Improper Ambitions

In Improper Ambitions, two real-life historical figures — a commercially successful painter who led an unconventional life and an iconoclastic artist who closely adhered to her society’s bourgeois mores — find a way through adversity for art’s sake. Peopled with famous artists and political figures of the 18th and 19th centuries, the story takes place against the dramatic backdrop of events such as the French Revolution, the Franco-Prussian War, and the First Impressionist Salon.