VICTORINE by Drema Drudge

Posted on May 24, 2021 by admin

Victorine by Drema Drudge is tour-de-force of exquisite writing with a bold female protagonist by the name of Victorine. A woman in pursuit of her own expressive voice in the epic center of the world of art in 1863 Paris, France. At the outset of the story she is the favored model of Manet. But she harbors her secret desire to create works of art of her own. She’s a complex character in multiple ways with a burning compulsions to paint at a pivotal time of art making in Europe.

This is no sweet pansy of muses but a full artistic persona in her own right. She’s opinionated yet vulnerable and insecure in her intellectual astuteness. Through the pages Drudge reveals her sensually wild, exploratory creative appetite seeking visual expression, a character who surprises the reader endlessly.

There are so many wonderful art insights and passages throughout this novel. It is a delight to meet Victorine; to come to know this passionate and frustrated artistic heart. A delight to walk alongside her in the art show rooms, fellow artists eyes upon her as she commands attention with her mere presence, as they seek her opinion and in some cases approval.

As Victorine begins to befriend and feel threatened by other female painters she confront her own inner insecurities, judgements, and the challenges of her social position. All of which prod her on to pursue her own dream to paint.

There are many deep and meaningful nuances throughout this story. Ones that pose questions to the reader around women’s position, power, and place in the world. Women’s agency itself. The author explores the dark under current of the disturbing yet true desires of people.

Drudge has masterfully constructed the intimate world of artists and muse and inner drives to create art whatever the obstacles and cost. The writing is superb throughout, and as for the characterizations of this collection of artistic giants known and unknown. A must read for all those interested in the artistic inner world complexities and wonderous spirits that have given us the pleasure of their enduring works of art still to this day.

Drēma Drudge suffers from Stendhal’s Syndrome, the condition in which one becomes overwhelmed in the presence of great art. She attended Spalding University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program where she learned to transform that intensity into fiction. She and her husband, musician and writer Barry Drudge, live in Indiana where they record their biweekly podcast, ‘Writing All the Things’, when not traveling. Her first novel, Victorine, was literally written in six countries while she and her husband wandered the globe. The pair has two grown children.

In addition to writing fiction, Drēma has served as a writing coach, freelance writer, and educator. For more about her writing, art, and travels, please visit her website, www.dremadrudge.com, and sign up for her newsletter. She’s always happy to connect with readers in her Facebook group, The Painted Word Salon, or on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Love of Art in Historical Fiction Series featuring Frederick Andresen & The Lady with an Ostrich-Feather Fan

Posted on August 29, 2015 by admin

The Lady with an Ostrich-Feather Fan: The Story of the Yusupov Rembrandts by Frederick R. Andresen recounts the inception and life history of two of Rembrandt’s most celebrated masterpieces: The Lady with an Ostrich-Feather Fan and Portrait of a Gentleman with Tall Hat and Gloves. The story takes us through the centuries, through country upheavals, and the ongoing responsibility to protect these exquisite portraits by courageous female protagonists charged with seeing to the welfare and care of these important works of art. Historically fascinating, this novel shows us the long enduring struggle great artworks and their caretakers have weathered as well as the demands of familial ties.

The story explores what those in search of gaining or maintaining societal status will suffer in the name of art, family, and personal honor. They risk their lives to preserve these family treasures, to keep them safe from the threats of revolution, obsessive parties, personal interests, and finally American law — until the paintings find a place to call home.

The book is unique in its scope of recreating the history behind these two important paintings and what they and their family custodians endured through the centuries so that we today are now blessed with the ability to enjoy and view these extraordinary masterpieces.

Stephanie Renee dos Santos: Will you please tell us about the unique structuring of the novel? Why did you chose this particular format?

Frederick Andresen: The format is dictated by the long, exciting, and sometime perilous journey of these extraordinary paintings. The Rembrandts and their descendant family of caretakers witnessed critical points of history and were threatened by life-changing events. While the time zones of these 282 years and evolving historic places can be divided into six ages, the story still fits into a broadly expressed dramatic three acts. The format is natural as the story is based on actual facts and historic events.

