, while they may not have been best buddies, they were they were close.
She paints the queen 18 times. I mean, she ends up being kind of the chief promoter, marketer of Marie Antoinette through her paintings. You know, some did better than others, and some were actually really… There was one painting of Marie Antoinette, and she’s wearing a very white chemise. We would love it, right? We think, “Augh! Look, this is beautiful. She’s wearing this lovely sort of springy, summery outfit,” but it was scandalous. It was considered really uncouth for the queen to be wearing this very relaxed look. So, the next painting, she paints her in this much more rigid fashion with her children around her in, sort of, a more traditional composition that you might find in the Renaissance of the Madonna and Child. And it’s really too late. The fact is that the monarchy is, you know, this is already in play, the toppling of the monarchy. So, in a sense, these are kind of a little bit too late in the day to try to save the queen or save the monarchy. But she did her best, and she remained a monarchist throughout her life.
She makes it very clear that when she flees Paris in 1789, that she’s doing so under duress, she’s fearful of her life, of Julie’s life, and she leaves behind her husband, who subsequently divorces her. But I think it was really more a matter of… just to separate himself from her, so he wouldn’t be seen as somebody who should be executed. So, she really goes under the cover of night with Julie and Julie’s governess, they leave Paris. So, I’m making it sort of quick, but she really does have this wonderful, as close as you can be to a queen, relationship with Marie Antoinette, that, you know, was personal.
Ann: I will be doing an episode about Marie Antoinette in a bit. And I do think that Vigée Le Brun, like, these are such iconic, famous images of her. At that time, that’s… It was part of the I want to say, like, public relations, for the royal family to have these portraits, and how you choose to present yourself. Like you said, when she presented herself in this simple chemise, maybe they were trying to be like, “Look, she’s relatable!” And it’s like, “No, she’s not.”
Jordana: Yes, right. And we don’t care because you already have the anti-monarchists who are, you know, they’re gaining in force, so making her look like, yeah, just another woman that you might have tea with is not actually accurate. But those who were strong monarchists equally saw it as just a scandal to portray their queen in such a casual manner.
Ann: She’s got sort of… I think in your book, you talk about the first time she painted Marie Antoinette, like Rose Bertin is there who is Marie Antoinette, it’s kind of like, clothier. She’s got sort of a whole… You imagine people getting ready for the Academy Awards, you know, there’s a whole team around her, it’s like, “Let’s create this look.” And Vigée Le Brun became such a crucial part of that, of presenting her in this different way. But I mean, no portrait was going to change the tide of what was happening in culture there.
Jordana: Right, exactly. To the point that her portraits often were this, you know, they were portrayals of the way people want to promote themselves or see themselves. So, you were asking when I was first introduced to Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun’s work, I saw her, or the way I would talk about her is somebody who made you look good, like a kind of early Photoshop. You know, there is a sort of similarity among her work, especially of men. There are very few that I like. You’ll notice the very few portraits of men in general that she painted, but very few in my book. They’re not all that interesting. A lot of the men are wearing, you know, their jackets and their different medals, and it’s all about their social status.
And it is, too, for the women. But the women come across to me more interesting because their outfits are so fascinating. They’re all sort of, you know, they’re very attractive. You know, and I think there’s she got that, she understood how people want to be seen. It wasn’t a time that you want to make that of naturalism, of making somebody look like the way they actually are, capturing some inner reality. It was really what the eyes see. So, she would drape her sitters in… She actually seemed to have like a, you know, magic bag of tricks. She would have these special draperies and turbans and things that were very elegant and flowed so that, you know, it also made her a virtuosa; you could see her virtuosa painting. But they made women look elegant and probably quite beautiful.
Ann: I find that really interesting, too, like Marie Antoinette, the only time she was painted by Vigée Le Brun, I think, that where she’s not looking like how we imagine Marie Antoinette with the extremely complicated dress and everything, was that one, the scandalous portrayal in the chemise. But so many of the other portraits, the ones you include in the book, are just like you described, it’s kind of people draped in fabric, almost looking like people from ancient Greece or Rome or something, which to me now seems like a really timeless sort of portraiture, where Marie Antoinette is so much in a time and a place because of the specificity of these gowns that she’s wearing.
So, let’s talk about her… Because in terms of that, she goes travelling. I’m just looking right now at my computer at the picture of Lady Hamilton as the Cumaean Sybil, which becomes kind of her calling card. Can you talk about… She’s travelling around Europe. She leaves Paris and she travels around, and she starts taking commissions. She starts painting people in other cities. How does that all play out?
