The house of fragile things : Jewish art collectors and the fall of France / James McAuley.

New Haven : Yale University Press, [2021]

�2021

1 online resource (xii, 301 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations (some color), maps

Access is available to the Yale community.

Description based upon print version of record.

Access restricted by licensing agreement.

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-si�ecle. 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.

EBSCOhost eBook collection, Yale University Press.

Print version: McAuley, James The House of Fragile Things New Haven : Yale University Press,c2021

Books / Online

English

July 27, 2021

Includes bibliographical references and index.