A Paris Life, A Baltimore Treasure

"With rich period detail and a genuine warmth towards its subject, it is eminently readable. Written for scholars and a general audience alike A Paris Life, a Baltimore Treasure amplifies Lucas's vital role in linking collectors in the United States and French artists during the highpoint of American buying power, from the Civil War until the mid 1880s, a story that, to date, has only been told in temporary exhibitions of Lucas's collection."

"Mazaroff details three decades of uncertainty over the ownership and importance of Lucas's gift. This story is greatly enhanced by the fact that most of the actors in the legal drama, which played out from the 1960s to the 1990s, gave interviews to the author; this oral history is the kind of vital inside information that scholars in future decades will relish. The book raises questions about art and money, personal enthusiasms and institutional priorities, and the grey areas in between, which make the process of shepherding gifts of art so political and complex."

"Stanley Mazaroff has thoughtfully recreated the legacy of one of America’s best documented late-nineteenth-century French art collections—its formation by a well-connected expatriate, its journey across time and space as taste and its institutional keepers changed, and its enduring significance both for scholars and the city that preserved it."

"A Paris Life, A Baltimore Treasure explores two compelling stories in sequence: the extraordinary life, work, and collecting habits of George Lucas, one of the least known but most influential Americans in Paris in the nineteenth century, and the dramatic tale of what happened to his collection once it found its way after his death to his native Baltimore. A significant contribution to the growing literature exposing the mechanisms of the transatlantic art market in the late-nineteenth century, Mazaroff’s book rightfully inserts George Lucas as a protagonist in the construction of the American private collection—and ultimately the civic museum—in the twentieth century. Equally compelling is Mazaroff’s account of the ultimate fate of Lucas’s own collection, one that was complementary rather than commensurate with the collections he built for others. A true Baltimore tale (and featuring a few of the most famous art-world celebrities!), A Paris Life, A Baltimore Treasure is a page-turning account of one of the most complex and exciting cultural battles fought in twentieth-century America. A terrific read!"

"Stanley Mazaroff's elegantly written account of all facets of the life and career of George A. Lucas provides a much needed and reliable source for the activity of this influential agent to art collectors. Mazaroff's work expands our appreciation of the cultural life of Belle Époque Paris and Gilded Age America."

"A solidly researched book that draws on an impressive range of archival sources, A Paris Life, A Baltimore Treasure is a meticulous and convincing examination of the construction and fate of a collection."

"As an attorney, the author is uniquely qualified to assess the legal battle over George Lucas’s collection that roiled Baltimore’s cultural institutions in the 1990s. Even more remarkable is Mazaroff’s lucid account of Lucas’s career as an art advisor and aesthete. He describes vividly the art world in Paris during the Gilded Age, and the timeliness of Lucas’s role in the formation of some of the most significant art collections in America."

"Combining a thoroughly researched, exhaustive account of the cultural life of Baltimore during the early nineteenth century with a balanced assessment of expatriate George A. Lucas's career and art holdings, A Paris Life, A Baltimore Treasure is an insightful analysis that draws on Mazaroff's legal experience and familiarity with almost all of the individuals involved."

"This timely book illuminates the tangled relationship between the cultural and pecuniary value of art, and maps the shifting, often tenuous, grounds on which these values are established. At the same time A Paris Life, A Baltimore Treasure lovingly resurrects George Lucas, one of America’s most influential and romantic expatriates. Meticulously researched, for both the general reader and scholar, this book charts new ground in the history of collecting."