Jordana: So, you know, even though Europe is a tight network—Western Europe, I should say—a tight network of monarchies, and they’re all somehow related to each other, one after the other. So, one of the sisters of Marie Antoinette is the ruler in Naples. So, it’s a logical place for her to head toward and seek new commissions.
Now, when she leaves Paris, this is the sort of interesting part, you know, she is definitely leaving, as I said, under duress. She leaves under the cover of darkness, and she leaves past the Bastille, so she recalls, like, you know, it’s very dramatic. Again, great for the movie. She’s sitting, she remembers, in a carriage with some stinky kind of guy; it’s not exactly a luxurious ride. She heads out, and she’s they stop in Lyon. I mean, the other thing that is important to know about France at the time is France itself is pretty disconnected. I mean, Paris is over there. What’s going on in Paris is really, really far away from what’s going on outside of Paris and in Lyon. You know, news does not travel fast. So, you know, the minute you get out, you’re kind of safer, right? So, this is not World War II. News travels slowly, and she sort of stops in Lyon, and then you’ve got to imagine these remarkably long carriage rides going over the Alps.
She ends up in northern Italy, and she’s always taken in by artist friends who know her. So, it tells you a lot about her reputation. Her reputation, by her thirties, she was really well-known throughout Western Europe. So, she has artist friends (French, I should say) who are teaching in, like, the academies in Italy. And she and her daughter are really taken in warmly, and this happens throughout her life. You know, she has friends all over the place, and she sometimes even leaves a portrait or two, you know, as a thank you. She gets to Rome; one of the highlights is that she meets Angelica Kauffman, who is one of the few other women artists, I think maybe the only one that she mentions in her autobiography. Again, if you think about that, situating yourself, your legacy, situating yourself in art history, Angelica Kauffman was somebody she admired greatly. So, she does talk about meeting her in Rome.
So, while she’s in exile, it’s not an unhappy exile, you know, she’s not in Alba, she’s not in prison. And in fact, in some ways, she’s finding herself in the depths, steeped in art, the kind of art that she had studied, that she had heard about, probably saw prints of; you know, murals and frescoes and paintings. So, Cumean Sibyl is a great example. She’s sort of looking at Raphael, she’s looking at Michelangelo, and then she’s decided like, “I’m going to paint a portrait with this reference.” So, that’s I think the important part, is that she’s sort of demonstrating that she’s a virtuosa, that she is capable of painting like Michelangelo, like Raphael. And in a sense, I think that’s what she sort of carries on in a lot of her future portraits of women, is that they are painted as mythological figures.
I should also back up and say that, you know, women were prohibited from painting the nude, so it put them on a kind of low rank. So, you know, when I was a curator, you know, at the Women’s Museum, sometimes I was faced with the idea—and I was sort of the curator of more historical art—with a lot of still life, a lot of still life and portraits. And I was like, that’s a lot. Who wants to walk into a full exhibition of portraits without a better narrative than this? But that was where women were kept because they were not accepted, they couldn’t paint the figure, they weren’t allowed, you know, or at least publicly or formally, training in anatomy. So, very few women attempted classical painting. One of the few is Angelica Kauffman. That’s why she was so remarkable, Angelica Kauffman, because she painted mythology, she painted classical scenes, which was entirely unusual.
So, the fact that then Vigée Le Brun, Élisabeth, makes these little footsteps, these little baby steps toward that with the Cumean Sybil, that’s when that starts. She’s sort of saying, “You know what? I guess Angelica did it. I can do it, too.” And the Cumean Sybil is so near to near and dear to her heart that she produces two of them, and one of them becomes her calling card, and she carries it around, because people will recognize the reference. Most people that she’s trying to woo, or get commissions from, will recognize that reference and say, “Wow, that’s pretty impressive. I want a painting by this person.”
Ann: I thought that was so interesting because, yeah, in an era before, you know, photography or anything, she just travelled around with this beautiful portrait she had made. So, when someone says, like, “Oh, why should I hire you to paint my portrait?” She can, “Ta-da! Here’s one that I did.” Just the idea that she’s carrying this around with her, I thought, was really interesting.
Jordana: Can you imagine? I know! And it’s also funny because one thing I thought about a lot was how she got around. She was in a carriage, and again, not luxury. I mean, it is the time she doesn’t have, like, shocks on the carriage, she’s on rutted roads. Now she’s carrying a painting around. I mean, I just can’t even picture it. You know, these horses, like, plodding along hundreds of miles, and she’s sitting on this, like, I’m just thinking about her spine, like, oh my god. You know, it’s tough. This is not easy travel.
