Amazon.com (ISBN 006019622X, Hardcover)

Hilary Spurling's masterful biography The Unknown Matisse mentioned the little-known story of Thérèse Humbert, the woman who brought financial disgrace on the great artist's family. In La Grande Thérèse, she devotes an entire book--slim though it is--to this fascinating subject. A hundred years ago the fabulously wealthy Thérèse Humbert and her husband lived like royalty on a fashionable street in Paris, where they employed Matisse's parents-in-law as servants. Thérèse let it be known that she had had an even wealthier American lover, and she paid for her extravagant lifestyle by borrowing money against the legacy he'd left her. But his children disputed the will, she claimed, and the subsequent lawsuits dragged on for years. Meanwhile the Humberts lived it up, socializing with the great and the good and running up debts all the while. In this wittily piquant morality tale, Spurling describes the spectacular rise and fall of a cunning French peasant girl with a wicked imagination and irresistible powers of persuasion. Thérèse died in disgrace and without a penny, but her hoax had fooled an entire society. As told by Spurling, her story is as rich and entertaining as anything by Dickens or Zola. --Lilian Pizzichini