"In this seductive, multilayered biography, based on original letters and diaries, Donna M. Lucey illuminates four extraordinary women painted by the iconic high-society portraitist John Singer Sargent. With uncanny intuition, Sargent hinted at the mysteries and passions that unfolded in his subjects' lives. Elsie Palmer traveled between her father's Rocky Mountain castle and the medieval English manor house where her mother took refuge, surrounded...

The fictionalized story of Virginie Gautreau's life, draws on the sketchy facts known about the subject of John Singer Sargent's famous painting, Madame X, recreating her tempestuous personality, the captivating milieu of Belle Epoch Paris, and the struggle between artist and model to control the painting that would change their lives.

John Singer Sargent's approach to watercolor was unconventional. Disregarding contemporary aesthetic standards that called for carefully delineated and composed landscapes filled with transparent washes, his confidently bold, dense strokes, loosely defined forms, and unexpected vantage points startled critics and fellow practitioners alike. One reviewer of an exhibition in London proclaimed him "an eagle in a dove-cote"; another called his work "swagger"...