Ann: I mean, she’s going around Europe, she’s meeting every celebrity of the time because she’s famous, well, as a portrait artist. She’s painting portraits of name after name that I recognize, the people who she encounters.
But I want to skip ahead to where she winds up in Russia because that’s an interesting era of her life. So, she was invited there, right?
Jordana: Yeah. Catherine the Great invited Élisabeth to Saint Petersburg. Catherine the Great is, of course, you know, a fascinating character. I’m sure you know a lot about her. She really wanted to bring Russia, which is huge, into a more European mode and less of an eastern mode in many, many ways. She collected, collected voraciously. She collected everything from gems to books to coins to people. And one of the people she collected was Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. So, she invited her to really teach artists of her court and of her domain how to paint portraits, but more in a Western style.
So, I think Élisabeth takes up the opportunity for two reasons. One is, I mean, Catherine the Great’s reputation was the way it is now. I mean, everybody knew her. So, that was a huge honour. And the second was money; she knew she would make a lot of money by going to Russia. So, she sets off with Julie on a crazy, crazy long carriage ride, which, you know, takes months. I mean, three months or something. She even talks about not just rutted roads, but pure sand, and they have to get out and walk. So, this is not fun.
So, when she gets to Saint Petersburg, she’s oo-ing and aww-ing and looking at the architecture because it is really a beautiful city. And it’s like, the minute she gets there, Catherine asks her to come to meet her, and she’s not even dressed. I mean, she doesn’t have what she thinks she’s going to wear. So, she sort of shows up in some modest outfit, and she forgets the protocol of meeting, you know, this most powerful monarch, and she does everything wrong. You know what I mean? She’s kind of like, you know, “What did I do?” You know, she sort of recollects that this was a moment in which she’s meeting this incredible woman, and she forgets how to honour her. And yet again, it seems not to matter all that much, just like when Marie Antoinette picked up her paints. This is the way she’s thinking about herself, again, very relatable, almost funny.
And then, she never paints Catherine the Great. Catherine the Great actually died just a few months after Élisabeth arrived. She does paint her granddaughters, and it’s a beautiful, beautiful painting that had some issues around it. The two granddaughters, they hold a cameo with their grandmother. She painted them initially with bare arms, and that was considered scandalous. So, she took the painting back and put sleeves on the girls. So, you know, and then she sort of establishes herself in the court, and not only that, in the Academy in Saint Petersburg. In fact, there’s still there’s a coin that’s struck in her honour that’s given out to a painter. It’s obviously, you know, some sort of a paid honorarium. And the fact is that she just has a lot of commissions. She knows a lot of people because there’s kind of a pipeline, a very big pipeline, of wealthy aristocrats and others who are going between Russia, namely mostly Saint Petersburg and Paris. So, there’s a lot of Parisian influence, a lot of French influence in Russia, and then a lot of Russians living in Paris, so they’re going back and forth. So, there’s the fact that she didn’t have a language barrier, really, everybody speaks French. She’s well-recognized by a lot of French who are there in Saint Petersburg.
Ann: And it’s in Saint Petersburg that Julie gets married, right?
Jordana: Yes. So, this is one of these really sad, sad moments of the autobiography. Julie meets this, you know, kind of a long story, you can get my book and read it. But it’s a story about— Again, kind of relatable. She meets a much older man who probably sees her as somebody with money and, you know, means. And Julie is very naïve; she’s been protected by her mother, as mothers do, and she’s really taken by this man. Much against her better judgment, Élisabeth agrees to the marriage and the dowry, and, you know, she’s very reluctant about this and leaves behind her daughter when she eventually does leave Saint Petersburg to return to Paris when she gets off the list of exiles and she’s allowed back in. She has to leave her daughter behind, and she expresses way more than just sadness about leaving her daughter; I think she feels like she’s leaving her daughter in just what’s a bad situation, something that’s not going to be a happy marriage. As it proves out, it’s not a happy marriage. So, I’ll leave it at that.
Ann: Yeah. Get all the details in the book. But yeah, just because you have Julie as such a character in your book, when you got to that part, I didn’t know this part of her life story. It’s just like, augh! Again, relatable. It feels contemporary, like how many mothers look at their daughters, “You’re dating that guy? You’re marrying that guy?” But daughters don’t listen, and it’s kind of… Yeah, it feels very contemporary.
