ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

Five-star ratings and reviews are coming in for " Sophie de Tott, Artist in a Time of Revolution, " on book websites such as Goodreads and Amazon, and on social media.  Amazon Customer 5.0 out of 5 stars   Artist, novelist, musician, refugee Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2020 I found this a fascinating read. Sometime in the year 1800, 42-year-old Sophie de Tott from Paris, artist, novelist, refugee and strong supporter of the Bourbon monarchy, flees from Hamburg to Maddox Street, London, to escape Napoleon's agents and the likely guillotine. In London she continues to paint portraits for a living, as she has done with some success in the Hanseatic city. The French Revolution had upended so many lives - occasionally for the better, as would be the case with Fanny Burney and her French refugee husband. Julia Gasper's absorbing account of the daring, peripatetic existence of Sophie de Tott, however, makes it clear that in this...

Sophie de Tott by Vigée-Lebrun Of all the emigrés who were welcomed to Brandenburgh House by Elizabeth Craven in the aftermath of the French Revolution, none was more remarkable than Sophie de Tott. She was an artist who exhibited her paintings at the British Royal Academy and when she came to stay at Brandenburgh House she painted portraits of Elizabeth's second husband the Margrave of Anspach and her son Keppel. Madame de Tott had once lived in Paris among the highest French aristocracy. As a girl she had been adopted by a rich Countess and lived in the heart of the capital, meeting all the leading intellectuals and enjoying the most cultivated salons. Laudatory poems had been written about her. She had known Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Lafayette, Madame de Stael and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun who painted this oval portrait of her in 1786. Since fleeing from Paris in the Revolution of 1789 she had lived in Switzerland and Germany, earning a living with her paintbrush. When...