Catherine Ostler Audiobooks

The Renoir Girls: a hidden history of art, war and betrayal

1 audiobook reviewed

Who is Catherine Ostler?

In 1881 Renoir painted two young sisters from a Jewish banking family in Paris, and the canvas has been admired ever since for its pink and blue serenity. Catherine Ostler’s The Renoir Girls asks what became of the children in it, and the answer turns a decorative portrait into something close to a tragedy.

The book follows the sisters from the Belle Époque to the Second World War, along paths that could hardly diverge more sharply: marriage into the English aristocracy and escape for one, collaboration for another, Auschwitz for a third. It is narrative history written with a biographer’s eye for the telling document.

What gives the book its force is the method. The painting is treated as evidence rather than decoration, and the research works patiently underneath its surface until the private history behind the public image comes through.

Catherine Ostler in audiobooks

Lucy Scott narrates the audio edition across more than thirteen hours, a register well suited to a book that moves between drawing rooms, galleries and the machinery of occupation.

It has only just arrived with us, so listener verdicts are still gathering. Come to it if you like history told through objects, or if you have ever stood in front of a nineteenth-century portrait and wondered about the lives behind the faces. Everything currently available is on the shelf below.