Act 1 Holland: The life expectation of portraits being painted, the artistic immortalization by Rembrandt, the sudden death of the woman, the ups and downs of the Dutch Golden Age, the paintings’ removal via auction to Paris where the Russian connection occurs as the “Lady” and the “Gentleman” escape the threat of the French Revolution and are taken to “safe” Russia by the famed and rich Yusupov family.

Act 2 Russia: The Rembrandts and their protecting family ownership over the entire eighteenth century, the dramatic threats from war and domestic uprising and the eventual fall of the Russian Empire, including the murder of the notorious monk, Rasputin, by the controversial Felix Yusupov who then escaped sure death with his jewels and the Rembrandts, to London.

Act 3 The Western Art World: The future of the Rembrandts at the whim and tactics of possessive art collectors, agents, and a scheming Felix Yusupov, ending in a New York courtroom where the art is possessed by the famous Widener family who finally give the entire collection to the new Mellon museum in Washington, DC., the 1942 wartime opening days of the National Gallery of Art where representatives of the Dutch legation view the art, along with the woman Dutch official who is a direct descendent of the woman in the portrait.

SRDS: What compelled you to include art and artist in your historical novel?

FA: One afternoon I was in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC and I happened to call a friend who asked me if I knew of the Yusupov Rembrandts. I said, “No,” so I went to see these famous portraits. In about an hour I had the start of a story. Why? It was the eyes—the eyes of the lady in Portrait of a Lady with an Ostrich- Feather Fan and her partner in Portrait of a Gentleman with Tall Hat and Gloves. They set me wondering about the message in the eyes of those mysterious characters, especially the eyes of the woman—Rembrandt’s woman.

Both paintings in their now home The National Gallery in Washington D.C

The driving force was The Lady with an Ostrich-Feather Fan painting and the story wanting to come out from behind those eyes. When I questioned NGA Curator Arthur Wheelock, Jr., I could see the path for a story was open to explore.

SRDS: What drew you to your specific visual art medium, artwork, and/or artist?

FA: Rembrandt! What else! But also the environment of The Golden Age, Holland’s magnificent seventeenth century. And what was to follow in European history and the how the art was protected and guided through that tumultuous time — 282 years until the paintings find their home in the NGA.

SRDS: What unique historical objects, places and/or documents inspired the story?

Moika Palace of the Yusupov family in St. Petersburg with the largest art collection in Imperial Russia, including the two portrait Rembrandts, called home in the late 1800s

FA: The Dutch Golden Age, Czar Peter the Great’s visit to Holland, The French Revolution, the historic Yusupov family, the Russian 19th Century especially in St. Petersburg, The Russian Revolution and fall of the aristocracy, the murder of Rasputin, post war England and America, The Widener family, the founding of the National Gallery of Art by Mellon.

SRDS: Is there an art history message you’ve tried to highlight within the novel?

FA: The art history message is that there is so often a history to art, surely unexpected or known to the artist, and often unnoticed by the succeeding owners, museums, etc. And history is filled with that entertaining trick called “unintended consequences.”

SRDS: What do you think readers can gain by reading stories with art tie-ins?

FA: The art subject is an innocent character in an unpredictable series of events. In well-written historical fiction, the fiction becomes real, and the history is seen through new eyes.

SRDS: What fascinating information did you uncover while researching but were unable to incorporate into the book, but can share here?

FA: Oh, so much. There is the story of the “Seven Rembrandts” and the one about “Coco Chanel and who? Rasputin?”

It is amazing how things “happen.” As a side event to the Russian Revolution, a deciding one in some people’s minds, was the murder of the mystic Gregori Rasputin by, it was popularly assumed, Prince Felix Yusupov. In my historical novel The Lady with an Ostrich-Feather Fan, this short side-story actually took place after that famous murder. But my story here is not about Prince Felix Yusupov or even Rasputin, both of whom figure largely in my book. This is about a happening that resulted from the Yusupov/Rasputin affair—an “unintended consequence” as they say. In researching and writing, many side stories surface, some new and some known. This is a truthful and fun one.

