Who Was Chevalière d'Eon?

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum opened a new exhibition on 15 October called Who Was Chevalière d'Eon?, and it's taking up residence in the Fragile Art Gallery. It's a long run, too — it stays put until 1 July 2027, so there's no rush to get there this weekend.

The subject is the Chevalière d'Eon de Beaumont, a French soldier, aristocrat, diplomat and spy who lived the first half of her life as a man and the second half as a woman. It's one of those lives that sounds like a piece of historical fiction: a career spent in the corridors of power, moving between the roles of soldier and secret agent, and then a public transition that became a story in its own right. Much of the fame that followed came from the public speculation about her gender, which propelled her to stardom across Europe.

The exhibition brings together rare prints and books that explore her life, so it's a look at d'Eon through the documents and images that survived her. Rather than a broad survey, it focuses on the records that track her through those different roles — the soldier, the diplomat, the spy — and the way she was written about as the public's fascination with her identity grew. It's the kind of thing that works best when you take your time with the individual pieces and piece the story together yourself.

It's free to visit, and since it's in the Fragile Art Gallery at Kelvingrove, you can easily fit it in around the rest of the museum. It runs from 15 October 2026 through to 1 July 2027, so you've got plenty of time to catch it.