Rating: WORTHY!
This was an intriguing biography of two people who intersected when one painted the portrait of the other, and the portrait was deemed scandalous. This result had very different effects on both participants.
The artist was John Singer Sargent. You may well ask why he wasn't named John Artist Sargent since he couldn't sing a note. I asked it, but the book never answered. That's books for you. Moody as hell.
The sitter was Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau. Both were American ex-pats, she having moved to France with her mom after the Civil War, and he having moved there to study art. She married a banker and became a much talked-about celebrity despite being merely a socialite. He became well-regarded after having successful exhibits in the annual Paris art Salon.
The thing was that this was in an era where no one blinked at endless classical nudes, and portraits were common. The scandal came about because of one curious thing: Sargent painted Gautreau with one thin strap of her gown partway down her arm. Yes, that was it. And this was in France! And she never really recovered from it. Sargent felt so bad about it that he hid the portrait away for thirty years letting hardly anyone see it. Now it hangs in the Met in New York where anyone can see it. Six years after the original, someone painted an homage to it, and no one blinked an eye. This is why I don't have a lot of regard for art critics! LOL!
The book was well-written and went into a lot of detail about various people's lives and the relationships between the two main characters and other well-known people of the era. It may be too much detail for some, not enough for others, but for me it was fine. I confess I did skim a bit here and there where it was of little interest to me, but I read avidly for most of it. I would have liked to have read more about Singer's art: his techniques and so on, but the author seemed interested only in the size of his canvas! Someone should tell her it's not the size that matters, but what you do with it! That aside, though, I did enjoy it and commend it as a worthy read.