It involves Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich, first cousin of Czar Nicolas II, and who was one of the handful of conspirators, led by Prince Felix Yusupov, who murdered Rasputin in the basement room of the Yusupov Palace on the Moika in Saint Petersburg in December, 1916. Czar Nicholas II sent the murdering conspirators far out of town and Dimitri was sent to a military unit in Persia. In the next year, 1917, it was all over for Czarist Russia and the Grand Duke never returned to his homeland. Like many other fleeing Russians, he ended up in Paris. And who do you think took notice of the aristocrat’s arrival? Coco Chanel. She was eleven years his senior but that didn’t stop either one.

The French perfume business was booming because the scents didn’t last past eleven in the evening. So they bathed in the stuff. (Can you imagine?) However, as I heard the story, Dimitri said to Coco that she should not sell big bottles of perfume for cheap prices, but small bottles for high prices. There is much written about this affair. Dimitri introduced Coco to Ernest Beaux, a successful Russian-born perfumier from St. Petersburg. Beaux’s grandfather was part of the Napoleon invasion of Russia in 1812, was captured by the Russians and upon release, decided to stay there. Ernest Beaux found himself in France after World War 1. His French employer, Rallet, would not follow his suggestions. From his Russian experience, Beaux insisted that the addition of deer musk would make the perfume last the night. On Dimitri’s suggestion, Coco hired Beaux, added deer musk to the eighty-some other ingredients and voilà- we have Chanel No. 5. That was 1920.

The Coco-Dimitri affaire lasted a year and while she moved on to others, the relationship is indeed historic. You may have seen the film “Igor and Coco” about her affair with Stravinsky. It seems she liked Russians—famous Russians. But as an unintended consequence of the murder of Rasputin, our lovely ladies have Chanel No. 5. Ce qui arrive, arrive.

To read more about all this read Chanel by Edmonde Charles~Roux.

SRDS: Any further thoughts on art in fiction you’d like to expand on?

Self Portrait by Rembrandt

FA: “The painting is not over until the viewer walks away.” I don’t know the source, but it comes out in Act 1, the painting by Rembrandt. This is true and because the viewer, each viewer in fact, may well come away with a different message or feeling, it is story, you can call it fiction. So as art may move to varying cultural environments, the reaction, the message changes.

SRDS: Are you working on a new historical novel with an art tie-in? If so, will you share a little with us about your next release?

FA: Oh yes, but let’s first get the present “art in fiction” story published and in the hands of the reader. But, yes, there is a new idea. In The Hermitage is the famed painting by Rembrandt of The Prodigal Son. That parable of Jesus is my favorite—what a story! When one looks deeper into the possible mind of Rembrandt and his last years, this being his last painting, what are the signals in the painting. After long study of the painting, I have a story and one which is universal and eternal. And I plan to set it in early California. But first, The Lady with the Ostrich Feather Fan will see the light.

About the author: Fred Andresen draws on a lifetime of international adventure and travel. A businessman in Asia, Europe and Russia, he founded his success on understanding the people, their history, and their stories. He lived in Russia for six years and has continued to maintain an interest there for the last twenty years. He writes historical fiction and non-fiction: The Lady with an Ostrich-Feather Fan: The Story of the Yusupov Rembrandts; Walking on Ice: An American Businessman in Russia (2007), which details his Russian experience with an “openly Chekhovian” narration, according to Andrei Zolotov, Jr., of Russia Profile; Dos Gringos (2010) is a true and hilarious account of his Norwegian immigrant father’s escapades in The Mexican Revolution. “A Norwegian and an Irishman meet in a Texas bar…” His essays and short stories have appeared in magazines in Russia, England, and America.

He is a Director of Chamber Orchestra Kremlin and was president of the Los Angeles- St. Petersburg Sister City Committee. A graduate of Thunderbird School of Global Management and Colorado State University.

A guiding motto of Fred‘s adventures and storytelling is Robert Frost’s “Two roads diverged in a wood, And I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

For more about Fred’s works:

www.fandresen.com

To buy: The Lady with an Ostrich-Feather Fan: The Story of the Yusupov Rembrandts

Join us here August 26th for an interview with Laura Morelli, author of The Gondola Maker!

