Background
Samuels, Ernest was born on May 19, 1903 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Son of Albert and Mary (Kaplan) Samuels.
( Controversy swirls around Bernard Berenson today as it...)
Controversy swirls around Bernard Berenson today as it did in his middle years, before and between two world wars. Who was this man, this supreme connoisseur of Italian Renaissance painting? How did he support his elegant estate near Florence, his Villa I Tatti? What exactly were his relations with the art dealer Joseph Duveen? What part did his wife, Mary, play in his scholarly work and professional career? The answers are to be found in the day-to-day record of his life as he lived it--as reported at first hand in his and Mary's letters and diaries and reflected in the countless personal and business letters they received. His is one of the most fully documented lives of this century. Ernest Samuels, having spent twenty years studying the thousands of letters and other manuscripts, presents his story in absorbing detail. Berenson helped Isabella Stewart Gardner build her great collection and performed similar though lesser services for other wealthy Americans. It was merely an avocation and a useful source of income; his vocation was scholarship. But after 1904, when the book opens, his expertise was in ever-greater demand: a purchaser's only assurance of the authorship of an Italian painting was the opinion of an expert, and in this field Berenson was pre-eminent. Increasingly he was drawn into the lucrative world of the art dealers; inevitably Joseph Duveen found it essential to enlist his services, at first ad hoc, then by contractual agreement. Samuels charts the course of Berenson's long association with Duveen Brothers, detailing the financial arrangements, the humdrum chores and major contested attributions, the periodic clashes between the stubborn scholar and the arrogant entrepreneur. The portrayal of Berenson's relationship with Mary is especially intriguing: a union of opposites in all but brains and wit, bonded--despite love affairs, jealousies, recriminations--no longer by passion but by shared concerns. Impinging on their lives are those of a huge circle of friends and acquaintances in America and the beau monde of Europe. Both as biography and as a chapter of social and cultural history, it is a compelling book.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674067797/?tag=2022091-20
(Critic, arbiter of taste, renowned authority on Renaissan...)
Critic, arbiter of taste, renowned authority on Renaissance painting and oracle to millionaire art collectors, Bernard Berenson was the most formidable presence in the art world for more than thirty years. Four decades of his life are unfolded in this compelling book.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674067754/?tag=2022091-20
( "Education had ended in 1871, life was complete in 189...)
"Education had ended in 1871, life was complete in 1890." With this paradoxical statement from The Education of Henry Adams, Adams apparently dismissed from the record twenty of the most interesting and active years of his career. Those two decades embraced the first great productive season of his literary genius and the most significant years of his emotional life. Opening on the highest note of expectation and closing with his desperate flight to the South Seas in 1890, a divided and lonely figure, that season of fulfillment and inner growth is the subject of this book. The relationship between Adams' life and writings grew steadily richer as his literary artistry matured, and with that process as his main concern, Mr. Samuels has written a book equally rewarding as a biography and as a critical study. Perhaps the greatest achievement biographically is a definitive and absorbing account of the true relationship between Henry Adams and his wife and an introduction to the grand passion for Elizabeth Cameron which was to affect the rest of his life. The whole intense inner drama of his feelings is really opened up for the first time, as often as possible in his own words, to the tragedy of his wife's suicide, the embittered years of work concluding the great History, and, finally, the escape to the South Seas in an effort to overcome the intolerable intensity of his love for Mrs. Cameron. Through detailed analyses of Adams' writings, Mr. Samuels shows how all this drama had its counterpoint in his literary activities and eventually became transformed into works of literary art. Equally interesting is the way in which the ideas for his biographical and historical writing emerged from the wide sources of his reading, were tested in the remarkable give and take of his circle, and finally adapted to the themes of his writing. This is the most exhaustive biographical and critical study of Adams' middle years ever made, and probably answers, so far as it is humanly possible, every unanswered question about Adams' life and the writing of his books. From the wealth of family papers deposited with the Massachusetts Historical Society and numerous other sources, Mr. Samuels has unveiled an increasingly complex personality - a brilliant mind in the grip of many prejudices and contradictions, yet one so terrifyingly honest that it more than ever defies explanation in any ordinary terms. The mass of fresh materials used includes letters from correspondents around the world and admits us to the other side of the enormous dialogue which Adams carried on with the members of his circle. Certain finds have revealed some invaluable sidelights including a striking fragment of Adams' diary for 1888-1889; a sheaf of his sonnets to Elizabeth Cameron, and the unpublished remainder of his letters to his wife. Much untouched material has also come to light in newspapers, magazines, public archives, court records, memoirs, and biographies. This is the second of three volumes of Mr. Samuels' definitive study of Henry Adams. The other two are The Young Henry Adams and Henry Adams: The Major Phase.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674387538/?tag=2022091-20
(Critic, arbiter of taste, renowned authority on Renaissan...)
Critic, arbiter of taste, renowned authority on Renaissance painting and oracle to millionaire art collectors, Bernard Berenson was the most formidable presence in the art world for more than thirty years. Four decades of his life are unfolded in this compelling book.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674067770/?tag=2022091-20
Samuels, Ernest was born on May 19, 1903 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Son of Albert and Mary (Kaplan) Samuels.
In 1942 he completed a Doctor of Philosophy in English with a dissertation on “The Early Career of Henry Adams” at the University of Chicago, after which he began teaching English at Northwestern University, becoming department chair in 1964 before retiring in 1971.
Born in Chicago, he received his Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago in 1926, but switched to literature in 1930, earning a Master of Arts in English in 1931. In 1933-1937 he practiced law in Chicago. In 1937 to 1939 he was an English instructor at Washington State University.
Samuels died in Evanston, Illinois.
(Critic, arbiter of taste, renowned authority on Renaissan...)
(Critic, arbiter of taste, renowned authority on Renaissan...)
( Controversy swirls around Bernard Berenson today as it...)
(This 378-page hardcover was published in 1967 by Harvard ...)
( "Education had ended in 1871, life was complete in 189...)
(Francis Parkman Prize Edition)
(Book by Samuels, Ernest)
(New edition)
(2)
Member Illinois communications of Scholars, 1966-1971, Council of Scholars, Library of Congress, 1980-1981. Member National Council Teachers English (director 1956-1957), Massachusetts History Society (correspondent), College English Association (president Chicago area 1957), American Studies Association (president Wisconsin-Northern Illinois chapter 1960-1961), Modern Language Association, Tau Delta Phi.
Married Jayne Porter Newcomer, August 24, 1938. Children: Susanna, Jonathan, Elizabeth.