Ruth Butler's HIDDEN IN THE SHADOW OF THE MASTER in PW Online

Web Exclusive Reviews: Week of 7/28/2008
-- Publishers Weekly, 7/28/2008

Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model-Wives of Cezanne, Monet, and Rodin
Ruth Butler. Yale Univ., $32.50 (368p) ISBN 9780300126242

Had they been literate, any of this book’s three subjects—wives to the founders of French Impressionism—could have penned fascinating memoirs; as professor and author Butler (Rodin: The Shape of Genius) explains in her introduction, “we know almost nothing in a direct way from Hortense, Camille, or Rose,” and that therefore her book “depends both on fact and imagination.” Providing a sketch of their lives, Butler takes readers to Paris during the Franco-Prussian War, where the women lived on extremely limited means, married to men whose only true love was their art. Hortense Fiquet and Camille Doncieux, the wives of Cezanne and Monet respectively, modeled for some of the artists’ most well-known paintings and bore their first children, yet receive little mention in most biographies. Rose Beuret is more well-known, but only because Rodin was slightly more open about their relationship. Beuret acted as Rodin’s model and his assistant, and watched over a studio “full of sculpture” in his absence, “mostly works of clay needing constant attention.” Looking beyond their work, Butler considers the human side of these artistic giants through the foggy lens of their most dedicated subjects. (June)

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