Interview posting schedule:

2014: August 30th Susan Vreeland, Lisette’s List (new release), September 27th Anne Girard, Madame Picasso (new release),October 25th Yves Fey, Floats the Dark Shadow, November 29th Mary F. Burns, The Spoils of Avalon (new release), December 27th Kelly Jones, The Woman Who Heard Color

2015: January 31st Heather Webb, Rodin’s Lover (new release), February 28th Alyson Richman, The Mask Carver’s Son, March 28th Maureen Gibbon, Paris Red (new release), April 11th M.J Rose, The Witch of Painted Sorrows (new release), April 25th Lisa Brukitt, The Memory of Scent, May 30th Lisa Barr, Fugitive Colors, June 27th Nancy Bilyeau, The Tapestry (new release) , July 25th Andromeda Romano-Lax, The Detour, August 29th Frederick Andresen,The Lady with an Ostrich Feather Fan, September 26 Laura Morelli, The Gondola Maker

Join Facebook group “Love of Arts in Fiction”!

Love of Art in Historical Fiction Series featuring Andromeda Romano-Lax & The Detour

Posted on July 25, 2015 by admin

The Detour by Andromeda Romano-Lax is a well-written and time period atmospheric novel. In 1938 Germany, art expert, Ernst Vogler is sent to Italy by the Third Reich’s Sonderprojekte, which is procuring Europe’s masterpieces on orders from the Führer. Vogler is to see to the transport of a famous Classical Roman marble statue, The Discus Thrower, and deliver it from Italy to the German border. It is to be a simple three-day mission.

But things immediately go awry upon his arrival in Rome. Escorted by Italian police twin brothers, Vogler sets out to fulfill his assignment while not being able to really confirm if the sculpture is in their possession as they truck it to the Gestapo. Meanwhile, the brothers seem to have other agendas: the pursuit of romance and suspect criminal side jobs. Vogler loses control of the delivery. As the twins steer the task off-track and onto a detour in which Vogler fears he may lose his work position, the highly sought after work of art, his life. When the whole mission spins out of complete control Volger is forced to find a way to survive and meet totally unexpected challenges; while discovering beauty, charm and love along the back-roads of the Italian countryside on the brink of World War II.

The Detour is full of flowing prose, fascinating observations on art and sculpture, interesting Italian folkloric tradition details, reveals disturbing Nazi policies and values, and closes with a surprising ending.

Be awed and admire artworks of the past and do whatever it takes for a masterpiece to live on…

Stephanie Renee dos Santos: Where and how did you glean your knowledge about sculpture? As there are many insightful passages about the medium in The Detour that I found exquisite and educational.

Andromeda Romano-Lax: The original statue was a bronze, now lost, created by Myron in about 450 BC. Many Roman marble copies were made, and one can read here and there about the discoveries and histories of each; I found information online, in footnotes of art books, and in museum guides. But my greatest information came from seeing the statue in person, in Rome. Comments by art historians helped provide a context and helped me appreciate what I had the pleasure of seeing with my own eyes: a figure that is dynamic–about to release the discus–but also static, frozen in that aesthetically pleasing but not exactly realistic posture. (The inherent symbolism of that balance between action and paralysis intrigued me, offering parallels to the lives of Germans in the late 1930s, including my main character.) The discus thrower has a calm expression on his face. The musculature is perfect, and the male figure is generic, blending styles from two eras and speaking to an ideal (noble and impersonal; poised for action but not straining) that resonated greatly with German collectors. Perhaps the best thing about seeing the statue in its current location and visiting the place where it was briefly kept, in Munich, was being able to contrast it more easily with many other ancient statues, illuminating what was particularly special about this one coveted work of art.

SRDS: What compelled you to include art and artist in your historical novel?

ARL: I’d already written about classical music as well as more general artistic themes, including the subject of political pressure put upon artists, in my first novel, The Spanish Bow. I wasn’t intentionally looking for a new art subject, but then I happened to see a photo of the Discus Thrower with a footnote explaining that Hitler was obsessed with the ancient marble and succeeded in buying it, against the objections of many, in 1938. I immediately wanted to know: what was so special about this statue? Why did it speak to Hitler, and how could one particular piece of art symbolize Nazi intentions? Through my first novel, I’d discovered many odd connections between the world’s greatest art, politics, and individual obsessions. Looking only at a small photo, I couldn’t tell why this statue would matter so much, but I felt the first tingles of a potentially fascinating exploration.

