British French literature scholar; Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at Oxford since 2015
The BBC’s Fake or Fortune? has authenticated a portrait as the work of 18th-century Scottish artist Katherine Read, marking it as the earliest European female-artist portrait of an Indian sitter. A sleeping-bag-wrapped work, found by Mary-Louise Wedderburn, is now valued well over 100000 pounds, with experts calling the attribution crucial for art history and the market.