Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers Jean Strouse
Event details
Hear the riveting story of John Singer Sargent and his relationship with the Wertheimer family, structured around the 12 portraits he painted of them between 1898 and 1908.
Asher Wertheimer was a London art dealer of German-Jewish descent. A prominent figure of the Edwardian age, he was at ease among Rothschilds, royals, journalists and aristocrats. In commissioning Sargent to paint portraits of his large family, he became the artist's most important private patron as well as a close personal friend.
Join Jean Strouse, author of Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers, as she offers a dramatic account of these extraordinary lives; a tale that encompasses intrigue, tragedy and resounding success. At the same time, she traces the decline of the British aristocracy and the rise of new power and wealth on both sides of the Atlantic, a transformation that Sargent captured brilliantly in his art.
This event will take place live on Zoom Webinar. You will receive a link to join a couple of days before the event and a reminder an hour before. During the event, you can ask questions via a Q&A function, but audience cameras and microphones will remain muted throughout.
Book sales
You can buy copies of many of our speakers’ books from Fox Lane Books, a local independent bookseller and Festival partner. In some cases, author signed bookplates are available too.
About the speaker
Jean Strouse is the author of Morgan: American Financier and Alice James: A Biography, which won the Bancroft Prize in American History and Diplomacy. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, Architectural Digest, Newsweek and elsewhere. Jean has been a Fellow of the MacArthur Foundation and served as the Sue Ann and John Weinberg Director of the Dorothy and Lewis B Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library from 2003 to 2017. Her new book is Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers (Manchester University Press, 2024).
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