Overview
Jean Strouse's Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers looks at twelve portraits of one English family painted by the expatriate American artist at the height of his career--and at the intersections of all these lives with the sparkle and strife of the Edwardian age. In commissioning this grand series of paintings, Asher Wertheimer, an eminent London art dealer of German-Jewish descent, became Sargent's greatest private patron and close friend. The Wertheimers worked with Rothschilds and royals, plutocrats and dukes--as did Sargent. Asher left most of his Sargent portraits to the National Gallery in London, a gift that elicited censure as well as praise: it was a new thing for a family of Jews to appear alongside the Anglo-Saxon aristocrats and dignitaries painted by earlier masters. Strouse's account, set primarily in England around the turn of the twentieth century, takes in the declining fortunes of the British aristocracy and the dramatic rise of new power and wealth on both sides of the Atlantic. It travels back through hundreds of years to the Habsburg court in Vienna and forward to fascist Italy in the 1930s. Its depictions of Sargent, his sitters, their friendships and circles, and the portraits themselves light up a period that saw tumultuous social change and the birth of the modern art market.
Full Product Details
Author: Jean Strouse ,
Susan Ericksen ,
Susan Ericksen
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Imprint: Tantor Audio
Edition: Unabridged edition
ISBN: 9798228448865
Publication Date: 11 March 2025
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Audio
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
""A brisk, wise, and admiring survey of an unusually long client relationship that signaled a tenuous shift in British society."" -- ""New York Times Book Review""
Author Information
Jean Strouse is the author of Morgan: American Financier, Alice James: A Biography, which won the Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy, and Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimeres. 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. Susan Ericksen is an actor and voice-over artist. She has been awarded numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. As an actor and director, she has worked in theaters throughout the country. Susan Ericksen is an actor and voice-over artist. She has been awarded numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. As an actor and director, she has worked in theaters throughout the country.
