Painter of the Revolution
Date Published: January 13, 2026
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
The daughter of Parisian shopkeepers, Adélaïde dreams not of marriage or titles but of earning a place among the masters of French art. With Queen Marie Antoinette on the throne and a spirit of change in the air, anything seems possible. But as revolution brews and powerful forces conspire to deny her success, Adélaïde faces an impossible choice: protect her life—or fight for a legacy that will outlast her.
Inspired by the true story of one of the first women admitted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, Adélaïde: Painter of the Revolution is a sweeping, evocative portrait of ambition, courage, and resilience in the face of history’s fiercest storm.
Prologue
Paris 1793
A column of fire reached like the
Colossus of Rhodes into the night sky.
Shadowed figures waving torches poured
into the Place du Carousel.
There, a clamoring mob passed wooden
chairs, carriage wheels, and empty wine barrels over their heads toward the
center of the square. Anything to feed the growing fire.
The Palais des Tuileries loomed to Adélaïde’s left. Its mansard roof jutted into a smoke-filled sky. To her
right, the Palais du Louvre’s long wings stretched into the dark. The stone
walls of the gallery that connected the two palaces flickered yellow and
orange.
Adélaïde had never felt as small and alone as in that moment, between
the embrace of buildings, in a space designed to dazzle royal spectators with
seven hundred horses and jousting riders. Tonight, the square was filled with
thousands of milling Parisians. And this time, she was the spectacle.
She pulled herself up on the tongue of
the wooden cart next to the fire. Squinting against the smoke, she searched for
anyone familiar.
Not a soul.
Even the donkeys had balked against
their traces and been set free. Their distant braying reached her over the
noise of the crowd.
Around her, men lurched about, their
faces reddened from the bonfire, their sleeves stained purple from the wine
they had scooped into their hands when the king’s cellars were raided. The
scent of Bourgogne rose into the air. Beside her, a woman opened a dusty brown
bottle and poured wine into the mouths of her companions.
Then the woman turned to Adélaïde. “Traitor!” she shouted, and drew back her arm, preparing to
throw the bottle.
The crowd took up the chant. “Traitor!
Traitor!” Others brandished their wine bottles.
Time slowed down. Adélaïde felt each sluggish
boom of her heart, the constriction of her lungs, the loss of air she could not
drag into her paralyzed chest. Was this the way she was going to die? Sliced to
ribbons by a barrage of flying glass?
She raised her hands to protect her head and
braced herself, but then a tall man in striped pants and a pointed red hat
plucked the bottle out of the woman’s hand and emptied the last drops into his
mouth. “Any Parisian knows not to let good wine
go to waste,” he said.
Laughter.
The new citizens of France stomped their
feet, shook their fists at Adélaïde,
and threw the staves of the wine barrels into the flames. Arms brushed against her skirts.
Bodies jostled the cart. She gripped the splintered seat to avoid being knocked
into the fire.
The wind changed, and a rush of acrid
smoke filled her lungs. She fought the urge to cough. Heat seared through her
dress, burned her arms. Her mind screamed at her to run, but she had promised
herself not to show fear, not to retreat.
The man in the red cap climbed into the
cart. Sweat rolled from his face, and she smelled the sharp scent of his
perspiration. Beneath his polished leather boots, the mountain of canvasses
shifted. Fragile wood snapped. He stooped and held up a painting, still in its
gilt frame. Black paint effaced the portrait sitter.
“Look at this travesty to art,” he
called to the crowd.
How right you are. She kept her eyes averted from his
familiar face.
“Burn it. Burn it all!” the crowd
roared.
Excerpt #2 – 902 words
For
the first time, she heard Director Pierre speak of the importance of art in
society, its role to teach, to record, to cause reflection, to inspire. His
voice echoed off the gallery arches and into her heart.
When
François mounted the stage and raised his right hand, her chest filled with an
emotion so big her lungs had no room to breathe. She was too far away to hear
the words of the Proces Verbaux but mouthed the words in time to the solemn rumble of his voice,
knowing he swore to observe the rules of the Academy, uphold its traditions,
and honor France through his work for the rest of his life. The crowd clapped
as the newest members of the Academy left the platform, but each time her
gloved hands met, it was though something she had swallowed had lodged in her
throat. What was wrong with her? If she loved him, how could she envy his
success? She should only feel joy in his accomplishment. She should have been
as relieved as he was when Joseph Vien finally moved to promote him. And she
was, she assured herself, but in all the months since she had painted the great
teacher, Vien had done nothing to help her. She did not know what to think.
