Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France

The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France

McAuley, James

Paperback

French HistoryGeneral ArtGeneral World History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0300264690
ISBN13: 9780300264692
Publisher: Yale Univ Pr
Published: Mar 8 2022
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.65
Height: 1.00 Width: 5.10 Depth: 7.70
Language: English
A powerful history of Jewish art collectors in France, and how an embrace of art and beauty was met with hatred and destruction

The depths of French anti-Semitism is the stunning subject that Mr. McAuley lays bare. . . . [He] tells this haunting saga in eloquent detail. As French anti-Semitism rises once again today, the effect is nothing less than chilling.--Diane Cole, Wall Street Journal

Elegantly written and deeply moving. . . . [A] haunting book.--David Bell, New York Review of Books

In the dramatic years between 1870 and the end of World War II, a number of prominent French Jews--pillars of an embattled community--invested their fortunes in France's cultural artifacts, sacrificed their sons to the country's army, and were ultimately rewarded by seeing their collections plundered and their families deported to Nazi concentration camps.

In this rich, evocative account, James McAuley explores the central role that art and material culture played in the assimilation and identity of French Jews in the fin de siècle. Weaving together narratives of various figures, some familiar from the works of Marcel Proust and the diaries of Jules and Edmond Goncourt--the Camondos, the Rothschilds, the Ephrussis, the Cahens d'Anvers--McAuley shows how Jewish art collectors contended with a powerful strain of anti-Semitism: they were often accused of invading France's cultural patrimony. The collections these families left behind--many ultimately donated to the French state--were their response, tragic attempts to celebrate a nation that later betrayed them.

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