I enjoyed this novel and the way it combined history and art and familial drama. I loved that it focused on Berthe Moriah, one of the few women impressionists. This book is set in three time periods, the present day, WWII and late 19th century Paris. The two time periods set in the past is where the book really came to life for me and I found myself wanting that to be the whole book. I just felt that part was so good and the modern day element was a bit of a throw away for me.
I will say this one is a bit of a slow burn at the beginning but when I finally got immersed, I didn’t want to put it down. The characters were well drawn and I loved learnjng about the lives of these real people. History, art, a mystery and a bit of romance…. And oh yes….Paris…. How could I not enjoy this book! Thank you to@NetGalley for an arc of this book.

Impressionism comes to life in this gripping, twisting, dual-timeline tale of family intrigue centered around artists Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot, giants of the French art world. An extremely valuable Impressionist painting by Édouard Manet that was once thought lost is found, leading to the unraveling of a long-buried mystery. Told through dual timelines and narratives mostly by modern-day descendant Tamara Rubin and Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot, the story weaves together a fight for the painting today and the history of Impressionism and the dramas of that time. And, the dramas are juicy!

I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of intrigue! Shapiro expertly paced the two timelines and wove in historical details of the Impressionist art movement, making the drama of the past accessible to modern readers, even if we don’t know much or anything about the art movement or Paris of the late 1800s. Highly recommend this to anyone interested in art historical fiction or drama.

Read THE LOST MASTERPIECE for
✌️ Dual timeline and multiple-POV narratives
🤫 Family secrets and rivalries
🖼️ Impressionist artist insights
✡️ WWII Jewish reparations
⌛️ Twists, turns, and a race to the finish
🔮 A touch of the supernatural
♥️ Closed-door romance

😘 Thank you to @AlgonquinBooks and #NetGalley for the gifted digital ARC and to @TheFuture_Of Agency for finding me and sending a gifted physical copy of the book. So, so grateful! All opinions are my own.

The story of Berthe Morisot was Interesting, especially her relationship with the other Impressionist Artist and their struggle for acceptance in the art world. Her relationship, with Manet is at the heart of the story. I am not a,big fan of none linear stories and did not particularly enjoy Tamara's storyline.

When Tamara inherits Party, she discovers a long-hidden family history replete with unanswered questions: How had it been stolen by the Nazis? How had the painting managed to survive three disasters that destroyed every other artwork around it? And most of all, why had she never known about her ancestor, Berthe Morisot?

This is told in two different time periods, present day and late nineteenth century Paris. I actually liked the present day better than the past. It moved faster and I loved Tamara. Her struggles and her connections to the painting are compelling.

Now, don’t think this is just about the loss and recovery of a painting. There is so much more to this novel. It is a bit of a ghost story as well! And I loved this part of the story. I knew where it was leading but it still kept me fascinated!

I did get this on audible because I can listen faster than I can read. And I really wanted to fit this book into my June reads. The narrators are Lucy Rayner, Christine Lakin, Hannah Curtis, B. A. Shapiro. I was not a big fan of the narrator that did the past section. She just did not sit right with me. But the one that did Tamara’s time period is excellent.

Need a tale with family drama, betrayal and secrets…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today.

I received this novel for a honest review.

4+ stars

“…a work of historical fiction, a combination of facts and imagination that creates something altogether new.” B.A. Shapiro

Those familiar with my book tastes understand this is my happy place - art, history, mystery and unheralded women. In B.A. Shapiro’s new novel she returns to the energy of The Art Forger (2012), a novel still on my Best of All Time List.

Present Day Boston: Tamara Rubin inherits a mysterious and presumed valuable painting Party on the Seine, attributed to Édouard Manet. She falls under its spell as she embarks upon a journey to authenticate the work and legitimize the creator and her own family tree.
1868 Paris: The story of Berthe Morisot begins (in the spirit of Jane Austen novel) and uncovers how she relates to the provenance of the painting and the distorted history of Parisian Impressionism.

Separated by 4 generations, the timelines converge with increasing speed, resulting in a fictional and plausible conclusion.

If you are drawn to art history novels, or those featuring strong female protagonists like Woman at the Wheel by Penny Haw or The Engineer’s Wife by Tracey Enerson Wood, I highly recommend Ms. Shapiro’s latest.

An excellent NY Times visual presentation is one that deepened my connection with the painter and her works. The article is behind a paywall, but perhaps you will have luck when searching The Impressionist Art of Seeing and Being Seen dated 6/4/2021. It is extremely well done!

Many thanks to Net Galley and Algonquin Books for the early copy in exchange for my honest review.

