Renoir Girls

Remarkable and haunting . . . a revelation Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber EyesA dazzling achievement, heartbreaking, glamourous, elegiac, revelatory and utterly gripping Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of The World: A Family History of HumanityTruly beautiful and melodic . . . a joy to read Hallie Rubenhold, author of The Five and Story of a MurderThrilling . . . essential reading for our times The Times, Book of the WeekAn astonishing true story of splendour, scandal and tragedy in Golden Age Paris.In 1881, Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted two young sisters from a Jewish banking dynasty at their home in Pariss grand 8th arrondissement. Pink and Blue, a portrait of Elisabeth and Alice Cahen dAnvers, captures a fleeting moment of innocence and beauty, and today it is one of Renoirs most celebrated works. His portrait evokes the glamour of the Belle poque: days at the races, nights at the opera, sun-soaked chateaux, brilliant salons filled with art, music and conversation. Paris at its most dazzling.Yet beneath the glittering surface was a surging current of resentment. Renoirs Impressionist masterpiece, radiant with light and colour, hides both a family secret and the tensions of an era poised for rupture. The same society that was illuminated by progress and culture was cast into shadow by division, prejudice and rising antisemitism. The Cahen dAnvers, prominent patrons of this Golden Age, would come to embody both its glory and its tragedy.In The Renoir Girls, Catherine Ostler paints a vivid and immersive portrait of intimate individual lives against the vast sweep of a changing Europe. Drawing on letters, diaries and exclusive new research, Ostler uncovers revelatory truths about a family at the heart of modern Europes struggles. From the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War to the Dreyfus Affair and the devastation of two world wars, this is a powerful story of love, courage and identity in conflict with the forces of history.