Jordana: Yeah, it’s an old story. But I mean, she travels a lot, and you get into all of this in your book as well, she paints lots of people, including Germaine de Staël, who we did an episode about a few weeks ago. I think they encounter each other in Switzerland. She paints Germaine as the main character of one of her novels, and I talked about in the podcast then, about how Germaine’s novels are highly autobiographical, so I just like that detail.
Jordana: Yeah, as Corinne.
Oh, going back to Julie. One thing that was very interesting is that you realize that Élisabeth was giving her daughter an education that girls just didn’t get at the time. Certainly, she didn’t. You know, I was telling you, she didn’t want to learn catechism and math. So, her daughter is fluent in four languages, probably more. She knows how to paint, draw, write. She’s always proclaiming, like, “Julie’s writing is remarkable.” You know, she’s so proud of Julie. Her observations, she actually recollects certain things that her young daughter said along the way about the moonlight and about the landscape, and she’s learning history. You know, she’s just getting these life lessons that, you know, most boys and girls didn’t have. So, she really was a remarkable girl, and in some ways, I could see why Élisabeth wanted her to marry a remarkable man, and the man wasn’t remarkable. He was remarkable because he was probably a scoundrel and, you know, and taking advantage of a very young and naive girl.
So, yeah. She does go back without her daughter, and she’s bereft. She’s absolutely bereft. But she goes back, and she makes a life again. It’s funny because her now-ex-husband has decorated the house that she’s going to go occupy. She doesn’t speak well of him either, you know, that he was stealing her money and all this, but I don’t know about this. I will tell you one thing: I don’t think she was the best businesswoman. So, when she goes to Russia, she gets paid in jewels, which was, if you think about all the different currencies, it was just better to get paid in, you know, metal, right, gold and jewels. And so, that was the… What would you call it? Like the Euro, right?
So, she heads back in on it in a carriage with her legs draped over a trunk, which contains all her payment that she’s earned, diamonds and such. And one of the points I make is she paints a self-portrait in Saint Petersburg, and she is wearing this massive diamond, which is blingy and says a lot about her. You know, “I have made it. I’ve made so much money here. This is what I’m worth. I got paid in this massive diamond.” It’s beautifully painted, by the way, because she catches all the light and, you know, you just feel the weight of it. And she comes back to Paris with her worldly goods. Her ex-husband has made a comfortable situation for her, as has her nieces. Her nieces are very important in her life, too. She sort of loses her daughter and gains her nieces.
And then, she’s got the travel bug. I mean, this is the thing is that this exile just exposed her to so many… Her first trip abroad was with her husband on honeymoon, then she is in exile. Then she comes back, and she really wants to get out again; she travels to England, she travels to London. She makes some portraits there, and she comes back. She travels to Switzerland multiple times. And during one of those times, she meets Madame de Staël, who is in exile and hates Napoleon, is ranting against Napoleon. So, I guess, probably is, I don’t know, asked to leave, let’s say, or leaves in her own accord, I’m not sure, but she has, you know, her mansion or chateau in Switzerland. And she paints her, but I will tell you, I don’t think that her first attempt was very successful. The sitter was highly unhappy with the way she looked in it. So, she had to make another go at it, and the second result was better received. So yeah, she’s painted, as you point out, as Corinne, and inspired by one of her best-known novels, Corrine, or Italy.
Ann: That tracks with what I’ve learned about Madame de Staël, which is just that she was not known as a great beauty. She was not known as being particularly well-dressed, but maybe she thought she was. So, if Vigée Le Brun is kind of painting what she saw, it’s like, “No, paint what I think I look like. Don’t paint what I look like.”
Jordana: Yeah, and then I think she just takes another road altogether, “I’m going to paint you as one of your characters, and that’ll just make it a lot easier. I’m going to put you in a tunic, and you’ll look very Roman, and you’re going to hold a lyre, and we’ll do the best we can with what you’ve got.”
You know, she does talk about this… It’s very funny, in Naples, there’s also a queen, one of the members of the monarchy, who’s also quite homely, and she talks about that because she has an eye for beauty and now she’s sort of faced with trying to make somebody look pretty, who just really isn’t. And, you know, she does her best. She does her best. So, yes, I want to learn, I’m very curious about Madame de Staël because she was such an influential writer, so much so that Napoleon does ask her to, you know, get out of here. We don’t need rabble-rousers.
Ann: Oh yeah, she was kicked out of Paris several times. One time, she was already in exile from Paris, and then she wrote another book, and then Napoleon was so mad he, like, re-exiled her even though she was already in exile because he was so mad. It’s just like, how bad you have to be to be sent in exile when you’re already in exile?