SRDS: What drew you to your specific visual art medium, artwork, and/or artist?

Discus Thrower by Romano-Lax with children

The Discus Thrower

ARL: I love art and music but I had never spent much time looking at statues. All art begs to be seen in person, but a three-dimensional statue is really different in life than a photo of the same piece. I knew from the start I would have to visit this statue in Rome—not a bad “must” to have on one’s to-do list! When I made that trip, in 2009, I loved being able to walk around the piece, seeing it from all angles, appreciating marble’s qualities in natural light, and also seeing it in relation to other statues. When you think of the paintings and statues that are immediately recognizable to many people around the globe, there really aren’t that many. Why does this statue represent the idealized human form; what does it say about beauty, athleticism, perfection, controlled emotions, dynamism without strain, ancient Greece and 20th century Germany? Why did it represent an artistic advance in one era, and an ideological tragedy in another? I wanted to find out.

SRDS: What unique historical objects and/or documents inspired the story?

ARL: The Discus Thrower itself, naturally. I also visited the Glyptothek museum in Munich, where the statue was kept prior to repatriation to Italy, and encountered an amazing art collection there, as well as a larger history of German art collecting, which pre-dates Hitler. (The Bavarian King Ludwig I was an avid collector of Roman and Greek art in the 1800s). Well before Hitler, many leaders have tried to acquire and control art and artifacts as a way of linking their nations to previous empires, legitimizing their claims of superiority, and shaping narratives that may encompass ancient myth, Biblical history, philosophy or science. Singular, recognizable works of art are potent symbols.

SRDS: Is there an art history message you’ve tried to highlight within the novel?

Hitler and The Discobolus

ARL: In this particular story, my main character, Ernst, is obsessed with the idea of the perfect body and the depiction of that perfection in ancient Greco-Roman sculpture. The idea of perfection itself, and the corruption of that idea into hatred of self or others, can be explored on many levels. It’s troubling but irrefutable that art appreciation does not necessarily lead to compassion, morality, or love of mankind. Mussolini played the violin; Hitler was a failed painter; the Nazis as a group were rabid art collectors. Art for me represents one of the most beautiful expressions of humanity, but like everything, it has an extremely dark side. The unethical acquisition of art and the use of art (or destruction of art) for political ends is a key leitmotif in 20th century history.

SRDS: What do you think readers can gain by reading stories with art tie-ins?

ARL: Art teaches us something that is more important in a distracted age than ever before: how to slow down, to look. It connects us to timelessness—other people, other places, values both similar to and different from our own time—while inviting us to project our own stories and ideas onto and into the work. That makes it a great subject in fiction, which in its best form, allows us to see the world anew, challenges us to empathize with others, reflects our own experiences, and connects us with something larger.

SRDS: What fascinating information did you uncover while researching but were unable to incorporate into the book, but can share here?

ARL: I spent a lot of time learning about the Nazis’ unprecedented, seven-year attempt to collect most of the Western world’s art. That’s a postscript to The Detour, which is set in 1938, so the full story doesn’t make it into the book. But it helped me understand how this first, more innocent art purchase of a single statue foreshadowed a campaign to control art, period. I also enjoyed research digressions into Nazi documentary-making (including the controversial work of Leni Riefenstahl), Greco-Roman ideas about sport and the ideal body, details from the 1936 Berlin Olympics, the history of eugenics (including pro-eugenics movements in America) and much more. I have bits of these subjects in the novel, but I had to leave so much out. Everywhere I turned in my reading and research travels across Europe, art, the human body, and politics seemed to be connected.

SRDS: Any further thoughts on art in fiction you’d like to expand on?

Discus Thrower closeup

ARL: Whenever we are in an art or history museum, we get more out of the experience by trying not just to see a physical object in front of us, but by using the object as a gateway into a larger story. It’s an interactive, ongoing process. Really great art novels role model that way of looking for us, by presenting us with vivid, complex stories that bring art to life.

SRDS: Are you working on a new historical novel with an art tie-in? If so, will you share a little with us about your next release?

