The hare with amber eyes : a family's century of art and loss

Format:

Book

Title:

The hare with amber eyes : a family's century of art and loss

Author:

De Waal, Edmund.

ISBN:

9780374105976

9780312569372

Edition:

1st American ed.

Publication Information:

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010.

Physical Description:

353 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm

General Note:

"Originally published in 2010 by Chatto & Windus, Great Britain, as The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance."

Contents:

Paris 1871-1899 -- Vienna 1899-1938 -- Vienna Kövecses, Tunbridge Wells, Vienna 1938-1947 -- Tokyo 1947-2001 -- Tokyo, Odessa, London 2001-2009.

Summary:

Traces the parallel stories of nineteenth-century art patron Charles Ephrussi and his unique collection of 360 miniature netsuke Japanese ivory carvings, documenting Ephrussi's relationship with Marcel Proust and the impact of the Holocaust on his cosmopolitan family.

Personal Subject:

Ephrussi family.

De Waal, Edmund-Travel-Europe.

De Waal, Edmund. (OCoLC)fst00424801

Ephrussi family. (OCoLC)fst01769243

Subject(s):

Jewish bankers -- Europe -- Biography.

Jewish businesspeople -- Europe -- Biography.

Art -- Collectors and collecting -- Europe -- Biography.

Netsukes -- Private collections -- England -- London.

Geographic Term:

Genre:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Salem Main Library	929.2 Ephrussi 2010	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Monmouth Public Library	920 DE De Waal, E. 2010	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

The Ephrussis were a grand banking family, as rich and respected as the Rothschilds, who "burned like a comet" in nineteenth-century Paris and Vienna society. Yet by the end of World War II, almost the only thing remaining of their vast empire was a collection of 264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox.

The renowned ceramicist Edmund de Waal became the fifth generation to inherit this small and exquisite collection of netsuke. Entranced by their beauty and mystery, he determined to trace the story of his family through the story of the collection.

The netsuke--drunken monks, almost-ripe plums, snarling tigers--were gathered by Charles Ephrussi at the height of the Parisian rage for all things Japanese. Charles had shunned the place set aside for him in the family business to make a study of art, and of beautiful living. An early supporter of the Impressionists, he appears, oddly formal in a top hat, in Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party . Marcel Proust studied Charles closely enough to use him as a model for the aesthete and lover Swann in Remembrance of Things Past .

Charles gave the carvings as a wedding gift to his cousin Viktor in Vienna; his children were allowed to play with one netsuke each while they watched their mother, the Baroness Emmy, dress for ball after ball. Her older daughter grew up to disdain fashionable society. Longing to write, she struck up a correspondence with Rilke, who encouraged her in her poetry.

The Anschluss changed their world beyond recognition. Ephrussi and his cosmopolitan family were imprisoned or scattered, and Hitler's theorist on the "Jewish question" appropriated their magnificent palace on the Ringstrasse. A library of priceless books and a collection of Old Master paintings were confiscated by the Nazis. But the netsuke were smuggled away by a loyal maid, Anna, and hidden in her straw mattress. Years after the war, she would find a way to return them to the family she'd served even in their exile.

In The Hare with Amber Eyes , Edmund de Waal unfolds the story of a remarkable family and a tumultuous century. Sweeping yet intimate, it is a highly original meditation on art, history, and family, as elegant and precise as the netsuke themselves.

Author Notes

Edmund de Waal's porcelain has been displayed in many museum collections around the world, and he has recently made an installation for the dome of the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was apprenticed as a potter, studied in Japan, and studied English at Cambridge. He is Professor of Ceramics at the University of Westminster and lives in London with his family.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

In this family history, de Waal, a potter and curator of ceramics at the Victoria & Albert Museum, describes the experiences of his family, the Ephrussis, during the turmoil of the 20th century. Grain merchants in Odessa, various family members migrated to Vienna and Paris, becoming successful bankers. Secular Jews, they sought assimilation in a period of virulent anti-Semitism. In Paris, Charles Ephrussi purchased a large collection of Japanese netsuke, tiny hand-carved figures including a hare with amber eyes. The collection passed to Viktor Ephrussi in Vienna and became the family's greatest legacy. Loyal citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Vienna Ephrussis were devastated by the outcome of WWI and were later driven from their home by the imposition of Nazi rule over Austria. After WWII, they discovered that their maid, Anna, had preserved the netsuke collection, which Ignace Ephrussi inherited, and he settled in postwar Japan. Today, the netsuke reside with de Waal (descended from the family's Vienna branch) and serve as the embodiment of his family history. A somewhat rambling narrative with special appeal to art historians, this account is nonetheless rich in drama and valuable anecdote. 20 b&w illus. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Kirkus Review

A nimble history of one of the richest European families at the turn of the century.De Waal, a notable London potter, is a descendent of the wealthy Ephrussi family. He seized on an inherited collection of Japanese netsukesmall decorative figures made out of wood or ivoryand traced its ownership down the family line, from patriarch Charles Ephrussi, originally from Odessa, to Great-Uncle Iggie, of Tokyo, who left the 264 elegant figures to the author upon his death in 1993. The family's fabulous wealth derived from the grain-trading business, operating between Paris and Vienna. Charles, who assembled the collection, was a dandyish art collector who settled in Paris at the age of 21, wrote art criticism and a book on Drer and patronized the early Impressionists. He was quite possibly the real-life character on whom Proust modeled his Charles Swann. Subsequently, the netsuke was given to Charles's cousin Viktor on the occasion of his wedding in 1899just at the height of the Dreyfus Affair, when French anti-Semitism burst forth in full forceand the collection passed to Vienna, where the family resided at the surpassingly beautiful Ephrussi Palais on the Ringstrasse. Anti-Jewish feeling pervaded all facets of their lives, and two world wars wreaked havoc on the Ephrussi fortune. Eventually the netsuke was saved from the rapacious hands of the Nazis by a servant who stuffed it in her mattress. De Waal keeps a pleasantly ironic tone throughout this remarkable journey and nicely handles the clutter of objects and relatives.The roster of characters is daunting at first, but this narrative proves a marvelously absorbing synthesis of art history, detective story and memoir.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Not only did ceramicist de Waal inherit an unusual collection 264 netsuke, miniature figures exquisitely carved in Japan he was also given the key to the remarkable history of his father's Russian-rooted, cosmopolitan Jewish family, the Ephrussi, who made a fortune exporting grain. Charles, a cousin of de Waal's great-grandfather, acquired the netsuke just before the Japonisme craze crested in late-nineteenth-century Paris. A well-known collector and critic, an early champion of the impressionists, and the primary model for Proust's Charles Swann, he gave his netsuke and vitrine, a customized glass display case, as a wedding gift to his Vienna-based first cousin, Viktor, and Emmy, his much younger, avidly fashionable wife. Their daughter, Elisabeth a poet who exchanged letters with Rilke, a trail-blazing lawyer, and de Waal's grandmother rescued her family from the Nazis. Elisabeth's brother Iggie, an intelligence officer, brought the collection back to Japan. As today's keeper of the storied netsuke, famed artist and curator de Waal tells a spellbinding and perceptive tale of extraordinary accomplishment and loss, beauty and terror, reinvention and survival in an intricately dimensional, profoundly involving first book, a sensitive and astute inquiry into culture and family, inheritance and preservation, and the secret life of objects.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist