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Family Romance

John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers

By Jean Strouse

Family Romance
Hardcover -
  • Price: £25.00
  • ISBN: 9781526188564
  • Publish Date: Nov 2024
  • Publisher: Manchester University Press
  • Pre-Order £25.00

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    Book Information

    • Format: Hardcover
    • Pages: 336
    • Price: £25.00
    • Published Date: November 2024

    Description

    A glittering account of John Singer Sargent's relationship with an eminent Edwardian family.

    In Family Romance, Jean Strouse tells the story of John Singer Sargent and his relationship with the Wertheimer family, structured around the twelve portraits he painted of them between 1898 and 1908.

    Asher Wertheimer was a London art dealer of German-Jewish descent. A prominent figure of the Edwardian age, he was at ease among Rothschilds, royals, journalists and aristocrats. In commissioning Sargent to paint a series of portraits of his family, he became the American expatriate artist's most important patron, as well as a close personal friend.

    Recreating the world of turn-of-the-century London, Strouse gives a dramatic account of these extraordinary lives, a tale that encompasses intrigue, tragedy and resounding success. At the same time she traces the decline of the British aristocracy and the rise of new power and wealth on both sides of the Atlantic, a transformation that Sargent captured brilliantly in his art.

    Reviews

    'A deeply informed, acutely sensitive cultural history.'
    Kirkus Reviews

    'A nuanced portrait of a world in flux.'
    Publishers Weekly

    'A riveting book about an amazing vanished world, a remarkable family and a great and mysterious artist, told with energy and vividness and sharp humour, full of extraordinary characters, some dubious, some shocking, some tragic, and sweeping with speed and brio over a great arc of time. No one could tell this story better, and what a story it is!'
    Hermione Lee, author of Virginia Woolf

    'Jean Strouse, a first-rate biographer, has fought through Sargent's hieroglyphic handwriting to boost our knowledge of the his unusual friendship with the extraordinary Wertheimer family. In uncovering more of this artistic Jewish family's history, Strouse has pursued a riveting detective story reminiscent of Edmund de Waal's The Hare with the Amber Eyes, revealing fascinating and colourful histories and characters previously little known. Strouse's Family Romance is a great read for anyone who loves Sargent and the glittering social circles in which he voyaged.'
    Paul Fisher, author of The Grand Affair: John Singer Sargent and His World

    'Family Romance belongs to that august line of panoramic social histories with Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes and, as the chronicle of an aristocracy in decline, with Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Jean Strouse is one of our subtlest biographers, and she shares John Singer Sargent's eye for the exquisitely telling detail that illuminates not only a character but an age.'
    Judith Thurman, author of Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette

    'A society in transition, an elusive painter in his prime and an Anglo-Jewish dynasty with aristocratic habits: all the elements are here for a rich drama. Jean Strouse delivers, prismatically pairing art and life, illuminating corners of brilliant privilege and dark prejudice, inviting us to peer, over John Singer Sargent's shoulder, into Gilded Age drawing rooms. Stylish, sumptuous and a joy to read.'
    Stacy Schiff, author of The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams

    Contents

    Introduction
    Part I: Arrivals
    1 Wertheimer's gift
    2 Sargent's paintbrush
    3 Merchants of art
    4 S. Wertheimer and Sons
    Part II: Harmony and discord
    5 Artist and patron
    6 Nest of vipers
    7 'Wicked Uncle Charlie'
    Part III: Succession
    8 Sons
    9 Daughters
    10 Oriental accents
    Part IV: Departures
    11 Asher: art wealth
    12 Ena in full sail: A Vele Gonfie
    13 Ruby: 'Enemy alien'
    Part V: Flux
    14 'An age on edge'
    15 Legacies
    Index

    Author

    Jean Strouse is the author of Morgan: American Financier and Alice James: A Biography, which won the Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, Architectural Digest and Newsweek. Strouse has been a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation and served as the Sue Ann and John Weinberg Director of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library from 2003 to 2017. She lives in New York City.

    Family Romance

    By Jean Strouse

    Hardcover £25.00 / $36.95

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