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17420 north avenue of the arts
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Luncheon of the Boating Party
by Susan Vreeland
January 11, 2008
Bestselling author Susan Vreeland has garnered international praise for her historical fiction on art-related themes. In her latest novel, Luncheon of the Boating Party,Vreeland brings to vivid life the fourteen subjects in Renoir’s painting.
An actress, a mime, a journalist, an adventurer, a singer-flower seller, an art collector, a poet, a boatman, a baron, and a yachtsman-painter are among the characters
you will meet. What is going on in their lives as they pose? How do the threads of their lives weave into the canvas? What secrets are they hiding?
Luncheon of the Boating Party depicts the summer of 1880, an exuberant postwar time when social constraints were loosening, Paris was healing, and Parisians were
bursting with a desire for pleasure. The fourteen people on the terrace overlooking the Seine enjoying this moment of la vie moderne are Renoir’s very real friends,
whose lives unfold and connect during the course of the making of the painting. Instantly recognizable, beloved the world over, Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party
serves as an icon of an age, a place, an art movement at its apogee, and an ideal of human desire and sociability.
Travel back with us to the terrace of La Maison Fournaise, twenty minutes west of Paris by train, where we drink champagne and cruise the Seine with the infamous
members of the boating party.
 Strapless
by Deborah Davis
February 8, 2008
The subject of John Singer Sargent's most famous painting was twenty-three-year-old New Orleans Creole Virginie Gautreau, who moved
to Paris and quickly became the “it girl” of her day. A relative unknown at the time, Sargent won the commission to paint her; the two
immediately recognized in each other a like-minded hunger for fame.
Unveiled at the 1884 Paris Salon, Gautreau’s portrait generated the attention she craved- but it led to infamy rather than stardom. Sargent
had painted one strap of Gautreau’s dress dangling from her shoulder, suggesting either the prelude to or the aftermath of sex. Her
reputation irreparably damaged, Gautreau retired from public life, destroying all the mirrors in her home.
Drawing on documents from private collections and other previously unexamined materials, and featuring a cast of characters including
Oscar Wilde and Richard Wagner, Strapless is a tale of art and celebrity, obsession and betrayal. Slip on you little black dress and join us
for an evening of romance, intrigue and infamy.
 The Wayward Muse
by Elizabeth Hickey
March 14, 2008
Pulled straight from the canvasses of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Wayward Muse paints a vivid portrait of the mysterious and beautiful
Jane Burden, the Pre-Raphaelite icon.
A stableman’s daughter raised in the slums of Oxford, England, seventeen-year-old Jane is convinced of her own homeliness. She is
unusually tall and very thin, with a long, pale, sad face and a mass of coarse, unruly hair. Her family and neighbors consider her ugly
and despair of her finding a husband. But her fortunes forever change when she is discovered by the charismatic and irreverent painter,
Rossetti. His fellow artist Edward Burne-Jones persuades Jane’s grasping mother to allow her to pose, for a fee, as Guenevere in a series
of murals. The modeling sessions change Jane’s life, introducing her to a group of young artists, writers, and craftsmen who called
themselves the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Jane is swept into the artist’s world as model and muse and falls madly in love with Rossetti. When he abruptly leaves Oxford with no
plans to return, brokenhearted Jane settles for a stable, if passionless, marriage to his soft-spoken protégé, William Morris– the man
who would go on to become the father of the British Arts and Crafts Movement. Jane resigns herself to life as a respectable wife and
mother, exchanging the slop bucket for intricate needlepoint, willing away the memories of Rossetti and what could have been.
But Rossetti and Jane are inextricably bound together by tragedy, art, and desire, and no amount of time or distance can separate
them. Years later, all three become entangled in a love triangle from which they will never escape.
 Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper
by Harriet Scott Chessman
April 11, 2008
Elegantly conceived and tenderly written, this richly imagined fiction entices us into the world of Mary Cassatt’s early Impressionist paintings. The story is told by
Mary’s sister Lydia, as she poses for five of her sister’s most unusual paintings, which are reproduced in, and form the focal point of each chapter. Ill with Bright’s
disease and conscious of her approaching death, Lydia contemplates her world with courageous openness, and asks important questions about love and art’s
capacity to remember.
Mary, seven years her junior, is on the cusp of realizing her creative ambitions, having been accepted as the only woman in the inner circle of late 19th Century
impressionists who were stirring up Paris and the art world.
These sisters savor their time together because they deeply love each other and they know they’ll soon be parted. Much goes unspoken. The younger sister avoids
acknowledging that Lydia has little time left and the older woman doesn’t force the conversation. They communicate through the work.
The final chapter, “Lydia Seated at an Embroidery Frame,” is a reprise of all the themes that have come before. Lydia composes a farewell letter to Mary, comforting
her: “My sister, my soul,” she writes, “you will remember me, bent over my labor, at my embroidery frame, on a hot June day in Paris, my dress like a field of flowers,
my face calm. You will remember me because you caught my soul in paint.”
 A Perfect Red
by Amy Butler Greenfield
Guest Speaker – Eric Mindling
May 9, 2008
A Perfect Red recounts the colorful history of cochineal, a legendary red dye that was once one of the world’s most precious commodities. Treasured by the
ancient Mexicans, cochineal was sold in the great Aztec marketplaces, where it attracted the attention of the Spanish conquistadors in 1519. Shipped to
Europe, the dye created a sensation, producing the brightest, strongest red the world had ever seen. Soon Spain’s cochineal monopoly was worth a fortune.
Desperate to find their own sources of the elusive dye, the English, French, Dutch, and other Europeans tried to crack the enigma of cochineal. Did it come
from a worm, a berry, a seed? Could it be stolen from Mexico and transplanted to their own colonies? Pirates, explorers, alchemists, scientists and spies–
all joined the chase for cochineal, a chase that lasted more than three centuries.
A Perfect Red tells their stories–true-life tales of mystery, empire and intrigue. Join adventure guide and photographer Eric Mindling on a journey down the
legendary Cochineal Trail, where you will learn the ancient secrets of cochineal and other natural dyes of Oaxaca, in pursuit of the most desirable color on earth.
 Scandals, Vandals and da Vincis
by Harvey Rachlin
June 13, 2008
Gaze at a Caravaggios, Rembrandt, Manet or Monet and you become filled with wonder and awe at the artistic genius of its creator. Yet before brush
was laid to canvas, the painting’s unique story had already begun.
In Scandals, Vandals, and da Vincis, award-winning writer Harvey Rachlin delves into the life of the painting itself: the circumstances under which it
was created; its journey over the centuries, passing thorough the hands of a cast of characters, from kings and queens, to tragic lovers, spies and
thieves; and the revolutions, the wars, the passions and the adventures that the painting encountered along the way.
Join us and discover how nearly thirty of the world’s greatest masterworks came to be created and how they survived burglary, forgery, revolutions,
ransoms, vandals, scandals, religious sects, and shipwrecks to eventually come to their current resting places.
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