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Between 1870 and 1945 several prominent French Jews, pillars of an embattled community, invested their fortunes in France’s cultural artifacts, sacrificed their sons to the country’s army – and were ultimately rewarded by seeing their collections plundered and their families deported to Nazi concentration camps. James McAuley, Paris correspondent for The Washington Post, explores the central role that art and material culture played in the assimilation and identity of French Jews in the fin-de-siècle. He will be in conversation with former Christie’s senior art lecturer and author Patrick Bade.

Click here to purchase a copy of House of Fragile Things: A History of Jewish Art Collectors & the Fall of France by James McAuley from our independent book selling partners, Blackwell’s.

James McAuley is the Paris Correspondent for The Washington Post and a contributor to The New York Review of Books. He recently received his doctorate in French History at Oxford. The House of Fragile Things is his first book.

Patrick Bade is an art historian. His works include Femme Fatal: Images of Evil and Fascinating Women, and studies of artists such as Degas, Klimt and Renoir.

In Association with Lockdown University