'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

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.