Catherine Hewitt

A richly told biography of Suzanne Valadon, the illegitimate daughter of a provincial linen maid who became famous as a model for the Impressionists and later as a painter in her own right. Catherine Hewitt tells the remarkable tale of an ambitious, headstrong woman fighting to find a professional voice in a male-dominated world.

A new biography of the wildly unconventional 19th-century animal painter and gender equality pioneer Rosa Bonheur. Rosa Bonheur was the very antithesis of the feminine ideal of 19th-century society. She was educated, she shunned traditional 'womanly' pursuits, she rejected marriage - and she wore trousers. But the society whose rules she spurned accepted her as one of their own, because of her genius for painting animals. She shared an intimate relationship...