Julian Russell Story

Julian Russell Story was born on 8 September 1857 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England, to American parents. His father was the sculptor, poet, and critic William Wetmore Story, and he was educated in the traditional English pattern, at Eton College and then Brasenose College, Oxford, from which the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection records indicate he graduated in 1879. He turned to art after his schooling, studying painting under the American expatriate Frank Duveneck in Venice from 1879, then in Munich, and later in Paris, where he trained under Jules Lefebvre, Gustave Boulanger, Henri Gervex, and Ferdinand Humbert, including study at the Academie Julian.

From the early 1880s to around 1900, Story exhibited regularly at the Paris Salon, building a reputation as a portraitist to European and expatriate society. His painting The Black Prince at Crecy, made for the 1890 Exposition Universelle in Paris, won a silver medal there; he won a gold medal at the Berlin Salon in 1891 and a further silver medal at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris. The French government made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, in 1900 according to most sources, though the Victoria and Albert Museum's records give 1901. He married the American soprano Emma Eames in 1891; they divorced in 1907. In 1909 he married Elaine Sartori Bohlen in London; the couple had three children.

Story died of cancer in a Philadelphia hospital in late February 1919, at age 61. Most secondary sources, including Wikipedia and 1000Museums, give the date as 24 February 1919, while the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection record gives 23 February 1919. The exact day cannot be confirmed from the sources available, though the month, year, place, and cause of death are consistently reported.

Contemporary press commentary on Story's work is not well documented in the sources available today, and no exact, attributable quotation from a named critic in a major outlet could be confirmed. What survives is institutional description rather than critical debate: museum and reference sources consistently characterize him as a noted portrait painter of his generation, a reading supported by his run of Salon and exposition medals through the 1890s and his Legion of Honor appointment around 1900. Beyond that consistent institutional framing, no substantive critical discourse about his work could be verified.

Public auction data for Julian Russell Story is sparse. The highest price documented for his work is EUR 29,580, realized at Dorotheum in Vienna on 10 November 2011, against a presale estimate of EUR 8,000 to 12,000, for a full-length portrait signed and dated 1898 that the auction house catalogued as depicting Count Louis Vorow Zborowski with his dog. By contrast, a separate work sold at Heritage Auctions in 2010 realized just USD 310.70, illustrating how wide the range can be between a strong Salon-period society portrait and a minor or damaged lot. No sale exceeding the 2011 Dorotheum result has been identified through 2026.

Story's market is small and unevenly documented, with only a handful of verifiable public sale prices and a wide gap between his best and weakest results, so any single auction figure should be read with caution rather than treated as a stable benchmark. There is no catalogue raisonne and no current commercial gallery or estate representation has been identified, which places extra weight on signature, exhibition history, and institutional provenance when evaluating a work. Collectors should also note the variant name forms under which his work is catalogued, including "Story, Julian Russell" and the shortened signature "Julian Story," all of which refer to the same artist.