John Richardson's father was Sir Wodehouse Richardson, a highly
successful quartermaster in Britain's pre-1914 imperial campaigns
who ended up founding the Army and Navy Stores. His maternal
relations were butlers and ladies' maids to the Rothschilds at
Mentmore. 'My upstairs-downstairs back-ground has proved, if
anything, an advantage,' writes Richardson. It meant he could
operate - socially, morally and intellectually speaking - free from
orthodox restrictions or prejudices. The liberating sense of being
an outsider was reinforced by 12 years' apprenticeship to the art
historian Douglas Cooper. The two met in 1949 when Richardson was
25: a handsome, passionate and penniless art-lover, 13 years
younger than Cooper, who had already built up the unrivalled
collection of Cubist masterpieces which enabled him to terrorize
the art world through a series of fearsome public vendettas. This
rip-roaring memoir covers the years the couple spent together in
Cooper's castle in Provence, which served as a kind of court annexe
for Picasso and his entourage. Regular visitors - ranging from
Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten to Anthony Blunt, W H Auden and
Angus Wilson - represented the cream of what Richardson calls la
haute pederastie. Kenneth Clarke left a vivid account of the
founding father of all art historians, Bernard Berenson, whom he
saw as a latterday Faust: a man of incomparably astute and refined
sensibility whose dealings with the art market meant selling his
sould to the devil. When Cooper and his companion visited Berenson
just before he died, Richardson came away convinced that his master
had made the same bargain. The Sorcerer's Apprentice tells the
story of an extraordinary, complex and often ferocious affair which
ended ostensibly in 1960 but was only finally resolved with
Cooper's death in 1984, and the dedication to his memory seven
years later of Richardson's definitive life of Picasso. Review by
Hilary Spurling, whose books include 'The Unknown Matisse' (Kirkus
UK)
The Sorcerer's Apprentice is John Richardson's vivid memoir of the
time he spent living with and learning from the deeply
knowledgeable and temperamental art collector, Douglas Cooper. For
ten years the two entertained a circle of friends that included
Jean Cocteau, W. H. Auden, Tennessee Williams, and, most
intriguingly, Pablo Picasso. Compulsively readable and beautifully
illustrated, this book is both a triple portrait of the author,
Cooper, and Picasso, and a revealing look at a crucial artistic
period.
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