Douglas Bruton’s With or Without Angels and Hope Never Knew Horizon both made it on to my books of the year list. He writes about art, creativity and love in an original, engagingly imaginative way. Even before reading Woman in Blue I was pretty sure it would be landing alongside this year’s favourites. As many will have spotted from the cover, the titular woman is the subject of an exquisite Vermeer painting which hangs in the Rijksmuseum’s Gallery of Honour. She’s reading a letter, dressed in a blue bedjacket, standing in a soft northern light. Bruton’s brief novella imagines a man who pays daily visits to the museum to gaze at her and her response to that gaze.
I want her to lift her head and catch me looking at her and then to scold me with a hard stare as she clutches her letter fast to her bosom, all the words pressed to her heart and all the words secret again.
The Man in Amsterdam, whose name we never know, is transfixed by the Woman in Blue, finding something new each time he approaches the painting, trying to catch himself off guard as if to see it afresh. His visits are so regular he’s beginning to arouse suspicion amongst the attendants. Sometimes he talks to a fellow viewer, once holding hands with a woman for an hour while they silently gaze at the enigmatic woman in blue who reminds him a little of his first love. He and his wife have become a little distant although she knows not to ask him about his writing before it’s finished for fear his ideas will melt away.
So what does it matter if he has brushed my hair a little prettier that it was, perfected the grace in my fingers holding the letter, straightened my back a little? It is a perfect lie or an imperfect truth. But I will contest that it is still me and no one else.
The Woman in Blue is used to being admired, even loved. She had formed a plan to catch Vermeer’s eye, to become his model and perhaps something more. He borrows his pregnant wife’s bedjacket, arranges the Woman in Blue in the window, giving her a letter each day after she complains that she cannot read blank sheets of paper. Every day she poses for him, dabbing a little rosewater on her neck which he’s requested to be exposed, worrying her mother about her reputation. Eventually, the painting is completed, Vermeer’s child is born and the Woman in Blue is released, her plan achieved. Now she waits for the Man in Amsterdam knowing there will be a stream of others to love her when his visits cease.
And this, all of it, is just a story, which is not to say it isn’t also in some sense true.
Bruton alternates his narrative between the Man in Amsterdam and the Woman in Blue, sketching a story for them both in gorgeous prose which had me scribbling a multitude of quotes. The Man in Amsterdam is engaged in a rich contemplation of this apparently simple painting which holds many secrets, complemented by the imagined story of the Woman in Blue and her relationship with her painter. There’s an intimacy between them: she waits for his visit, catching his thoughts, while he falls a little in love with her, removing his wedding ring before approaching her. A risky device but it works beautifully. It’s a captivating piece of fiction, inspired by Bruton’s visit to the Vermeer exhibition in 2023. I’m hoping he’s already at work on his next book.
Fairlight Books: Oxford 9781914148682 144 pages Paperback (Read via NetGalley)
