Overview

The spellbinding story, part fairy tale, part suspense, of Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, 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.   The Lady in Gold, considered an unforgettable masterpiece, one of the twentieth century’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.   Anne-Marie O’Connor, writer for The Washington Post, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, 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.   The Bloch-Bauers were art patrons, and Adele herself was considered a rebel of fin de siècle Vienna (she wanted to be educated, a notion considered “degenerate” in a society that believed women being out in the world went against their feminine “nature”). The author describes how Adele inspired the portrait and how Klimt made more than a hundred sketches of her—simple pencil drawings on thin manila paper.   And O’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.   She writes of the Nazis confiscating the portrait of Adele from the Bloch-Bauers’ grand palais; of the Austrian government putting the painting on display, stripping Adele’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, The Lady in Gold and proudly exhibited it in Vienna’s Baroque Belvedere Palace, consecrated in the 1930s as a Nazi institution.   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.   We see how, sixty years after it was stolen by the Nazis, the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 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’s decision had profound ramifications in the art world.   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—the shimmering painting, and its equally irresistible subject, the fate of each forever intertwined.

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9780307265647

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Reviews

O'Connor . . . skillfully navigates the bizarre orbit of Klimt's masterpiece . . . with depth of insight and righteous indignation. Whether or not you've marveled at Klimt's shimmering portrait before, you won't look at it the same way again. <br>-- Washingtonian <br> Fascinating, ambitious, exhaustively researched . . . A mesmerizing tale of art and the Holocaust. <br>-- The Washington Post <br> Writing with a novelist's dynamism, O'Connor resurrects fascinating individuals and tells a many-faceted, intensely affecting, and profoundly revelatory tale of the inciting power of art and the unending need for justice. <br>-- Booklist (starred review) <br> Part history and part mystery, The Lady in Gold is a striking tale. <br>-- BookPage<br> <br> The dazzling, nearly surreal'Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I' is about a lot more than just art. O'Connor captures the whole story. <br>-- Library Journal <br> Every stolen painting has a story. The tale behind this one is epic. <br>-- Christian Science Monitor <br> A fascinating book. <br>-- Dallas Morning News <br> [An] evocation of a beautiful, vanished world. <br>-- Women's Wear Daily <br> Fascinating tale of beauty, terror, loss and remembrance reveals a deeper truth beneath the golden surface. <br>--Jonathan Lopez, Associated Press <br> O'Connor has told an important story. <br>-- The Wall Street Journal <br> Lusciously detailed. <br>-- Kirkus <br> Encapsulates a fascinating, complicated cultural history of fin-de-siecle Vienna, its Jewish intelligentsia, and their near complete destruction by the Nazis....vividly evokes... how she became entwined with the charismatic, sexually charged, and irreverent Klimt...poignant and convincing... <br>-- Publisher's Weekly <br> Ignites many a startling flashpoint in the moral history of our time--a taut, rich, tangy and instructive read. <br>--Frederic Morton <br> Gripping in details and drama. <br>-- The Los Angeles Times

Skillfully filters Austria's troubled twentieth century through the life of Klimt's most beloved muse . . . The book's strength lies in the depth of its details . . . offering readers a nuanced view of a painting whose story transcends its own time. <br>-- Bookforum<br> <br> [A] fascinating story of lust, beauty, greed, loss, prejudice, atrocity, and justice is told here with a wealth of glittering detail. <br>-- The Dispatch <br> O'Connor . . . skillfully navigates the bizarre orbit of Klimt's masterpiece . . . with depth of insight and righteous indignation. Whether or not you've marveled at Klimt's shimmering portrait before, you won't look at it the same way again. <br>-- Washingtonian <br> Fascinating, ambitious, exhaustively researched . . . A mesmerizing tale of art and the Holocaust. <br>-- The Washington Post <br> Writing with a novelist's dynamism, O'Connor resurrects fascinating individuals and tells a many-faceted, intensely affecting, and profoundly revelatory tale of the inciting power of art and the unending need for justice. <br>-- Booklist (starred review) <br> Part history and part mystery, The Lady in Gold is a striking tale. <br>-- BookPage<br> <br> The dazzling, nearly surreal'Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I' is about a lot more than just art. O'Connor captures the whole story. <br>-- Library Journal <br> Every stolen painting has a story. The tale behind this one is epic. <br>-- Christian Science Monitor <br> A fascinating book. <br>-- Dallas Morning News <br> [An] evocation of a beautiful, vanished world. <br>-- Women's Wear Daily <br> Fascinating tale of beauty, terror, loss and remembrance reveals a deeper truth beneath the golden surface. <br>--Jonathan Lopez, Associated Press <br> O'Connor has told an important story. <br>-- The Wall Street Journal <br> Lusciously detailed. <br>-- Kirkus <br> Encapsulates a fascinating, complicated cultural history of fin-de-siecle Vienna, its Jewish i

Author Information

Anne-Marie O’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 Los Angeles Times for twelve years, and has written extensively on the Klimt painting and the Bloch-Bauer family’s efforts to recover its art collection. Her articles have appeared in Esquire, The Nation, and The Christian Science Monitor. She currently writes for The Washington Post from Mexico City, where her husband, William Booth, is Post bureau chief.

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