Essential reading on the Camondo family is Nora Şeni and Sophie Le Tarnec, Les Camondo ou l’éclipse d’une fortune, Arles, Actes Sud, 1997 and Pierre Assouline, Le Dernier des Camondo, Paris, Gallimard, 1997. A wonderful exhibition catalogue on the family is La Splendeur des Camondo de Constantinople à Paris 1806–1945, Paris, Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, 2009. The key book on the creation of the Museum is the beautifully illustrated Musée Nissim de Camondo: La demeure d’un collectionneur, Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, 2007, republished in English as The Camondo Legacy: The passions of a Paris Collector, London, Thames & Hudson, 2008. The recent publication of Nissim’s letters is invalu- able: Le Lieutenant Nissim de Camondo Correspondance et Journal de Campagne 1914–1917, Paris, Les Arts Décoratifs, 2017. Anne Sebba, Les Parisiennes, New York, St Martin’s Press, 2016 has a substantial chapter on Beatrice Reinach.
For the background to Jewish life in France I am indebted to Pierre Birnbaum, trans. Jane Marie Todd, The Jews of the Republic, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1996 and to Michael Graetz, trans. Jane Marie Todd, The Jews in Nineteenth-Century France, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1996. Cyril Grange, Une élite parisienne: les familles de la grande bourgeoisie juive (1870–1939), Paris, CNRS Editions, 2016 is essential to understand the economic milieu.
On the development of the Rue de Monceau I recommend Fredric Bedoire, The Jewish Contribution to Modern Architecture 1830–1930, Stockholm, 2004 and for the building of Villa Kerylos, Adrien Goetz, Villa Kérylos, Paris, Grasset, 2019, translated as Villa of Delirium, New York, New Vessel Press, 2019.
Two terrific recent novels have retraced part of this story: Fillipo Tuena, Le variazioni Reinach, Rome, SuperBEAT, 2015 and Adrien Goetz, Villa Kérylos.
For background reading on taste and connoisseurship I recommend Charlotte Vignon, Duveen Brothers and the Market for Decorative Arts, 1880–1940, New York, D. Giles Ltd, 2019 and Colin B. Bailey, Renoir’s Portraits: Impressions of an Age, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997.
Finally, the key texts that I have used in reference to Vichy France
and the Holocaust are Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton,
Vichy France and the Jews, New York, Basic Books, 1983; David
Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich, London, HarperCollins, 1981;
Sarah Gensburger, Images d’un Pillage: Album de la spoliation des
juifs a Paris, 1940–1944, Paris, Textuel, 2010; Renée Poznanski, Jews
in France during World War II, Waltham, MA, Brandeis University
Press, 2002; Robert Paxton, La France de Vichy (1940–1944), Paris,
Points Histoire, 1973; and Alan Riding, Et la fête continue: la vie
culturelle à Paris sous l’Occupation, Paris, Flammarion, 2012.