The Artist's Wife

"At the turn of the century, she was "the most beautiful girl in Vienna," intelligent, aristocratic, and adored. Her father was a landscape painter and an Imperial favorite. She herself stood at the threshold of a promising musical career. Her childhood dream had been to follow her Papi's footsteps in the impersonal pursuit of Art. Instead, Alma Mahler turned her considerable talents to becoming a freelance muse.". "Passionate, fickle, brilliant, and alcoholic, she made a series of dazzling conquests, including the composer Gustav Mahler; the architect Walter Gropius, who went on to found the Bauhaus; the author Franz Werfel, who wrote The Song of Bernadette; and the revolutionary painters Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka.". "In The Artist's Wife, Alma Mahler tells her own story, after death and without apology: her childhood in the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire, her climb to the heights of Central Europe's beau monde, the struggles of her three marriages, the deaths of three of her children, her flight from Hitler's Anschluss, and her exile in Golden Age Hollywood.". "It was an extraordinary life, encompassing poverty and wealth, celebrity and isolation, and ranging from the court of the Habsburgs to Beatles-era Manhattan."--BOOK JACKET.