Author of ‘The Renoir Girls’ tells their story to a captivated audience

'The Renoir Girls' by Catherine Ostler. (Photo: Simon & Schuster)[Missing Credit]

However, the lives enjoyed by prominent Jewish families like theirs were soon to unravel. In the aftermath of the Dreyfus Affair, in which a Jewish French artillery officer, Alfred Dreyfus ,was wrongly accused of treason, “the families who were at the top suddenly found themselves at the bottom”, said Ostler, as Jews found themselves ostracised in an increasingly polarised French society, divided between the “Dreyfusards”, who supported Dreyfus, and the “anti- Dreyfusards”, who upheld the officer’s convictions, with their antisemitic overtones.

Ostler reflected: “Suddenly, it becomes about whether you are on the side of the Jews or not”, as antisemitic newspapers like Édouard Drumont’s La Libre Parole surged in popularity, portraying Dreyfus as a symbol of the disloyalty of French Jews.

Despite the initial patriotism and unity provoked by the onset of World War One, in which “Jews proudly fight for France”, the devastation left in its wake led to a swell of antisemitic feeling, as Ostler remarked that, in France, a “non-flourishing economy goes hand in hand with antisemitism”.

Renoir’s portrait, on the surface a symbolic masterpiece of the artist’s ability as a “human paint brush”, was revealed by Ostler to be a richly historical and emotional story of a Jewish family trying to survive in the festering atmosphere of early twentieth century antisemitism.

She told the audience that Elisabeth, despite her early conversion to Catholicism in 1894, was revealed to be Jewish in 1944 by the local mayor and Vichy collaborator, and was tragically deported to Auschwitz, where she was killed.

Catherine Ostler. (Photo: JP Masclet)[Missing Credit]

Ostler also discussed the long and challenging process which accompanied writing the book and documenting a largely forgotten story and led to her getting in touch with the now 94-year-old granddaughter of Alice, Marina Bayliss.

Alice had moved to England in 1898 after marrying Charles Townsend, who was English, but heroically managed to smuggle Marina out of France in 1940 as the Nazis descended.

Ostler shared how she had experienced “a historian’s dream”, when descendants of Alice brought her a black trunk full of diaries, photo albums, private investigation reports and more from their family archives, allowing Ostler a first-hand glimpse into the lives of the extraordinary women she was studying.

When asked exactly how long the process of writing the book took, Ostler chuckled. “My last book came out in 2021, so technically four or five years,” she said, before countering this by admitting her fascination with the Cahen d’Anvers story began over a decade earlier, in 2010. “I sort of tried to resist writing it,” she said, until eventually she realised she was unable to rid herself of her ongoing “obsession”.

While Ostler is not Jewish herself, her book and the conversation with Green reflect a depth of depth of understanding about the complexities faced by a Jewish family in an increasingly prejudiced European society.

The Renoir Girls

By Catherine Ostler

Simon & Schuster