Are you enjoying The Gilded Age?

It was all about vanity and status

When Julius LeBlanc Stewart’s painting The Baptism hung in the gallery at LACMA, the description on the museum card was brief and puzzling. These people might be a branch of the Vanderbilts, but no one knows for sure. It took me years of research (in the pre-Google era), and with the assistance of some Episcopal church historians, I found the answer - as well as why the subjects of the painting were scandalized by its existence. I felt I had to fictionalize the story because there were some notable gaps in the historical record, and novels after all must make sense. But even today, although the circumstantial evidence is unmistakable, the response of the museum curatorial staff has been, “It’s fiction, after all.”

But when, standing in front of the painting, I presented my findings to a roomful of curious docents, no one left early.

The Baptism by Julius LeBlanc Stewart was exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, but it was never sold. Oddly, there is no existing evidence that it was a commissioned work. The painting remained in the artist’s estate until forty years after he died, then was sold to an art dealer. LACMA owns this huge canvas, but it is not currently on display.

In the fictional framework of the novel, in the present day, art historian Grace Atwood becomes obsessed with the painting and its hidden clues for reasons that have more to do with her personal ghosts. Either her doting husband is trying to make her think she’s crazy, or she really is in the early stages of dementia.

Art historians assumed the artist rendered an event that took place in Paris his own wealthy family. But a close study of the priest’s robe suggests an American Episcopal ceremony, and an old photograph of a Vanderbilt home that burned down in Newport, Rhode Island shows the room. If you’re curious, get the book!

Endorsements

“I must say, I am impressed with your sleuthing, your imagination and your ability to weave a story. Your theory is fascinating, and I personally would be quite excited if any piece of it proved true.”  —  Carson Joyner Clark, biographer of painter Julius Stewart

“Alva Vanderbilt Belmont would be very grateful to you for researching a Vanderbilt family painting – as will all the family. And as I do. Historians keep us alive!”  —  Margaret Hayden Rector, Vanderbilt biographer, author of Alva, That Vanderbilt-Belmont Woman

Want the facts and the crumb trail? For us obsessively curious types, there’s a Scholar’s Edition of the book, which contains the full text of the novel, as well as the white paper documenting my research with references, which appeared as an article in The Journal of Art Crime.

“Of the many inquiries we get, this has been the most interesting in a long time.”  —  The Very Rev. Harry E. Krauss (retired)

“I think you’ve done an extraordinary job of researching and speculating on the painting. You’ve certainly convinced me that this was a Vanderbilt affair!”  —  Mary Sudman Donovan, Historian, Episcopal Church USA, Author of A Different Call: Women’s Ministries in the Episcopal Church, 1850-1920

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