유대계 세 자매, '벨 에포크'의 화려함, 특권과 배신  

영국 귀족과 결혼해 탈출, 나치 협력자, 아우슈비츠서 사망

 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Irène Cahen d'Anvers, 1880, 65cm × 54cm, Foundation E.G. Bührle, Zürich

 

1880년, 피에르 오귀스트 르누아르(Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1841-1919)는 파리에서 가장 화려한 8구에 위치한 저택에서 유대인 금융가이자 아트 컬렉터 루이 라파엘 카엔 당베르(Louis Raphaël Cahen d'Anvers) 백작의 세자매 중 큰딸 '이렌 카엔 당베르 양의 초상(Portrait de Mademoiselle Irène Cahen d'Anvers)'을 그렸다. 이듬해엔 어린 두 자매 엘리자베트와 알리스 카엔 당베르를 '분홍과 파랑(Pink and Blue)' 캔버스에 담았다. 

 

 

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alice and Elisabeth Cahen d’Anvers(Pink and Blue), 1881, 119cm × 74cm, São Paulo Museum of Art, Brazil

 

당베르 자매들의 초상화는 순수함과 아름다움이 깃든 찰나의 순간을 포착한 작품으로 벨 에포크(Belle Époque) 시대의 화려함을 환기한다. 볼로뉴 숲의 경마장에서 보낸 낮과 오페라 극장에서의 밤, 햇살 가득한 저택, 그리고 예술과 음악, 대화로 꽃피던 눈부신 살롱 등 파리가 가장 찬란하게 빛나던 시절의 인물화다.

 

르누아르 그림 속의 모델이 되었던 세 자매는 제2차 세계대전에 이르는 격동의 세월 속에서 드라마틱한 삶을 살게 된다. 한명은 영국 귀족과 결혼해 탈출했고, 한명은 나치 협력자가 되었고, 또 한명은 아우슈비츠에서 생을 마감했다. 

 

7월 14일 미국에 출간되는 캐서린 오슬러(Catherine Ostler)는 저서 '르누아르의 소녀들(The Renoir Girls)'을 통해, 급변하는 유럽이라는 거대한 역사의 흐름 속에서 개인의 내밀한 삶을 생생하고 몰입감 있게 그려낸다. 편지와 일기, 그리고 새롭게 발굴한 독점 연구 자료를 바탕으로 오슬러는 근대 유럽의 격동기 중심에 서 있던 한 가족에 얽힌 놀라운 진실을 밝혀낸다. 보불전쟁의 여파부터 드레퓌스 사건, 그리고 두 차례의 세계대전이 가져온 참화에 이르기까지, 스페인 국왕에서 드레퓌스, 프루스트와 모파상에 이르기까지, 사라져 버린 세상의 찬란한 기억 속에 묻혀 잊힐 뻔했던 특권과 아름다움, 그리고 배신의 서사다.  

 

 

 

The Renoir Girls

A Hidden History of Art, War & Betrayal

By Catherine Ostler

 

About The Book

Three sisters, the daughters of a prominent French Jewish family, all painted as children by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. In the turbulent years from the Belle Epoque to World War II, one would marry an English aristocrat and escape; one would become a collaborator with the Nazis; one would die in Auschwitz. This is the remarkable hidden history of the lives behind Renoir’s beguiling portraits.

 

Paris, 1881. The artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir knocks on the door of a wealthy Jewish family’s home in the 8th arrondissement, the grandest quarter of Paris. He has arrived to paint the portrait of the family’s two youngest daughters. The parents, the Cahen d’Anvers, are bankers, collectors, philanthropists, and pillars of Parisian society. They go to balls, breed racehorses, and ride in the Bois de Boulogne with their aristocratic friends. But for the Jewish community, the undercurrents of Parisian sentiment are already moving in a sinister direction. The story of the Renoir girls will end in the duplicity and the horror of the Second World War.

 

With an extraordinary cast of characters, from the girls themselves, their mother’s lovers, a heroic British General; from the King of Spain to Dreyfus, Proust, and Maupassant—this is a story about one of the world’s most famous pictures, The Pink and the Blue. But really it is a story about Paris—one that prefers to be hidden. With access to never-before-seen letters, diaries, and personal recollections—it is a tale of privilege, beauty, and betrayal almost lost in the shimmering memory of a vanished world.

 

 

About The Author

Catherine Ostler is an author and journalist who has been Editor-in-Chief of Tatler, the English Standard (London), the Evening Standard magazine (London), and Editor of The Times (London) Weekend. She has also written for a wide range of publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Telegraph (London), the Financial Times, and Vogue. She studied English at Oxford University. Her first book was the critically acclaimed The Duchess Countess: The Woman Who Scandalized Eighteenth-Century London. 

 

Raves and Reviews

“The Renoir Girls is much more than an engrossing family saga about lucky people brought low. Its real subject is antisemitism, which starts as a background whisper and becomes a terrifying roar. This makes it essential reading for our times, a terrible warning about how racial hatred can lie dormant for decades before reappearing with a vengeance in times of political and financial chill.”

—Kathryn Hughes, The Times (UK), Book of the Week

 

“This book is an epic tale of a changing world that ends up all too close to our own . . . Some scenes will live with me for a long time, in their tragedy but also their revelations of courage.”

—Lara Feigel, The Observer

 

“[A] story that is at once intimate and expansive, rooted in the particulars of a single family, yet reaching outward to encompass some of the defining events of modern European history. In the end, The Renoir Girls is less about a painting than about what lies beyond its frame: the passage of time, the shifting of identities, the sudden and often catastrophic turns of history.”

—Guy Walters, Independent 

 

 

Publisher: Atria Books (July 14, 2026)

Length: 432 pages

ISBN13: 9781668232484

https://www.simonandschuster.com 

 

 

*아티스트와 뮤즈 (8) 오귀스트 르누아르와 리즈, 알린, 마고, 가브리엘, 수잔...

https://www.nyculturebeat.com/?mid=Art2&document_srl=3926084