Family Romance

A glittering account of John Singer Sargent’s relationship with an eminent Edwardian family.

In Family Romance, Jean Strouse tells the story of John Singer Sargent and his relationship with the Wertheimer family, structured around the twelve 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 a series of portraits of his family, he became the American expatriate artist’s most important patron, as well as a close personal friend.

Recreating the world of turn-of-the-century London, Strouse gives 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.

'I read and shivered and tried, unsuccessfully, to think of other sub-three hundred-page works of nonfiction that deserve to be called epic.’ – The New Yorker