A 2019 study found that “in the collections of eighteen major US art museums, 87 percent of artworks were by men, and 85 percent by white artists.” There’s a lot to be mad about, but London-based art historian Hessel nimbly pivots that energy into a constructive, revelatory project. Prominent 19th-century art critic John Ruskin once proclaimed, “the woman’s intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, and decision,” and traces of this misguided and malignant sentiment can still be found over a century later in art institutions around the world. Throughout, the author, a consummate historian, displays her deep research into the era, the city, and its denizens.Ī culturally vibrant account of Russians uprooted to Paris during a tumultuous time.Īn indispensable primer on the history of art, with an exclusive focus on women. Many of these artists’ lives were stunted well into the 1930s by enforced dispossession and poverty. As in her previous histories, Rappaport drives her lively narrative with minibiographies of notable characters, including Nobel laureate Ivan Bunin and noted humorist Teffi.

At the time, the new arrivals were often characterized as quarrelsome or prone to dissent. The author delineates the plight of both the Russian elite, who had to abandon their great wealth in land and palaces while pining for a restoration of the monarchy, and the truly impoverished immigrants who drove taxis, took up needlework in Chanel’s fashion house-“twenty-seven fashion houses were established in Paris by Russian emigres between 19”-or toiled at dozens of other low-paying jobs. At the same time, Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company was storming Paris with its shocking modernist music and dance, and other artists-e.g., poet Ilya Ehrenburg and painters Marc Chagall and Chaim Soutine-were “electrified,” as Ehrenburg put it, by the abundant culture of Paris.

“The French press,” writes the author, “regularly titillated readers with stories of the vices and eccentricities of the grand dukes.” The events in Russia from 1905 onward caused increasing anxiety for the aristocracy and fear for safety of the extended Romanov family. The bestselling author of The Romanov Sisters returns with the story of the Russian aristocrats who made Paris their home after fleeing the Bolshevik coup.Įarly on, Rappaport, an expert on imperial Russian history, notes how “the Russian discovery of the French capital…goes back to the time of…Peter the Great, who made a visit to Paris in 1717 and fell in love with Versailles.” This affinity for Paris reached its apex during the Belle Époque, when the excesses of Russian aristocrats became notorious around town.

After the romanovs book