The Lost Masterpiece is worth reading for what it tells us about the complicated creative and emotional life of Berthe Morisot. The sections of the book that place us in late-19th century Paris, among the Impressionists, of whom Berthe Morisot was the only woman—are great. We learn a lot about Morisot and benefit from Shapiro’s empathy in showing Morisot’s struggles to gain respect from her fellow artists, the complex feelings she has to manage dealing with her mother, her strong bond with her sister, and most of all her dangerous, long-lasting love affair with Edouard Manet. Shapiro is very good at tracing the exhilarating ups and excruciating downs of this relationship. Indeed she is very good at bringing to life all the people in this part of the book, the famous and the fictitious ones she invents to help move this part along.

Shapiro also is good at bringing to life the wholly fictitious characters who populate the novel’s present-day part. This part runs in parallel with the part featuring Morisot.

I could have done without this part. The two parallel stories are connected by the discovery of the “lost masterpiece” and the battle over its rightful ownership. The narrator and protagonist in this part of the book is Tamara Rubin. She is not an artist. She works in biotech, managing new products through the FDA approval process and into the market. Perhaps the author gave her this background as a way of reminding us that you do not have to be a humanist to appreciate great art.

Tamara becomes so obsessed with possessing this “lost masterpiece,” that I found myself disliking her and, by extension, disliking anyone who wants to possess great art and not share it with the world. But maybe this is another message Shapiro intended us to get from this book.

I give Shapiro huge credit for the clever ways she links the parallel stories in this novel—even managing to make the present-day part suspenseful. I also admire her skill in describing emotional and physical intimacy. I just wish she had found a way to make her present-day characters as interesting as the ones we know from history.

Thank you Algonquin Books for providing an advance copy in galley form for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

No one writes atmospheric, haunting historical fiction quite like B.A. Shapiro. Told in multiple timelines and POVs, The Lost Masterpiece is the story of a 19th century impressionist, Berthe Morisot.

When Berthe's descendant receives notice that she has inherited a Manet painting, she begins to look into her family's history and uncovers much in the process. An exciting exploration of family secrets, art, with an unexpected supernatural twist, The Lost Masterpiece was an engaging read that will leave you thinking about it for days after you've finished reading.

Some things can be both outlandish and true

Tamara Rubin is smart and a rational thinker and she is absolutely not the type of person to fall for a phone scam, which is exactly what she thinks a man claiming to be Jonathan Stein of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany is trying to pull. Although she is nominally Jewish all the members of both sides of her family left Europe before World War II, so it simply isn't possible that he's on the level. He is, however, persistent, and when she eventually meets with him she discovers that her mother's family, the Bernheims, about whom she knows little were the owners of a famed painting by Édouard Manet called Party on the Seine, one of his most acclaimed paintings which was taken from them by the Nazis and never seen again. Until, that is, it was recently found and the Conference set to work finding the descendant(s) of Colette and Samuel Bernheim who would be the legal heir(s)...namely, Tamara, as her parents are both dead and were the only children of only children. Suddenly, Tamara is the owner of an Impressionist masterpiece valued at many millions of dollars and discovers that she is the descendant of Berthe Morisot, the only female member of the bande of artists who would become known as the Impressionists, an accomplished (though undervalued) artist in her own right and the sister-in-law of Manet. Berthe in fact is the primary figure in the painting, one that will beguile Tamara once it comes into her possession and for which she soon must risk everything if she wants to keep it when the well-funded and influential Édouard Manet Foundation,(in the person of Damien Manet) claims that the painting belongs to them and demands that she turn it over. The life of Berthe unfolds alongside Tamara's tale; she is a woman as talented as (if not more so than) the men with whom she paints and who (unlike them) is limited in what subjects she is allowed to paint and possibly even whether she will be allowed to continue to paint if she marries as her mother insists she must do. She also is attracted to the charming but married philanderer Manet, a relationship which could ruin her reputation and that of her family were it to be made public. She is determined to fulfill her artistic promise even as her affair with Manet explodes, and even though society is as opposed to her career as it is to the Impressionist movement.
The Lost Masterpiece is really two novels in one, the first a thriller set in the world of art as a long-missing and valuable painting reappears and possession of it becomes a pitched battle between a scientifically minded executive who wants to maintain ownership as much because of its connection to her family (a history about which she had known next to nothing) as its monetary value and the man who considers himself the steward of the full Manet oeuvre who will do whatever he must do...threaten Tamara, tempt her with money, ruin her career....to claim the painting for himself and the Foundation he runs which honors his ancestor. Tamara is scrappy, stubborn, and is at a bit of a loss to reconcile her orderly, scientific mind with the feelings of attachment she develops for the painting (and the hints of a supernatural element to it). The other novel contained within the cover is historical fiction detailing the life of Berthe Morisot, her family, her talent, her love life, and her legacy, as well as her circle of friends whose names even the non-artistic amongst us know (Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, etc). The characters, particularly Tamara and her ancestor Berthe, are wonderfully developed, and the backdrops for their stories (particularly France in the later half of the nineteenth century) are richly drawn and full of detail. With an interesting premise thrown in this novel has all the elements of a fascinating read, but I must admit that while I can enjoy novels with a hint of the supernatural to them I didn't enjoy that element in this particular instance. It didn't seem to mesh with the rest of the book for me, I would have preferred perhaps more legal or investigative details to flesh out the story. Still, I found myself fully immersed in the story from cover to cover, and thoroughly enjoyed learning about Berthe and the challenges she faced as well as about the different facets of the art world explored. Readers of Nancy Horan, Sara de Vos and Sarah Dunant should give this a try, and anyone who has enjoyed author B. A. Shapiro's previous novels will find much to like as well. Many thanks to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for allowing me access to this mix of art, history and mystery in exchange for my honest review.

