ArtCurious · Jennifer Dasal/ArtCurious

THE CLUB: Have a Listen to This Exclusive Excerpt!

July 14, 2025·21 min·1 clip

Jennifer Dasal shares an exclusive excerpt from her book about American women artists finding refuge in Belle Epoque Paris.

Jennifer Dassel, host of the ArtCurious podcast, opens the episode by announcing the July 15, 2025 publication of her book 'The Club: Where American Women Artists Found Refuge in Belle Époque Paris,' published by Bloomsbury. She describes it as a true story of pioneering American women who traveled to Paris at the turn of the 20th century to pursue careers in art, at a time when the art world was dominated by men. Dassel notes she also narrated the audiobook and shares an excerpt to give listeners a taste. The excerpt begins with Chapter 5, titled 'The Minister's Wife,' opening with a 1909 quote from Town and Country praising Elizabeth Mills Reid as a patron saint to American girl students in Paris. The chapter establishes the context of the American colony in Paris buzzing over President Benjamin Harrison's 1889 appointment of journalist and politician Whitelaw Reid as U.S. Minister to France. The narration traces Whitelaw Reid's biography from his origins in Xenia, Ohio, through his Civil War correspondence for the Cincinnati Gazette, his coverage of the Battle of Shiloh, and his eventual purchase of the New York Tribune, where he introduced the linotype machine to build wealth. Elizabeth Mills Reid's background is equally detailed: she was the daughter of Darius Ogden Mills, a 49er who became the wealthiest man in California through gold and silver mining, banking, and railroad investment. Elizabeth's early life included childhood in Sacramento and San Mateo County, education at the Brackett School for Girls in New York, and a formative stint in Paris as a teenager at a school in Montmartre run by Aline Vallette, a feminist educator who championed women's rights and mothers' education. In 1874, Elizabeth was confirmed into the Episcopalian Church at the American Cathedral in Paris alongside confirmation classmate John Singer Sargent. After completing her education, Elizabeth devoted herself to philanthropy — establishing hospitals, Red Cross chapters, and nursing schools — the only acceptable career for a woman of her social standing. Her courtship with Whitelaw Reid, 20 years her senior and far less wealthy than her family, involved two years of long-distance correspondence and some family resistance, but Elizabeth's own insistence carried the day. The couple married on April 26, 1881, at the Mills family's Fifth Avenue mansion before 250 guests. Whitelaw Reid's political ambitions had aimed at the ambassadorship to the Court of St. James's, but he ultimately accepted the lesser post of Minister to France under Harrison, relocating his family to Paris in spring 1889. In Paris, Elizabeth Reid was widely covered in society pages for hosting lavish balls and luncheons, but she also embedded herself in the American colony's charitable networks. The narration describes the American colony as a self-contained Right Bank enclave — with American restaurants, an English bookstore, a Paris edition of the New York Herald, American dentists, and even a baseball club drawn from male students at the Académie Julienne — criticized as too French by Americans and too American by the French. Elizabeth's connection to the American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, where she had been confirmed decades earlier, drew her into charitable planning with fellow congregants. The excerpt ends on a cliffhanger as Elizabeth meets a Mrs. William Newell and learns of a secondary American colony in far greater need of support — the community of American women art students that forms the heart of the book.

As heard by us

A poised preview of The Club, using Elizabeth Mills to trace wealth, duty, and constrained influence in Belle Epoque Paris.

Jennifer Dassel turns this ArtCurious installment into a preview of The Club, her book about American women artists seeking room to work in Belle Epoque Paris.

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Why you'd press play

A bookish look at American women artists in Belle Epoque Paris, with the social rules that shaped their lives.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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