| Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model-Wives of Cezanne, Monet, and Rodin | 
 enlarge | Author: Ruth Butler
Publisher: Yale University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (4 reviews)
Sales Rank: 200896
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 376
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0300126247
Dewey Decimal Number: 759.4
EAN: 9780300126242
ASIN: 0300126247
Publication Date: June 23, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Paul Cezanne, Claude Monet, and Auguste Rodin. The names of these brilliant nineteenth-century artists are known throughout the world. But what is remembered of their wives? What were these unknown women like? What roles did they play in the lives and the art of their famous husbands? In this remarkable book of discovery, art historian Ruth Butler coaxes three shadowy women out of obscurity and introduces them for the first time as individuals. Through unprecedented research, Butler has been able to create portraits of Hortense Fiquet, Camille Doncieux, and Rose Beuret?the models, and later the wives, respectively, of Cezanne, Monet, and Rodin, three of the most famous French artists of their generation. The book tells the stories of three ordinary women who faced issues of a dramatically changing society as well as the challenges of life with a striving genius. Butler illuminates the ways in which these model-wives figured in their husbands? achievements and provides new analyses of familiar works of art. Filled with captivating detail, the book recovers the lives of Hortense, Camille, and Rose, and recognizes with new insight how their unique relationships enriched the quality of their husbands? artistic endeavors.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Too much conjecture and speculation! December 27, 2008
I agree with everything that reviewer Margaret Williams said. Ms. Butler constantly says things like, "We know nothing about Madame Monet's feelings at this point, but surely she must have felt..." or "one can imagine that she felt..." I think that this started out as an admirable project, but that after Butler started researching, she discovered there simply was no source material available on these women. So she repeats all the well-worn stuff about the artists, then tries to guess what the women in their lives must have felt. Sometimes she contradicts her own research -- emphasizing that one of these women adored her artist/lover and was "surely" happy with her lot, when other documentation which she quotes indicates otherwise. And some things are just downright silly. She claims, optimistically, that Camille Monet "loved posing" for her husband; how can she possibly know that? And to say that Camille made an important contribution to her husband's paintings just because she chose the outfits she posed in? Any art lover -- let alone an art history prof like Butler! -- knows that an artist will paint his sitters however he sees fit, regardless of what they actually look like or what they're wearing!
Another problem -- not necessarily the author's fault -- is that there aren't nearly enough illustrations. For every five artworks that Butler references, maybe one is reproduced -- and usually in a small black & white photo.
I, too, wonder why Yale published this. It's very telling, too, that the NY Times book review did not publish an actual review, but rather an interview with Ms. Butler -- presumably because an honest review would have revealed that there are serious problems with the book. Ms. Butler must have friends in high places who don't want to hurt her.
 Ambitious and commendable, but... October 27, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Ruth Butler has set herself an ambitious and commendable task in "Hidden in the Shadow of the Master," namely, to pluck from oblivion the histories of three women who shared the lives of three remarkable artists - Monet, Rodin, and Cezanne - sometimes happily and sometimes in utter misery. Butler asks good questions: Why have these women never figured in traditional biographies of these artists? Did they feel cast aside in their own time, as their husbands pursued extramarital affairs and devoted, almost always, more attention to matters of art than of family? Did their roles as the principle models for their husbands' figurative work constitute an important contribution to art history?
Unfortunately, Butler isn't really in much of a position to answer these questions. Researching the lives of obscure people is undoubtedly very difficult: to pull off her project successfully, Butler would have needed to get extremely lucky in uncovering previously unknown documents, like correspondence and diaries - as, for instance, Gail Levinson did in researching the life of Edward Hopper's wife, Jo, who is brought vividly and poignantly to life in Levinson's "Edward Hopper." Butler however has not hit upon many revelatory documents, and one tends to doubt that she tried very hard to find any. Ninety-five percent of the sources she cites are war-horses of the traditional history of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, which she creatively reinterprets to place the "model-wives" front and center. The result is a lot of rhetorical questions: "What must Madame Cezanne have felt like" in her difficult marital circumstances, etc.
The first sign of trouble comes in Butler's introduction where she says, "The story I tell depends both on fact and on imagination." To my mind, that statement makes this book a very suspect addition to the academic literature, and I am frankly surprised that Yale University Press would have published it. Most disturbing, to fill in the gaping blanks in her narrative, Butler engages in highly speculative biographical interpretations of paintings and sculptures - often presuming to intuit the feelings of both sitter and artist. This is precisely the sort of thing that one would expect of undergraduates writing on art for the first time, and one would caution them against it because of the methodological speciousness of the approach.
In sum, high-minded intentions cannot make up for a lack of rigorous research and ground-breaking discoveries. Despite Butler's best efforts, all three of the women about whom she writes in "Hidden in the Shadow of the Master" remain, as far as I can see, unrevealed in this very ambitious though questionable book.
 Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model-Wives of Cezanne, Monet, and Rodin October 6, 2008
This book was very informative about the way these artists lived and treated their wives. It showed the very human side to Cezanne, Monet, and Rodin and made me think that genius comes with a price. Their wives/models didn't have easy lives living with them which was in a way surprising to me after seeing all the beautiful portraits they did of their wives. Those portraits made me fantasize about how wonderful it must have been to be married to these artists. This book opened me up to reality!
 Hidden in the Shadow of the Master August 10, 2008
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
It was a sad revelation to see how these brilliant artists treated their models who became their mistresses, the mothers of their children, and they eventually married them,--but gave them little credit.
It was also a sad revelation how little they were appreciated and how little their art was able to reap for them financially.
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