I can’t resist an art theme as regular readers of this blog will know and Lucy Steeds’s debut The Artist sounded particularly intriguing. Set in Provence over the summer of 1920, it begins and ends in 1957 with a woman gazing at a painting she knows intimately in London’s National Gallery.
No. Ettie knows better now. Tata is always selective in what he destroys. It is no coincidence that he chose to ruin the thing she had worked so hard to create.
Trying to establish himself as a writer specialising in art, Joseph dares to approach the renowned artist and notorious recluse Edouard Tartuffe for an interview, thrilled by the one-word response: ‘Venez’. Joseph left the Slade after a year, already much disparaged by his father for his stance as a conscientious objector to a war which his older brother had strode confidently towards. He makes his way to the tiny hamlet where Tartuffe has shut himself away with his niece, somewhat taken aback when the irascible artist demands that he model for a portrait, brusquely agreeing that Joseph can write about him in return. The artist’s every need is attended to by Ettie, so self-effacing Joesph barely notices her at first. Ettie has hardly left the farmhouse where she and her uncle live, filled with a longing to experience the world and explore the talent her uncle has done his best to squash. In 1920, the consequences of war are still painfully present, Joseph grieving his vibrant adventurous brother who has returned from the front broken; Ettie remembering the horrors she witnessed as a volunteer nurse. As the summer wears on, Joseph unravels a perplexing mystery and Ettie sees a way for her talent to be recognised.
The sunlight is buttery, the terrace sandy under his feet. There is an end-of-summer mellowing in the air. The greenness of the trees is like a painted parasol, shading the scene with a cool sweetness.
Steeds’s novel is gorgeously immersive, the summer Provencal landscape and the food it produces vividly evoked. Her descriptions of art are arresting as you might expect from a writer whose day job is lecturing on the subject. Unfolded from the alternating perspectives of Ettie and Joseph, the novel is framed by the two short London passages which sets us up nicely for a summer that ends dramatically and satisfyingly completes the story. Steeds’s overarching theme is the age-old dismissal of women’s artistic talent, still alive and kicking in the early twentieth century, skilfully explored through gripping storytelling, replete with small reveals, including a very satisfying one following a scene in which a female collector puts her boorish male companions firmly in their ignorant place. Clever title, too. I’m keen to see what Steeds comes up with next.
John Murray London 9781399819565 304 pages Hardback (read via NetGalley)
