Sargent's Women

Four Lives Behind the Canvas

Donna M. Lucey

$49.95

Hardback

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English

Norton
22 September 2017

Individual artists, art monographs; Biography; Biography: arts & entertainment

In this seductive, multilayered biography, based on original letters and diaries, Donna M. Lucey illuminates four extraordinary women painted by the iconic high-society portraitist John Singer Sargent. With uncanny intuition, Sargent hinted at the mysteries and passions that unfolded in his subjects’ lives.

Elsie Palmer traveled between her father’s Rocky Mountain castle and the medieval English manor house where her mother took refuge, surrounded by artists, writers, and actors. Elsie hid labyrinthine passions, including her love for a man who would betray her. As the veiled Sally Fairchild - beautiful and commanding - emerged on Sargent’s canvas, the power of his artistry lured her sister, Lucia, into a Bohemian life. The saintly Elizabeth Chanler embarked on a surreptitious love affair with her best friend’s husband. And the iron-willed Isabella Stewart Gardner scandalized Boston society and became Sargent’s greatest patron and friend.

Like characters in an Edith Wharton novel, these women challenged society’s restrictions, risking public shame and ostracism. All had forbidden love affairs; Lucia bravely supported her family despite illness, while Elsie explored Spiritualism, defying her overbearing father. Finally, the headstrong Isabella outmaneuvered the richest plutocrats on the planet to create her own magnificent art museum.

These compelling stories of female courage connect our past with our present―and remind us that while women live differently now, they still face obstacles to attaining full equality. 8 pages of color illustrations.

By: Donna M. Lucey
Imprint: Norton
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 244mm, Width: 168mm, Spine: 30mm
Weight: 561g
ISBN: 9780393079036
ISBN 10: 0393079031
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 22 September 2017
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Donna M. Lucey, author of the best-selling Archie and Amelie: Love and Madness in the Gilded Age and other books, recipient of two NEH grants, and a 2017 writer-in-residence at Edith Wharton's the Mount, is media editor at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.

Reviews for Sargent's Women: Four Lives Behind the Canvas

"""Ingenious."" -- Frances Wilson - Times Literary Supplement ""Straight from the pages of a novel by Edith Wharton or Henry James."" -- The Times ""[Lucey pieces together] lost stories, and the stormy brew of scandal and repression that affected these women—and Sargent himself."" -- Elle ""As rich as [Sargent’s] portraits are, the textural evidence in which Ms. Lucey ensnares them is finer still."" -- The Wall Street Journal ""[These women] were smart, passionate, willful, adventurous and striking-looking.… Lucey’s prose is invitingly conversational and quick-flowing."" -- The Washington Post ""It [Sargent's Women] tells of an era long gone yet still fascinating."" -- Choice"