Jordana: Double exile.
Ann: Yeah! She’s put in kind of house arrest.
So, sort of the final act of Vigée Le Brun’s life, how does her… Julie comes back after the failed marriage.
Jordana: Julie does come back very briefly with the husband, but she’s sick. This is sort of really also one of the saddest, saddest parts. She obviously has something, either… You know, I was tempted to say syphilis. Her face is ravaged. Her mother comes— So, they’re not close anymore. She learns that Julie has come back, she finally goes visits her when she’s on her deathbed. Her face is ravaged. So, you know, again, somebody who is not only her daughter, but somebody, her daughter was very pretty and now her face is ravaged. So, I think it’s either syphilis is most likely, perhaps smallpox. But she dies shortly thereafter, and she really reads this incredible eulogy to a daughter in the autobiography, but also feels really sad for herself. You know, mother losing a daughter is never, never easy.
Her nieces then start to play much more of a role in her life. They’re the ones who get her to write. And maybe it was a way not only of recording her remarkable life, but maybe she was grieving still, you know? But in any case, they took her under their wing. They ended up being people who, one of them actually was sort of, I guess, an executor of her estate and managed to get works into the Louvre and other collections. So, took care of her aunt’s effects. But the most important thing I think they did—well, getting works in the Louvre is nice—but is putting out this… suggesting to write this, which, again, I don’t know of other examples of men or women really writing this much. It’s also written in a very… I urge readers to read it because it’s not written for academics; it’s just written by this woman who is having this incredible journey, and if anybody’s interested in 18th-century European history, it’s a great read. And that’s what they do for her.
They find a publisher, and in 1835, she prints 1,500 copies of her memoir, which was released in installments, as was typical of the time.
Ann: Where was she when she died, and where was she buried? Is there a grave people can visit?
Jordana: You know, I haven’t visited her grave. It’s outside of Paris. It’s kind of on my list to do one day, but I haven’t done it. She was living outside of Paris. In fact, there was yet another… Napoleon, talking about being twice exiled, I mean, Napoleon also, right? So, Napoleon comes back, and he’s trying, that’s when he meets his Waterloo. But there is this moment where she’s in a town called Louveciennes, which is five miles outside of Paris. There are these Prussian troops that invade Louveciennes one night, I mean, it’s very, very scary. So, you know, she’s been through a lot, and she’s just constantly up against something. So, here she is. They wreak havoc on the town, they leave Louveciennes, and then all this stuff happens.
They defeat Napoleon, Louis XVIII ascends to the throne, and Élisabeth goes to join the public to see the new king. And she talks about Louis XVIII approaching her, and she says, “He approached no other woman.” So, she’s still very much, you know, very respected, even by Napoleon. So, that’s interesting, right, because she doesn’t like Napoleon. Think about it, she was friends with the monarchy, with the previous government. But they’re very respectful of her. She’s just, sort of despite herself, you know, makes sort of like, you know, Napoleon and his family. But, you know, she recognizes, well, he’s the man in charge now, so she sort of is courteous toward him. So, I think she is buried out in Louveciennes.
Ann: You know, there’s so many times I talk about women on this podcast, and it’s, like, “No one knows where she’s buried,” or like, “Her grave was destroyed in the French Revolution,” or whatever. So, I’m glad there is actually a place, for once.
Jordana: Yeah, yeah, there is. There is. And that should be on all of our lists to go and see, but I haven’t been back to Paris since I finished this book. So, that’ll be on my list.
Ann: Just as sort of, like, a wrap-up. Final question: Do you think she is so well known today because the memoir exists, or is it because she painted Marie Antoinette? Like, why do you think her name still stands today?
Jordana: Yeah, I think it was her association with Marie Antoinette. I mean, there were many, many women painters, and that’s something that sort of rather, you know, I would say, been highlighted in recent scholarship. She was not one of a few. I mean, you know, there was Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, very few women in the Académie Royale. But in other academies, there were women, and they were working, and they were professional. When you think about it, though, they weren’t painting the Queen. So, I think, you know, really, that sort of sets her apart. Her constant commissions coming from different royalty also sets her apart. And the fact that her niece puts her work in the Louvre, that also sets her apart. Her work was never authored as somebody else’s work, which is sometimes what happens.
