This is an extraordinary biography, not merely of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the
subject of one of Gustav Klimt's most famous paintings, but also of the
work itself and the world of early 20th-century Vienna. The painting
"Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" (1907) was famous before its
record-breaking purchase in 2006 at $135 million by Ronald S. Lauder for
his New York-based Neue Galerie. Through her painstaking research,
O'Connor ("Washington Post") manages to capture the cultural,
historical, and political climate that gave birth to this painting. She
describes the anti-Semitism that permeated early 20th-century Vienna and
the role that Jews played (often as outsiders) in that society. Stolen
by the Nazis during World War II and renamed "The Lady in Gold" (to
avoid any hint that its subject was Jewish), the painting was at the
center of an eight-year battle by Bloch-Bauer's niece Maria Altmann to
regain her family's legacy. (Library Journal)
Request
The Lady in Gold from the catalog.
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