Family Romance
Book review by Dr Anne Sarzin
A family saga: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers
When wealthy London art dealer Asher Wertheimer commissioned the celebrated and internationally acknowledged artist John Singer Sargent to paint twelve portraits of himself, his wife and their ten children, it caused a stir far beyond their cultivated circle of minor Jewish aristocrats. It was such a significant and generous commission that it triggered professional jealousy among Sargent’s competitors, who mistakenly thought they were his peers. But Sargent was in a painterly realm of his own, celebrated in England where he lived and worked, on the continent where he grew up, and in America, the country of his birth.
Throughout Sargent’s life as an artist, he was attracted to the figures on society’s margins and to cultures other than his own and, inevitably, he warmed to the vibrant Wertheimer family both personally and professionally. It was known that he nurtured a close, respectful and reciprocal connection with the family, especially with their elder daughter Ena, a six-foot-tall beauty whom he admired and adored. Theirs was essentially a warm and platonic relationship. Sargent never married and the Wertheimer ladies knew of his rumoured preference for Venetian gondoliers. He lived opposite Oscar Wilde and was certainly cognisant of the need for discretion in English society where homosexuality was a grievous crime and where proven guilt, as in Wilde’s case, spelt outright rejection and ruin.
When it became widely known that Asher intended bequeathing nine of the Sargent portraits as a generous gift to the National Gallery, a tidal wave of controversy swept through British society, even triggering a hostile session in the House of Commons devoted to this seemingly scandalous development. How could portraits of ‘alien’, ‘exotic’ and ‘oriental’ persons—contemporary code for Jews—be exhibited alongside aristocratic subjects portrayed with delicacy, finesse and in superb taste by artists such as Joshua Reynolds. Many in British society were frankly appalled at this potential collapse of traditional aesthetic and political standards, their distaste bearing all the hallmarks of traditional Jew hatred that rose to the surface in the late 19th century.
These anti-Jewish sentiments were aggravated by a societal backlash against the perceived flood of impoverished Jewish migrants settling in the East End of London in the late 1880s, having fled the pogroms and poverty of Russia’s Pale of Settlement. At the other end of this spectrum were the Wertheimers whose distinguished ancestors included Samson Wertheimer, a Chief Rabbi and ‘Court Factor’ to three Holy Roman Emperors in Habsburg Vienna; while Asher’s wife, Flora, came from a dynasty of cultured and knowledgeable art dealers. As Strouse observes, ‘From cultures that valued education and literacy, even in poverty, Jews tended to gravitate to fields in which knowledge conferred distinct advantages—commerce, finance, medicine, science, law. Dealing in art was just such a domain.’
This is the colourful canvas on which historian Jean Strouse has drawn a fascinating picture of British society in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with all their faults and foibles. More importantly, she has delved beneath the surface to expose the hidden rifts, the antagonisms, blatant bias and, at times, naked aggression in English society. Many resented Jewish newcomers entrenching themselves successfully in society to the alleged detriment of others, giving rise to old antisemitic tropes.
Strouse provides multiple insights into the societal and cultural currents, both good and bad, that swirled through English society at the turn of the nineteenth century. The book, however, is at its heart a comprehensive and touching portrait of a singular family with strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures, tragedies and triumphs. There were losses that tore it apart. Alfred, the second Wertheimer son, wanted to be an actor and fought bitterly with his father, who threatened to withdraw support should he go on the stage. Addicted to morphine, he died from an overdose at the age of 26, a heartbreaking event that Strouse speculates probably inspired Somerset Maugham’s short story ‘The Alien Corn’. Four months later, Alfred’s brother Edward died of typhoid in Paris while on his honeymoon.
But it is Ena Wertheimer, Asher and Flora’s striking and animated daughter, who somehow secured a special place in Sargent’s affections. Ena was 23 when she met Sargent, then aged 41. She forged an enduring bond with the artist. When showing an American visitor his dual portrait of Ena and her sister Betty, Sargent asked, ‘Isn’t it stunning of the taller girl? Don’t you think she is handsome? Isn’t Miss Wertheimer beautiful?’ Of particular interest is the story of Sargent’s 1904 transgressive portrait of Ena, known as A Vele Gonfle, a wedding gift from her father, with its chequered history that prompts more questions than answers. According to Strouse, ‘They [Ena and Sargent] remained such close friends that her husband wondered whether they had been lovers’.
When Asher died in 1918, the funeral took place at the Willesden Jewish Cemetery, conducted by Reverend Emanuel Spero of the Central Synagogue. After Asher’s demise, the Wertheimer name disappeared from art sales, as did the Jewish identity of the family, erased through assimilation. Strouse has crafted a fine history of these times and their larger-than-life characters. She has resurrected Sargent’s artistic reputation and polished his gilded social persona. She has produced an excellent biography of a family and an artist intimately enmeshed in ways that reveal poignantly not only who they are, but also the censorious attitudes of the larger society in which they lived and flourished.
Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers
Jean Strouse
Manchester University Press UK
2024