And yes, the autobiography sets her apart, too, because it is really hard to find out information, even in the archives, on a lot of these women artists. You know, they didn’t leave behind memoirs, maybe there’s a letter or two. Again, this autobiography is like many; it’s not necessarily accurate, and it does paint herself as, you know, kind of really remarkable. So, you know, you have to sort of understand that she’s seeing herself in a certain light, that she’s kind of great. And I do admire her for that because that is something that artists need to do. They need to sort of see themselves; they have to be immodest. And she’s completely immodest, she’s an immodest woman, and she’s proud of what she’s done. She doesn’t call herself a “woman artist,” and in fact, she doesn’t really talk about challenges that she might have encountered because of her sex. None at all. She seems to have been really, really well-received by men, by women. She was kind of unto herself.
Ann: I told you before, like I’ve done an episode before where I spoke with Bridget Quinn about Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, and one of the issues with her legacy is that she’s so often painted in pastels, which can be hard through the years, like it’s just not a… Unless it’s under glass, it’s hard for those paintings to be sort of maintained. Whereas Vigée Le Brun, what was she painting in? Was she painting in oils?
Jordana: Yeah, oils. Sometimes on panel and sometimes on canvas. But you’re right, pastels are difficult to maintain, they’re very fragile, and they don’t travel well.
Ann: Yeah, you couldn’t travel around with your calling card if it’s made of pastels, I guess.
Jordana: No. Not so much. She really painted… I mean, Rosalba Carriera was a great pastelist and, you know, also in the Académie Royale, but yeah, she’s harder to get to know because these works are, I’d say, more ephemeral. And, you know, Vigée Le Brun painted over 800 paintings, that’s a lot, and you see them throughout Europe. Once you become aware of these artists and you start looking for them, you know, pretty much in every museum, and the Met has a lot in New York. I don’t know about Canada. I’ve sort of scoured the world; there are a couple in Tokyo that were collected by a private collector. You know, most remain in France, but many throughout the U.S. as well.
Ann: Actually, that’s really good information, too, if people… Like, it’s now on my bucket list. I would like to see one of these paintings in person. So, the Met would be a place where people, American listeners, could maybe go to see some of her work.
Jordana: Yes, the Met and the Louvre, I mean, they’re the two major… I think there are at least five on view, the last I looked, along with a number of other women artists from the era.
So yeah, I think that’s really what sort of makes her a standout, is that you sort of see this life that was maybe not the one that we imagine 18th-century women had, we imagine them as more staid, under the protection of a man, and she sort of defied all these conventions. And as I said, even her lack of modesty, I think that sort of defines her, puts her in a very different light. I think from early on, she had a great sense of self-confidence in her talents. She’s also funny; she talks about how she was sort of like a swan, sort of an ugly duckling as a young girl, and then she also emerges as a rather attractive swan. She talks about walking through the jardin with her friend and men looking at them, and her mother kind of saying, “Mm-mm-mm. No, no, no, no.” It’s a whole flirtation. And so, those kind of moments are what really bring her to life and make her real for me, and hopefully for my readers too.
Ann: Yeah, exactly. Everybody should read your book, obviously. I think it does really present her life in a really understandable way. Like you were saying about the breastfeeding and stuff. When something comes up that’s so different from life now, you have these little sort of asides in the book where you kind of explain what’s going on. Or when she meets a famous person, you explain, “Here’s who this was.” It’s like you were holding my hand throughout the book, explaining all these things. And so, I appreciated it. I think it’s really a great introduction to her life and story for people of all ages.
Jordana: Thank you. I did try to do the thing that we all do, which is we look at paintings, even those of us who are art historians and say, “What is that thing that she’s wearing?” Or, you know, “I want to know more about the ring,” or “Tell me about that scarf.” You know, art historians can kind of lose sometimes the interest of the audience by talking in these sort of larger terms, when really what we want to know is why their hair is powdered grey, and, you know, tell me more about that funny-looking thing in the corner. That’s where I started to get more interested in how we run museums, and what it is that we’re really trying to get people interested in. And Vigée Le Brun, you can pick up a lot of detail about everyday life for a certain echelon of society.
Ann: Well, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. I really appreciate this conversation.
Jordana: Ann, this has been a real pleasure. Thank you for having me.
—————
So again, Jordana’s book is called Daring: The Life and Art of Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. It’s a beautiful book. I think I said this in the episode, but there’s so many pictures throughout, and that’s so important because you can get so much understanding of what Élisabeth was thinking and what she was up to and what was happening in the world based on what her portraits look like. And also, they’re just beautiful paintings, and art was how she expressed herself, so it’s such a good thing to be able to see so many pictures all in one book. It’s a beautiful book, super recommend it. Everybody should pick up a copy.
