A deeply informed, acutely sensitive cultural history.
An artist’s colorful world.
With an illuminating group portrait of artist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) and the family of Asher Wertheimer, award-winning biographer Strouse creates a richly detailed history of social and artistic transformations at the turn of the century. Sargent grew up in Europe, studied art in Paris, and settled in London in 1887, where he lived, between travels, for the rest of his life. Although his shocking Madame X almost derailed his career, he became renowned as a portraitist, sought after by wealthy bankers, industrialists, and aristocrats—among them, Asher Wertheimer, an art dealer whose clients included an international roster of dealers and collectors. The son of Samson Wertheimer, who emigrated from Bavaria in 1839 and became known as a “king of the London art trade,” Asher became the “prince regent.” Like many among the newly wealthy, Asher wanted to underscore his stature with portraits; for his part, Sargent saw in the Wertheimer family—Asher, his wife, and their 10 children—“a rich opportunity to capture personal and social change.” Strouse examines that change by tracing the fortunes of each member of the sprawling Wertheimer clan: their education, marriages, offspring, and negotiations with the “occasional hostility and exclusion” resulting from tacit, or sometimes overt, anti-Semitism. In some London circles, Sargent was sniffed at as a painter of Jews, even though Jews comprised a small minority of his sitters. The Wertheimers, however, were more than just clients; they became friends. Like them, Sargent knew he would never be considered “one of us” in England. Besides exploring his friendship with the Wertheimers, Strouse reveals his warm relationships with artists such as Monet and Rodin, his generosity to younger artists, and the arc of his posthumous reputation.
A deeply informed, acutely sensitive cultural history.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 978-0-374-61567-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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