The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer

O'Connor, Anne-Marie

ISBN 10: 0307265641 / ISBN 13: 9780307265647

Published by Knopf Publishing Group, 2012

Former library book; Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0307265641I3N10

Synopsis:

The spellbinding story, part fairy tale, part suspense, of Gustav Klimt&rsquo;s <i>Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer</i>, one of the most emblematic portraits of its time; of the beautiful, seductive Viennese Jewish salon hostess who sat for it; the notorious artist who painted it; the now vanished turn-of-the-century Vienna that shaped it; and the strange twisted fate that befell it.<br> <i>&#160;</i><br> <i>The Lady in Gold,</i> considered an unforgettable masterpiece, one of the twentieth century&rsquo;s most recognizable paintings, made headlines all over the world when Ronald Lauder bought it for $135 million a century after Klimt, the most famous Austrian painter of his time, completed the society portrait.<br> &#160;<br> Anne-Marie O&rsquo;Connor, writer for<i> The</i> <i>Washington Post</i>, formerly of the <i>Los Angeles Times,</i> tells the galvanizing story of the Lady in Gold, Adele Bloch-Bauer, a dazzling Viennese Jewish society figure; daughter of the head of one of the largest banks in the Hapsburg Empire, head of the Oriental Railway, whose Orient Express went from Berlin to Constantinople; wife of Ferdinand Bauer, sugar-beet baron.<br> &#160;<br> The Bloch-Bauers were art patrons, and Adele herself was considered a rebel of fin de si&egrave;cle Vienna (she wanted to be educated, a notion considered &ldquo;degenerate&rdquo; in a society that believed women being out in the world went against their feminine &ldquo;nature&rdquo;). The author describes how Adele inspired the portrait and how Klimt made more than a hundred sketches of her&mdash;simple pencil drawings on thin manila paper.<br> &#160;<br> And O&rsquo;Connor writes of Klimt himself, son of a failed gold engraver, shunned by arts bureaucrats, called an artistic heretic in his time, a genius in ours. <br> &#160;<br> She writes of the Nazis confiscating the portrait of Adele from the Bloch-Bauers&rsquo; grand <i>palais;</i> of the Austrian government putting the painting on display, stripping Adele&rsquo;s Jewish surname from it so that no clues to her identity (nor any hint of her Jewish origins) would be revealed. Nazi officials called the painting, <i>The Lady in Gold</i> and proudly exhibited it in Vienna&rsquo;s Baroque Belvedere Palace, consecrated in the 1930s as a Nazi institution. <br> &#160;<br> The author writes of the painting, inspired by the Byzantine mosaics Klimt had studied in Italy, with their exotic symbols and swirls, the subject an idol in a golden shrine.<br> &#160;<br> We see how, sixty years after it was stolen by the Nazis, the <i>Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer</i> became the subject of a decade-long litigation between the Austrian government and the Bloch-Bauer heirs, how and why the U.S. Supreme Court became involved in the case, and how the Court&rsquo;s decision had profound ramifications in the art world. <br> &#160;<br> A riveting social history; an illuminating and haunting look at turn-of-the-century Vienna; a brilliant portrait of the evolution of a painter; a masterfully told tale of suspense. And at the heart of it, the Lady in Gold&mdash;the shimmering painting, and its equally irresistible subject, the fate of each forever intertwined.

About the Author: Anne-Marie O&rsquo;Connor attended Vassar College, studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. She was a foreign correspondent for Reuters and a staff writer for the <i>Los Angeles Times</i> for twelve years, and has written extensively on the Klimt painting and the Bloch-Bauer family&rsquo;s efforts to recover its art collection. Her articles have appeared in <i>Esquire, The Nation,</i> and <i>The Christian Science Monitor</i>. She currently writes for <i>The Washington Post</i> from Mexico City, where her husband, William Booth, is <i>Post</i> bureau chief.

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of ...
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Publication Date: 2012
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket