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.
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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