This is a dual-timeline book about a circle of famous painters in late-nineteenth-century Paris, centering on the anguished Impressionist artist Berthe Morisot. One timeline details the life of Berthe Morisot, the one woman in their midst who never got the recognition she deserved. The second timeline takes place in present day, when Morisot’s great-great-great-great granddaughter, Tamara Rubin receives a phone call letting her know she has inherited Édouard Manet’s Party on the Seine, a painting that completely upends her life. As Tamara tries to research the painting, she discovers a long-hidden family history replete with unanswered questions:

Although the painting "Party On the Seine "that Tamara inherits is not an actual Morisot painting, all of the other paintings discussed in the book, as well as the relationships and friendships, were real. The book was a bit of a slow burn, so it took me a little while to really get into the story, but once I did, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't have a lot of knowledge about artists and their works, but that didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book.

I have read other books by B. A. Shapiro and enjoyed them - she has a real feel for portraying unique angles of the art world. So, I was eagerly looking forward to this book, but unfortunately I left it with mixed feelings. The story concerns an American woman who learns that she is a direct descendant of the Impressionist painter Edouard Manet and has inherited one of his paintings. When another descendant of Manet’s challenges her for rightful ownership, and when the painting starts to lead her to Manet’s contemporary Berthe Morisot, she decides to pursue the painting’s provenance to prove it belongs to her.

This might have been a fascinating story were it not for two elements. First, the author chose to fictionalize key elements of Morisot’s life, including the number and names of Morisot’s children, birth and death dates, and the names of paintings. Yes, I know that historical fiction takes liberties (and I do understand making up the name of a painting at the center of the story in order to protect the owners of real works), but I don’t understand some of the choices the author made, which seemed to take liberties with the facts only in order to justify the story she wanted to tell. If you have to do this, why not make up completely fictional characters? In fact, I notice that the publisher has classified this as sci-fi, thriller and women’s fiction, not even historical fiction.

The second problem has to do with the character of Tamara, who inherits the painting. The author has chosen to include a supernatural element which initially seems harmless but as the story progresses, becomes more and more unbelievable. Yes, supernatural elements can be used with great success, but this plot line was simply not believable, and, like the fictionalization discussed above, seems included only because the protagonist would not be able to prove her heritage without it. It doesn’t help that the author portrays Tamara as unstable, flaky, and a regular user of gummies.

I wish I could recommend this book more heartily, because I love Berthe Morisot’s and Edouard Manet’s work, and I agree that Morisot has gotten short shrift in art history. But when a book like this comes out, I always worry (hopefully needlessly) that people who don’t know much about art will assume the elements of the story are true, which does a disservice to the artists being depicted.

Thanks to Algonquin Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Three well-developed characters are tied together across time by one painting. The mystical element, where the modern-day protagonist feels as if the painting communicates with her, feels a bit contrived and over the top to me. That negative became secondary to the great history of the Impressionist movement included here. Wonderful characters and an interesting resolution to the painting's origin story and its historical mystery. This novel has it all...love, adultery, betrayal, adventure...

Based on the blurb, this sounded really intriguing but the execution fell short for me.

I enjoyed the writing within this book but I struggled with one of the main characters, Tamara, and her choices. I also generally did not like this character's personality.

The art history chapters of this book were much better than the present day chapters with Tamara, but I still found the story to be a bit slow and it wasn't too gripping for me. When I read this blurb, I was really hoping for a similar experience to The Goldfinch.

In my opinion, the supernatural aspect felt out of place within this story. What I did enjoy was reading about the artists. Their characters seemed to match up with what I've learned about their real life counterparts. The personalities felt fitting.

Overall, I don't think this was a bad book by any means but I also felt that it struggled to come together in a way that I personally would've liked it to.

Thank you to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

"An enigmatic painting. The mystery of who painted it. A riveting thriller from the bestselling author of The Art Forger.