That
night, François lay against her breast while she played with his unruly locks,
freed from the hated wig that lay like a gutted rodent at the edge of the bed.
“I
thought I would never make it,” François said. She was still wondering if she ever
would.
“That
was the first time I heard someone talk about the mission of art—to teach,
record history, inspire greatness,” she said.
He
shuddered. “In Vien’s studio, that was all we heard. Let us not talk of it now.”
She
wanted to ask him if that was the power of art, if that was the need that
impelled them to produce it. Instead, she let him pull her back into his arms.
A
breeze stirred through the room. Then their bodies moved together beneath the
open window, beneath the summer sky, and the pale crescent moon.
Afterward,
she lay watching as dawn rimmed the darkness, thinking how she would do
anything for her turn on that stage.
#
Which was why she found herself in Pahin
de La Blancherie’s cabinet of curiosities the next afternoon, perched on a
knobby sofa, sipping coffee and nibbling madeleines. Pahin sat across from her
drinking brandy and smoking a cigar. A square man with the features of a toad,
he bore no family resemblance to any royal person who had visited À La
Toilette.
Perhaps Ducis and LeKain were right, Adélaïde thought. LeKain had called
him a huckster while Ducis insisted Pahin was a great actor.
“If he’s an actor, then what am I?”
LeKain had roared. “I challenge you to see if he knows how to play the part of
a king.”
She had to admit, when Pahin spoke, his
gravelly voice sounded unlike any aristocrat she had met. But so far, his claim
to descend from royalty had made him impervious to d’Angiviller’s machinations,
so here she was, negotiating to get her artwork into his exhibition.
“What else will be on display?” She eyed
a preserved calf with two heads posed on a lacquered table. Next to it, a large
jar held a pair of conjoined twins suspended in gray fluid and beyond that, an
orange and white kitten with two pairs of hind legs floated in a blue glass
jar. It was hard to imagine her art competing with such oddities.
He grinned. “I assure you, the exhibition
is quite serious. Intellectuals will travel from across the world to give
lectures and demonstrate the latest inventions.”
“Which artists will be there?”
“All the current ones.”
She knew this did not mean Royal Academy
artists. “Any other female artists?”
“Madame Lebrun.”
“But—” She winced. “I heard she was in
Flanders.”
“Ah, yes.” He drew on his cigar. “Her
husband’s gambling debts. However, I already have her commitment. Don’t you
see? Having two female artists’ works on display will make a splash.”
She waved away a cloud of smoke while
she considered.
He motioned to a sheaf of papers lying
on the sofa table. “I will advertise the exhibit in my journal. People in Europe
and the Americas, even the French colonies at the farthest ends of the oceans,
will learn of your work.”
Thirty minutes later, she left Pahin’s mansion
with a signed contract, pleased with herself. She had agreed to give him forty
percent of her earnings, not the fifty percent he had demanded.
Back in her studio, excitement built as she
cataloged her works. This would be her first exhibit in six years. Then, she
had shown two paintings to Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun’s twenty. If they were always
to be pitted against each other, this time she would come prepared.
About the Author
Janell Strube makes a mean barbecue sauce. She’s also a world traveler, a baker, and a bicyclist. But when she writes, her identity as an adoptee often steers her attention to topics of alienation, erased history, and displacement.
In 2024, a personal essay of hers was published in the anthology Adoption and Suicidality. Her work has also appeared in Shaking the Tree: brazen. short. memoir and A Year in Ink. Her short memoir, “Taking my Blonde Daughter to a Black Lives Matter Rally,” was selected for the 2020 San Diego Memoir Showcase, an annual live storytelling event.
While much of her writing is personal, she enjoys the freedom that comes with crafting fiction. Her desire to learn about forgotten female artists who shaped the French revolutionary period motivated her to write Adélaïde: Painter of the Revolution.
When not crunching numbers as a tax executive for a hotel chain, she can be found hanging out with Shiloh the Wheaten and plotting her second book.
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