An adorable professor emerita named Ruth Butler is publishing Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model-Wives of Cézanne, Monet and Rodin, a look into the world of the women who supported the painters during their heydays (the real-life version of Kate Christensen’s excellent The Great Man, perhaps?). I intend to devour it. She says that even despite plenty of mistreatment, philandering, heartbreak, the models were loyal: “Would Rose have preferred to live with a railroad worker who came home for dinner every night? Would Camille have preferred to be married to a department store owner who would give her all the dresses she wanted? Probably not.”