In a gripping novel full of plot twists, B.A. Shapiro embeds us in a circle of famous painters in late-nineteenth-century Paris, centering on the anguished Impressionist artist Berthe Morisot - the one woman in their midst who never got her due - and the story of Morisot's great-great-great-great granddaughter, Tamara Rubin, who has inherited Édouard Manet's Party on the Seine, a painting that completely upends her life.

When Tamara inherits Party, she discovers a long-hidden family history replete with unanswered questions: How had it been stolen by the Nazis? How had the painting managed to survive three disasters that destroyed every other artwork around it? And most of all, why had she never known about her ancestor, Berthe Morisot? As the painting begins to metamorphose into darker and more terrifying versions of itself, Tamara's ordinary life is thrown into turmoil. What wounds and resentments plagued Morisot, and to what lengths will her spirit go for revenge?

The Lost Masterpiece is a story of love, adultery, betrayal, family secrets, and the grueling birth of Impressionism, taking the reader on a whirlwind adventure from the streets of Paris in the late 1800s and the studio Berthe Morisot shared with Manet, Degas, and Renoir to the present day. Shapiro brings Berthe's world to life, tracing her work through generations of descendants and introducing us to a painter as brilliant and original as her male counterparts across 150 years of triumphs, struggles, passions, animosities, and malevolence."

Justice for Morisot! At least when I was an school we studied her.

Tamara gets a call from an agency working to restore art stolen by the Nazis to the rightful owners. She is now the owner of a painting by Manet. Tamara, who knew little of her family’s history, learns she is related to Berthe Morisot, a female impressionist painter. She has the painting delivered to her apartment. It entrances her, and she feels a strange and eerie connection to the image of Morisot in the painting. This leads us into another story line about Morisot and Manet, their love and the creation of the painting. Meanwhile, Tamara is fighting off a challenge by Manet’s heirs for ownership of the painting. In building her case she grows closer to Morisot and the secret of the painting.

A wonderful read!
This novel drew me in from the very first page and kept me hooked until the end. The characters were vibrant and relatable, the writing was engaging, and the story had just the right balance of heart and humor. Highly recommend!
Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

Let me start by saying that I have read and enjoyed many off B A Shapiro's other books set in the art world. I was expecting this one of be of the same caliber. Sadly- it is not. First- I've grown weary of the then/now narrative style which has been greatly overused in recent years. Second Tamara is supposed to be a brilliant Harvard graduate, but the way she is portrayed as a barely functioning Gen Z, living in her parents basement, who can't get through her day without gummies, and sounded like a teenager.

While I enjoy magical realism when done right, this attempt at magical realism surrounding the painting seemed like it was something thrown in at the last minute to give the painting "more mystery", and fell flat in my opinion. While some reviewers were bothered by the fact that the painting isn't real, I was not. Many good art stories have used a fictional piece of art work and created a very convincing story, making the reader feel as though it is real, to the point they could swear they've actually seen it. Nothing about the description of the painting felt real. It's as though the author combined the qualities of several well-known impressionist paintings into some amalgam of a painting that may have been produced during that time.

The relationship between the Manets and Morisot is well documented, as well as the society of Impressionist painters in Paris. That was probably the strongest part of the book. However, I found much of the dialog trite, and less authentic than it should have been. Instead of portraying the Impressionists as a close group of colleagues and friends, each time they were mentioned felt like an exercise in name dropping.

Thanks to Net Galley for this ARC opportunity.

Only a three for this Shapiro book (I've liked the others much more). Some very interesting scenes about art and artists that I always enjoy in her work, and I liked the holocaust recovery bits as well. I never like stories that make up information about real people -- I don't mind a little artistic license, but not things made up of whole cloth as this book did. I also didn't like the "haunting" aspects. I like magic / ghost stories but it didn't belong here. I would have preferred the double timeline mystery aspect.

For the most part, I enjoyed reading this book especially about Morisot and the limits put on women painters at the beginning of impressionism. Although she painted with Manet, Renoir, Degas etal, she never received the attention she deserved. What I didn't like was the painting "talking" to Tamara. Paranormal is not for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Algonquin Books for the ARC.

My first book that shined a spotlight on artwork stolen by the Nazis and later reunited with the rightful Jewish owners was Woman On Fire by Lisa Barr (which was excellent by the way). Since then, I have read everything I can about this from Monuments Men and to this novel here.

While I did enjoy this book and the different time periods, the main character Tamara (!!!!) just was not my cup of tea. She was the heart of this story and so with that, I give this book three stars. Chloe was my favorite!

A wonderful book for lovers of the Impressionists and history. An excellent example of a well thought out historical fiction novel that takes liberties with histories to create a beautiful narrative that jumps between multiple generations of the Morisot women (some who really lived, most a work of fiction). It brings to light the impressive career of Berthe Morisot who was a part of the original bande of Impressionists yet has not received the claim she deserves. A captivating read with an interesting twist as our main character Tamara discovers whether her painting is causing her insanity or if it’s something worse.