Sargent's Women

Descriere

"In Sargent's Women [Donna M. Lucey] does even more of what she does best, creating a rollicking snow globe version of an almost unimaginable world of wealth, crackpot notions of self-improvement and high-flying self-indulgence...woven around an often passionate commitment to, deep admiration for and wide-ranging pursuit of the fine and literary arts..." The New York Times
With unprecedented access to newly discovered sources, Donna M. Lucey illuminates the lives of four extraordinary women painted by the iconic high-society portraitist John Singer Sargent. With uncanny clairvoyance, Sargent's portraits hint at the mysteries, passions and tragedies that unfolded in his subjects' lives. Sequestered in a fantasy-land castle in the remote Rocky Mountains, Elsie Palmer carried on a labyrinthine love life; Elizabeth Chanler stepped into a maze of infidelity with her best friend's husband; as the veiled image of Sally Fairchild beautiful, commanding and poison-tongued emerged on Sargent's canvas, the power of his artistry lured her sister Lucia into an ill-fated life in art; and shrewd, iron-willed Isabella Stewart Gardner collected both art and young men.
Born to unimaginable wealth, these women lived on an operatic scale, and their letters and diaries create a rich depiction of the Gilded Age and the acclaimed but secretive painter whose canvases defined the era.