Sargent’s Women explores the extraordinary lives of four women painted by the iconic, high-society Gilded Age portraitist John Singer Sargent. Each woman inhabited a rarefied world of large fortunes and strict conventions, yet managed to do something unexpected to upend society’s rules. Basing her research on original letters and diaries, author Donna Lucey uncovered stories of forbidden love, family conflict, ambition, desire, and triumph. The New York Times Book Review called Sargent’s Women “[a] rollicking snow globe version of an almost unimaginable world of wealth.” Chosen as a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, Sargent’s Women won the 2019 Victorian Society in America Book Award and the 2018 Art in Literature Mary Lynn Kotz Award, and was a finalist for the 2018 best work of nonfiction for the Library of Virginia Literary Awards.
Donna M. Lucey is the author of a number of award-winning books on the Gilded Age, including the New York Times best-selling Archie and Amélie: Love and Madness in the Gilded Age and Photographing Montana 1894–1928: The Life and Work of Evelyn Cameron. Ms. Lucey has been awarded two National Endowment for the Humanities grants as an independent scholar, and was a 2017 writer-in-residence at Edith Wharton’s The Mount. She lives with her husband, author Henry Wiencek, in Charlottesville, Virginia, and is currently at work on a book titled Victoria’s Island, on Queen Victoria’s summer residence on the Isle of Wight.
The Gibson House Museum is sponsoring this virtual talk on February 7 from 7 – 8 with Donna M. Lucey. $10 for Gibson House members, $12 for nonmembers. A $1.00 registration fee will be assessed by the ticketing provider Fareharbor in addition to the program cost. Register HERE.
