Family Romance

August 5, 2024
Biographer Strouse (Alice James) intricately sketches the longtime relationship between painter John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) and a wealthy Jewish family in early 20th-century Britain. After being commissioned by art dealer Asher Wertheimer, Sargent spent nearly a decade painting Asher, his wife, and their 10 children. In 1923, the portraits were exhibited in the National Gallery, where the display of “wealthy, London-born Jews of German descent” alongside “Anglo-Saxon aristocrats” elicited mixed reactions. Members of the House of Commons petitioned for their removal, and some of Asher’s associates took “offense” at the frank depiction of his traditionally “Jewish” features, but one art critic characterized the subjects’ wealth and “beauty” as emblematic of the times. Strouse situates the family against the backdrop of a society in which aristocrats’ fortunes were declining, while new fortunes, including those belonging to Jewish families, were “reorder the transatlantic social landscape.” Nevertheless, Strouse notes, a “profound sense of otherness” characterized the Jewish experience in Britain and reflected a complicated clash between the old and the new that accelerated as the century wore on. The result is a nuanced portrait of a world in flux.

Starred review from October 15, 2024
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 shockingMadame 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"[208] 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.

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