Another book you should pick up a copy of? My book! That’s coming out in February 2026. That’s right! Your girl is an author, or I will be when my book is published in February. So, my book is called Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Uncrowned Queen. It is a biography of a woman who lived, you know what? A bit simultaneous with Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, but she spent her life first in Germany and then in England, and then she… You know what? Like Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, travelled around. They had a lot of people they knew in common. Anyway, Caroline of Brunswick was a messy bitch, and I adore her. She is an icon to me. She is one of the least well-known and least well-regarded of the consorts of the British monarchy, and we’re going to change that. We’re going to make our girl famous.
So, my book comes out next year. And if you’re like, “Great, I’ll buy it next year,” thank you. Thank you for thinking that, people who thought that. But if you pre-order it now, which is a thing you can do, where you can just go into any online website in North America that sells books, and you can just buy it, basically, and when it actually is published, then you’ll get it, so you can buy it ahead of time. You know, like getting a movie ticket for a movie that doesn’t come out for a while. You can also go to your local independent bookstore and do the same thing. Just say, “I want to pre-order Rebel of the Regency by Ann Foster.” If you do that, that’s cool, and I’d appreciate it, and as a special thank you to show how much I appreciate it, I’m giving away some treats!
So, if you pre-order my book and then share the receipt with me at RebelOfTheRegency.com, there’s a form there to submit your receipt, you can get some free treats from me. Those treats include, you can get a free one-year paid membership to my Substack, a free one-year paid membership to my Patreon, and you can have both. The third thing you could also choose to get, or all three things, is to get a digital paper doll of Caroline of Brunswick and some of her most iconic outfits and accessories. So again, my book is called Rebel of the Regency by Ann Foster. You can pre-order it all over the place, and you can get links to pre-order it and also a link to submit your receipt at RebelOfTheRegency.com.
I also want to let you know that as we’re getting closer to my book coming out, I’m getting more comfortable with doing public events and things like that. As such, I’m doing my first-ever Vulgar History live podcast recording. It’s going to be in Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the Trident Cafe, 7:00 PM on Wednesday, September 3rd. It’s totally free, there’s no need to sign up or register. You can truly just show up. I will be there, and I hope people will be there, and I’m going to be telling a story from Canadian history. I’m really looking forward to it, and it’s going to be me practicing to get ready for if I do more live podcast recordings around the time that the book comes out and touring and visiting bookstores and things like that. It’s funny because I know so many podcasts do live podcast recordings. Longtime listeners to this podcast, or anyone who’s heard my Mary, Queen of Scots series, will know that I described John Knox, the “philosopher,” he did these sort of yelling sermons where he would yell at everybody about how women were whooores and people would go there and be really influenced by him. And I described those as live podcast recordings. So, now that I’m doing live podcast recordings, I want to say, like, I’m not going to be calling anyone whooores except in complimentary ways. But I just feel like live podcast recording makes me think of John Knox now.
Anyway, I also want to mention something else exciting, which is… So, I have a Patreon, which is where you can support this podcast in various ways. You can just join the Patreon for free, and that’s supporting by making me feel good about it. We are really close to having 1,000 members, which is bananas and really exciting to me. When we get to 1,000 members, maybe I’ll do something special for all the Patreons. So, you can join there for free, absolutely free. There, you can get, I have some free things I do there, like updates about my book, and I’m practicing doing videos. But also, I just share links and we have like little chats and stuff. We have a nice time.
You can also join the Patreon for one dollar, one American dollar, a month, or maybe it’s one Canadian dollar. Anyway, $1/month, and what you get for that is all the above, plus, also, you get to have early, ad-free access to all episodes of this podcast. So, that’s a treat for you as well. And then if you join at the $6/month or more level, you get bonus episodes as well as access to our exclusive Discord, the Vulgar History Salon, where I also share some spoilers and information about upcoming episodes. But crucially, if you join at that $6/month or more level, you get access to our bonus episodes like Vulgarpiece Theatre, which was on hiatus but is now back, baby. This is where myself, and friends of the podcast, Allison Epstein and Lana Wood Johnson, we watch period movies. We watch costume dramas and we talk about them and we have a really nice time. There’s lots of tangents. We talk about the outfits in the movies. We talk about what did they change from real history or not.
