The Lady In Gold

Excerpted from the Hardcover edition

Adele's Vienna
Poems and Privilege

It was 1898, and the devil himself seemed to dance in Vienna.

The mistress of Emperor Franz Joseph was Vienna's premier actress, Katharina Schratt, and she was threatening to retire from the stage unless the Imperial Burgtheater staged a scandalous Arthur Schnitzler play that glamorized free love. Vienna's most acclaimed star couldn't possibly be allowed to step down in the Jubilee Year, the fiftieth anniversary of the reign of the Austro-Hungarian monarch. So when the curtains opened on Schnitzler's Veil of Beatrice, the emperor personally saw to it that his mistress was onstage in a black veil, in the role of the seduced woman.

If it had once been unthinkable for the Austrian emperor to publicly indulge the whims of a common actress, Vienna was now a hothouse where nothing seemed impossible.

For hundreds of years, the great Habsburg dynasty had reigned over this crossroad of East and West. Behind immense battlements, its frilly court united German, Italian, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, and Croatian aristocracies into a single royal house whose multicultural capital was as ornate as a Fabergé egg. Even their German acquired elaborate embellishments and a lilting cadence, softened by Italian and French, and Baroque exhortations to kuss die hand. This culture of pleasure was so unabashed that one Habsburg archduke declared wine "the principal nourishment of the city of Vienna."

Now Vienna's ancient ramparts had come tumbling down, and a new wave of newcomers was crowding in from Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, and Transylvania. You could hear a dozen languages in a single street-or a single tavern.

This new Vienna was a city of contradictions. It was one of Europe's richest cities, yet its immigrants were among the poorest. The construction of opulent new palaces did little to hide a severe housing shortage. Vienna doctors were creating modern medicine-pioneering surgeries;

Anne-Marie O’Connor attended Vassar College, studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley. She was a foreign correspondent for Reuters and a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times for twelve years, and has written extensively on the Klimt painting and the Bloch-Bauer family’s efforts to recover its art collection. Her articles have appeared in Esquire, The Nation, and The Christian Science Monitor. She currently writes for The Washington Post from Jerusalem, where her husband, William Booth, is Post bureau chief. 

Fascinating. . . . A mesmerizing tale of art and the Holocaust. The Washington Post

A celebration of art and persistence. . . . O Connor s book brings Klimt s exceptional portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer home, broadening the meaning of homeland at the same time. The Christian Science Monitor

Ms. O Connor has told an important story. The Wall Street Journal
 
O Connor skillfully filters Austria s troubled twentieth century through the life of Klimt s most beloved muse. . . . A nuanced view of a painting whose story transcends its own time. Bookforum

Captivating. MORE Magazine

Combines detailed reportage with passionate storytelling. . . .  Unraveling the portrait s journey also reveals how global norms of art and war have changed, and the powerful roles that art plays in politics, society, identity and memory. The Rumpus

A fascinating book. The Dallas Morning News

Richly drawn. . . . Part history and part mystery, The Lady in Gold is a striking tale. BookPage

The lusciously detailed story of Gustav Klimt s most famous painting, detailing the relationship between the artist, the subject, their heirs and those who coveted the masterpiece. . . . Art-history fans will love the deep details of the painting, and history buffs will revel in the facts O Connor includes as she exposes a deeper picture of World War II. Kirkus Reviews

Intriguing. . . . Poignant and convincing. . . . Vividly evokes the intellectually precocious and ambitious Adele s rich cultural and social milieu in Vienna, and how she became entwined with the charismatic, sexually charged, and irreverent Klimt. Publishers Weekly

Writing with a novelist s dynamism, O Connor resurrects fascinating individuals and tells a many-faceted, intensely affecting, and profoundly revelatory tale of the inciting power of art and the unending need for justice. Booklist (starred review)