ARL: My next book, BEHAVE, features 1920s psychologists John and Rosalie Watson, so it’s more about science (including the science of parenting) than it is about art. But I’m always on the alert for other art history tie-ins, since I love spending time learning about that world.

About the author: Born in Chicago, Andromeda Romano-Lax is the author of The Spanish Bow, a New York Times Editor’s Choice that was translated into 11 languages, and The Detour, as well as numerous works of nonfiction. She teaches in the low-residency MFA program at the University of Anchorage Alaska and is a co-founder of 49 Writers, a statewide literary organization. Recently, she has divided her time between Alaska, Mexico, and Asia. Her next book, Behave, will be published in 2016.

For more about Andromeda’s works:

Author website : http://www.aromanolax.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Detour-A-Novel-by-Andromeda-Romano-Lax/292416680782702

To buy: The Detour

Join us here August 29th for an interview with Frederick Andresen, author of The Lady with an Ostrich Feather Fan!

Interview posting schedule:

Join Facebook group “Love of Arts in Fiction”!

Recap of the 2015 Denver Historical Novel Society Conference panel-talk “Art and Artists in HF”

Posted on July 8, 2015 by admin

We love art. We love artists. We love art history. We write about art, artists and history. Art-based historical fiction is an expanding and exciting niche in the historical fiction genre. At this year’s Historical Novel Society Conference in Denver, June 26-28, writers Alana White (The Sign of the Weeping Virgin), Donna Russo Morrin (The King’s Agent), myself Stephanie Renee dos Santos (Cut From The Earth), Mary F. Burns (Portraits of An Artist), and Stephanie Cowell (Claude & Camille) came together to share our collective wisdom on how and what special challenges arise when writing about art and artists and what to keep in mind when delving into the world of the creative arts. A special thanks to the forty writers who attended our discussion. We hope each of you left with something to aid and enhance your stories!

Here’s the recap of the writing points we covered at the panel-talk:

Alana White: “Using art to advance the story in action and dialogue.”

In The Sign of the Weeping Virgin the setting of this historical mystery series is the Italian Renaissance when my protagonist, lawyer Guid’Antonio, conducts investigations for the powerful Medici family. In the novel, the young ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de’ Medici, asks Guid’Antonio to investigate two mysteries for him. One involves a weeping panel painting of the Virgin Mary, the other centers on a missing girl. While there is considerable art in the narrative, it is Sandro Botticelli’s fresco of Saint Augustine that provides the clue to solve the mystery of the young woman who has disappeared.

Since this is a mystery, I wanted to “plant” the clue that enables Guid’Antonio to solve the riddle four times. While painting the “Saint Augustine” in Guid’Antonio’s family church, Botticelli overheard some young monks arguing among themselves. Amused, he recorded four lines of their dialogue at the top of the painting in the scribbled lines of a geometry book. (Restorers discovered the lines while cleaning the fresco in the relatively recent past.)

We see Sandro painting the lines at the top of the fresco:

Is Brother Martino anywhere about?

Brother Martino just slipped out.

Slipped out where?

Through the Prato Gate for a breath of fresh air.

Guid’Antonio has gone into the church to inspect the panel painting on the altar—the reportedly weeping painting. On the way out, he notices Sandro’s newly completed fresco on the south wall. While Guid’Antonio sees the scribbles high up in the gloom, he cannot read the lines. “Guid’Antonio made out a fringed tablecloth and a couple of books, one leather bound, the other open to a page scribbled with a few odd markings and, hidden as it was in the shadows, a bit of text he could not make out. Like his spirit, all the rest of Sandro’s masterful work was lost in a world of dark, and so he turned away.”
Very brief, but advances the mystery elements of the story. By now, Guid’Antonio—and we—suspect “Brother Martino” has something to do with the missing girl.
While Guid’Antonio is standing near the church front, his nephew and secretary, Amerigo Vespucci, swings the doors open, admitting sunlight. At last Guido reads the dialogue. Realizing Botticelli must know something about “Brother Martino,” he hurries to Botticelli’s workshop. Now close to the novel’s end, Sandro provides Guid’Antonio with the clue Guid’Antonio needs to wrap up the loose threads concerning the girl, and the mystery of the weeping Virgin Mary painting, too.

