Sargent's Women

June 5, 2017
Lucey (Archie and Amélie) examines the fascinating lives of four women affiliated with the inimitable painter John Singer Sargent, “portraitist to New York’s Gilded set.” The women, three of whom appear in Sargent’s paintings, include Elsie Palmer, who was plucked from a cushy life of English aristocracy and forced to assimilate into the American West after her mother’s death, and Elizabeth Chanler, whose tragically misdiagnosed tuberculosis of the hip resulted in her being strapped to a board for two years as a teenager. Sargent painted Isabella Stewart Gardner twice, once in youth and once shortly before her death at age 82. In the years between, she amassed an incredible art collection that included a Vermeer and a Botticelli. Lucey goes a bit off script to focus on Lucia Fairchild, who never appeared in any of Sargent’s paintings (though her sister Sally did), but it is the right choice. Lucia’s life is endlessly intriguing. A working artist who lived in New Hampshire’s eccentric Cornish Arts Colony among luminaries such as sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and actress Ethel Barrymore, Fairchild led a successful career creating affordable miniature paintings to support her children and deadbeat husband. Oddly, there is little biographical information on Sargent himself, who remains something of an enigma throughout the book, though Lucey does analyze his artwork and his aesthetic choices. Still, Lucey ably pulls these four compelling women out of obscurity with insight and infectious enthusiasm.

May 15, 2017
Perceptive biographies of a quartet of Gilded Age women.During his long and fruitful career as a portraitist, John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) counted among his opulent subjects four women embedded in the glittering, passionate, and sometimes-tawdry landscape of 19th-century high society. Drawing on much archival material, Lucey (Archie and Amelie: Love and Madness in the Gilded Age, 2006, etc.) returns to themes of her last book, revealing love, madness, greed, and occasional triumph at a time when even wealth did not necessarily guarantee women independence. Sargent himself stands at the periphery of Lucey's engrossing stories, although he was handsome, dashing, and astonishingly productive. Portraiture supported him and his family, but toward the end of his career, he disdained the genre; he was tired, he said, of flattering his patrons. Lucey chose her subjects well: four women who responded in unexpected ways to the challenges that they faced. Elsie Palmer, daughter of a rich Colorado businessman, was destined to be the caretaker for her family until, at the age of 35, she courageously decided to marry--the only way, writes the author, that she could flee her father's "smothering demands." Lucia Fairchild was the sister of the beautiful Sally, subject of one of Sargent's most enigmatic portraits. Raised in "a cocoon of privilege, money, and influence," the Fairchild girls and their brothers saw their wealth vanish. Lucia managed through a combination of "talent and raw courage": encouraged by Sargent, she became an artist, working tirelessly to support her spendthrift husband and their children. The lovely heiress Elizabeth Chanler suffered from a hip infection that left her strapped to a portable bed for two years during adolescence. She fell in love, scandalously, with a friend's husband, the writer John Jay Chapman, and they married after his wife died suddenly. Isabella Stewart Gardner grew up a rebellious tomboy and never lost her willfulness and determination. She became the most prominent art collector of her time, leaving her collection--including Sargent's work--in her own museum. Colorful, animated portraits sympathetically rendered.

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Starred review from May 15, 2017

American artist John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) gained fame for creating exceptional portraits, perceptively revealing the singular essence of each of his subjects on canvas. Lucey (Archie and Amelie) tells the vivid personal stories of four women Sargent depicted while simultaneously skillfully weaving in details about his life and art as well as his connections to these individuals, their families, and their notable friends and associates. The women came from society's upper reaches and led complex and often eccentric lives. Here are Sally Fairchild, Elsie Palmer, Elizabeth Chanler, and well-known collector Isabella Stewart Gardner. Each account is intriguing, especially that of the beautiful Fairchild, who eventually relinquishes the spotlight to her sister, Lucia Fairchild Fuller--a young woman so inspired by Sargent that she pursued a serious, lifelong painting career. Lucey's research is impressive and uses a wealth of varied original sources. Her narrative is engaging and elegant, set in a rich cultural and social framework that insightfully reflects the era. Selected portraits, photos, and helpful notes all enhance the text. VERDICT This skillfully written work with a unique creative perspective will attract readers interested in art and history and will be a lasting addition to academic and arts collections.--Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ

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Starred review from August 1, 2017
Lucey's fascination with the Gilded Age did not end with the completion of her best-selling Archie and Amelie (2006); it intensified as she considered the work of John Singer Sargent, a painter of uncanny insight whom she views as possibly his era's greatest chronicler. Choosing four striking Sargent portraits of wealthy, cosmopolitan American women, Lucey vividly reveals the hidden truths of their tumultuous lives, while also succinctly telling the artist's own intriguing story. Archie Chanler's sister Elizabeth was 27 when Singer painted her in 1893, capturing the banked fury and passion of this kind and dignified woman, who seemed destined for spinsterhood until she embarked on a life-altering affair with her best friend's husband. Elisa Palmer was another underestimated poor-little-rich-girl navigating a complicated life. Boston Brahmin Lucia Fairchild worshipped Sargent, became an artist, and supported her feckless husband while she struggled with multiple sclerosis. Lucey's portrait of mercurial and brazen Isabella Stewart Gardner, the best known of the quartet, is as fresh and revelatory as Sargent's scandalous painting as she recounts Gardner's zeal for art collecting and her unique home museum. Lucey's superlative group portrait, rendered in crystal-clear prose, is spring-fed by her immersion in vast archives of letters and diaries, her pilgrimages to the extraordinary places that shaped her subjects' lives, and her keen insights into what drove these women to break out of their gilded cages.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)