And our grand return episode, we’re talking about a movie that’s called The Madness of King George, which is from 1994 or 1995. And it’s about George III of England and his wife, Queen Charlotte. And those are the people from Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, except not Black people. Charlotte, not a Black person in this film, she’s played by a white person, Helen Mirren. Anyway, it’s a movie about King George and his health problems, his mental health problems. And they are the parents-in-law and also aunt and uncle of Caroline of Brunswick, who I wrote my book, Rebel of the Regency, about. So, there’s some people in this movie who appear in the Caroline of Brunswick story. I will let you know that Caroline of Brunswick’s husband, George IV, AKA Prinny, is in this movie, and he is the villain of the movie, and that’s how you know it’s a good movie.
So anyway, if you want to listen to Vulgarpiece Theatre and our discussion of The Madness of King George, you can join the Patreon, Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter, is how you join the Patreon at any of the levels. But if you join at the $6/month level, you get to listen to that discussion, or if you just want to listen to it, you can also get a free one-week trial, or you could also preorder my book, sign up for the free Patreon membership, listen to the episode, and then you get a book in February.
And I have one final thing to say. So many announcements today, but I was really excited about this. So, we have a brand partner who is called Common Era Jewelry, which is a small, woman-owned business that makes beautiful jewelry inspired by ancient Rome, ancient Greece, ancient Egypt and other ancient cultures. This includes pendants and rings with images on them of women like Cleopatra or Anne Boleyn (who’s not from classical times, but don’t worry about it), as well as jewelry based on pieces found in archaeological digs, and jewelry that just kind of looks kind of like what jewelry in olden times looked like.
They have a new collection called Ceremonia, which is engagement rings! And they’re so beautiful! I’m not looking to propose to anybody personally or to be proposed to by anybody personally, but I was like, “Damn, I want one of these rings.” So anyway, it’s called Ceremonia, a collection of engagement rings inspired by ancient history. Like, some of them are kind of this is what a ring looked like that a woman in ancient Rome would have had, or the vibes of this are kind of like ancient Greece adjacent. They’re all sort of inspired by, like, a specific love story of somebody from oldey-times. Anyway, so if you’re somebody looking to get proposed to or looking to propose to someone else, these rings are gorgeous. And if you want to just drop a hint to somebody that you would like to be proposed to, when you go to each of the rings on the Common Era website, there’s a little button that’s, like, “Drop a hint,” so they could like subtly let your person know. Like, if you’re going to propose to me, this is what I want. I want this ring that looks like ancient Rome.
So, most of Common Era’s pieces are available in solid gold as well as in more affordable gold vermeil. Vulgar History listeners can always get 15% off all items from Common Era by going to CommonEra.com/Vulgar or using code ‘VULGAR’ at checkout. And you should let that person know who you’re dropping the hint to, who you want to propose to you, that you want to be proposed to. But you also know that we’re in a recession. You know, like, you want to get your deals where you can get your deals. So, tell your person, drop a hint, “I want this ring,” but then also be like, “Use code ‘VULGAR’ for 15% off at the checkout,” so they can get the discount too. And that shows that you love them and they love you. I think that’s how that works.
Anyway, we’re in Marie Antoinette Month for the next, I keep saying, seven weeks. I forget if that includes this week or not, but we’re in it, babes. Marie Antoinette Month. And next week, we’re going to be talking about somebody, not Marie Antoinette herself yet, but somebody even closer who knew her even better than Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. I won’t say who that person is, but you’ll find out next week because we were in Marie Antoinette Month. It’s happening. Our long, long wait is over, and I’m really excited to share all these stories with you. Until next time, my friends, keep your pants on and your tits out.
Vulgar History is researched, scripted, and hosted by Ann Foster, that’s me! Editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. Transcripts of this podcast are available at VulgarHistory.com by Aveline Malek. You can get early, ad-free episodes of Vulgar History by becoming a paid member of our Patreon for as low as one dollar a month at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWwriter. Vulgar History merchandise is available at VulgarHistory.com/Store for Americans and for everyone else at VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. Follow us on social media @VulgarHistoryPod and get in touch with me via email at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com.
References:
Buy a copy of Jordana’s book (affiliate link)
Preorder info for Ann’s upcoming book, Rebel of the Regency!
Get 15% off all the gorgeous jewellery and accessories at common.era.com/vulgar or go to commonera.com and use code VULGAR at checkout
Get Vulgar History merch at vulgarhistory.com/store (best for US shipping) and vulgarhistory.redbubble.com (better for international shipping)
Support Vulgar History on Patreon
Vulgar History is an affiliate of Bookshop.org, which means that a small percentage of any books you click through and purchase will come back to Vulgar History as a commission. Use this link to shop there and support Vulgar History.
