Audiobook10 hours
Sargent's Women: Four Lives Behind the Canvas
Written by Donna M. Lucey
Narrated by Elizabeth Wiley
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
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; 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.
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Reviews for Sargent's Women
Rating: 3.923076923076923 out of 5 stars
4/5
26 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The portrait painter, John Singer Sargent, is the Sargent in the title. However the book is about four of society's notable women whose lives intersected with his, all but one memorialized on canvas by him.The time period is late 1890's and this well-researched book by Donna M. Lucey portrays the lifestyle of the times among the top tiers of the upper class. Though Sargent was born in the U.S., he resided in Europe most of his life. It was through benefactors that he became sought out for his portraits. The four women documented led interesting lives and that Lucey relates in detail, based on her fine research of the subjects. I highly recommend this book.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Could not listen although interested in the subject because of the narrator. Too much emoting, too much excessive expression. Just read us the book, please!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a fascinating set of biographies, not so much of John Singer Sargent, but of several of his subjects. The splendid writing takes you right into the high celebrity drama of the gilded age, and rounds out the painted portraits with all the life details one might want.
I hope that the actual printed publication is lavishly illustrated, as I admit I spent a great deal of time looking for the portraits and for any further imagery of the subjects. Particularly in reference to Lucia Fairchild. I also wonder at some of the author's choices when it comes to Fairchild sisters -- I quite agree that Lucia is probably the more interesting of the two, but given how little time is spent on Sally, it's really hard to tell.
Nonetheless , a wonderful read -- vibrant and illuminating both of art history and the lives of gilded age women.
advanced reader's copy provided by edelweiss. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Really enjoyed this delightful and engrossing quartet of womens' lives in the Gilded Age. Lucey's writing is great and the stories she tells are varied and interesting, linked as they are by art and place and time. I took my time reading it to make it last longer.