Lady with a Brooch

Praise for Lady with a Brooch: Lady with a Brooch is a biography and a detective story--with a very satisfying ending. As a Munch scholar, there is so much here that I did not know! I really appreciated the part of the book that focuses on Eva Mudocci's life: her family background, her years as a child prodigy, her education and her musical career with Bella Edwards--all of this is really fascinating, with colorful descriptions of the milieu and the status of woman violinists. And when Munch enters the scene, it becomes even more interesting. Rima Shore has done a thorough job puzzling the bits and pieces of information together into a credible picture, and tells Mudocci's story in language that is very fluent and readable. --Magne Bruteig, Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, Munch Museum, Oslo, and author of Munch: Drawings (Marot) It's been a long time since I was as sorry to come to the end of a book as I was with Rima Shore's utterly captivating biography. Beautifully crafted, witty, and even suspenseful, it is both deeply researched and subtly, intriguingly personal. A social history, it is also a moving-- and sometimes troubling--portrayal of artists in extremis, a study of women musicians negotiating what Shore describes as the uneven terrain between nonconformity and respectability. Set variously in Paris, London, Berlin, Dresden, Oslo and Copenhagen, this work contains enough intense drama to fuel an opera or a movie. Shore's readers are in for a big treat. --Stephen R. Lehmann, co-author of Rudolph Serkin: A Life (Oxford University Press) A fascinating biography, elegantly told. Eva Mudocci was not only a highly appreciated violinist and owner of an important violin, but also the subject of celebrated portraits by Edvard Munch and Henri Matisse. Mudocci and pianist Bella Edwards were at the crossroads of early twentieth-century music and art. Their story offers new slants on such leading lights as Henri Matisse, Edvard Grieg, Malvina Hoffman, and Lady Maud Warrender, and on the lesbian communities of Belle E poque Paris and mid-century England. --Nelly Furman, Professor Emerita, Cornell University, and author of George Bizet's Carmen (forthcoming, Oxford University Press)