Tag Archives: Edgar Degas

Dysfunctional Romance in Belle Epoque Paris

Destination: Paris (Belle Epoque–1880s-1920s)

Book: I Always Loved You by Robin Oliveira (New February 2014)

Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas–(shown here in portrait and self-portrait by Degas) a dysfunctional romance if  there was one.  That is not a typo. (I did not mean to type “if ever there was one”.)

It is clear in reading I Always Loved You: A Novel that Robin Oliveira had very little fact to go on in her novelized version of the rumored love affair between the American and French artists, but the suspicion is enough to go on. Life among the artists of the Belle Epoque in Paris on the other hand swirls and sparkles just as you would expect in the midst of a gang that included a bunch of nobodies (then) who are artistic treasures (now). Continue reading Dysfunctional Romance in Belle Epoque Paris