Donna Russo Morin: “Using specific artworks to reveal time period and/or social/political attitudes – to depict an art history advancement.”

Civilizations are remembered, discovered, through their artists and their art.
There are certain eras where humanity made significant social/cultural changes. The Renaissance is one of those times.
The Italian Renaissance artists changed the very nature of their mediums.
The Renaissance signaled the reemergence, the ‘rebirth,’ of Humanism, the belief in the intellectual potential and overall experience of humankind. Art reflected Humanism, turning to more realism.
A perfect example is Michelangelo’s David. In this scene, my female protagonist in The King’s Agent sees the statue for the first time: It was indeed a giant; Aurelia guessed it to be taller than three men. When she studied the face, all of David’s mysteries were revealed. The face was, as she had heard, a bit large for the size of the head, but upon his features, she saw all of the fear, tension, and aggression the real David must have felt when attacked by the colossal Goliath. Wrinkles perforated his forehead, thick brows drawn together, with a scornful twist to his full lips; fearful, yes, but with an inner assuredness that all evil could be felled. There was great nobility to the man etched into immortality, a beautiful determination astounding the eye as well as the soul.
Art mirrored the turn from religious themes; were instead infused with sensation that paintings were modeled after real people/real life. In this quote, the male protagonist scours a painting by Carlo Crivelli: The painting was a combination of hard angled buildings and gracefully rounded people. It projected a vanishing perspective, with Mary glimpsed in the foreground just through an open door, two men in the gallery beside the building, and others in the background, the success of the dimensions depicted, were a function of the perfect spatial and size balance of each person and object rendered.
This is the sort of realism that found its birth in the rebirth of the Renaissance.

Stephanie Renee dos Santos: “Use of artist space to depict action in story – moments of crisis and conflict.”

I elucidated this point with excerpts (condensed versions shared here) from my forthcoming novel Cut From The Earth, the story of an empathetic Portuguese tile maker, Piloto Mendes Pires, who risks everything to save slaves and escape The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 that ushers Portugal into a New Age.

Example 1: Chracter Conflict

The back alley door slammed open as Rafa picked up a large rolling pin, double the size of a baker’s.

In stormed Senhor Guimares, the owner of the nearby Red Clay Tile Factory. His dark mustache quivered on his flushed face.

“Where’s Padre Piloto?” he demanded.

Piloto peered down through the floor’s grid. He remained quiet, waiting to hear what he’d come for.

“Hand me the template,” Rafa said to Jawoli calmly. Rafa placed the 14 x 14 metal template on top of a flattened slab of clay, and began cutting tiles out with a knife.

“I asked a question you ignorant peças!” Senhor Guimares bellowed. “Where is the Padre!?” He shook his index finger at them.

Piloto cringed. He rushed to the stairway. How to deal with this man?

Senhor Guimares stomped by the kilns and over to where the men worked.

“Who’s in charge?” he demanded, his mustache now twitching. “Comer o pao que o diabo amassou! I’m speaking to you!” Sweat ran down his temples and dripped onto his pressed linen shirt, taut on his keg belly.

Rafa put the scoring tool down and stared coldly at the intruder. “Padre Piloto.”

This excerpt shows how one can use the artist space and materials to demonstrate and create conflict between characters, while allowing the reader deeper into the specifics of the artists world.

Example 2: Crisis

A jolt shot through Piloto’s body, ejecting the tile from the tong’s grip. It shattered on the floor. He dropped the iron-tongs. They clattered upon the shards. Barrels of chalky glazes shook, their thick soups boiling over their rims, mixing paddles churning in the vats. The viscous substances ebbed and flowed down the sides of their holding containers: manganese-browns, copper-greens, cobalt-blues, iron-oxide oranges, creating an amalgam of colors on the ground.

Rolling pins fell off counters, and ricocheted end-on-end before congregating in a pile, next to the vats. Dried goat balls the size of peaches filled with liquid glaze vaulted to the floor, glaze paints squirting out their nozzle ends. Buckets of paintbrushes careened, the brushes scattering like plucked feathers. Work pedestals spun. Small glass jars of pigments vibrated across tabletops; others wobbled off, exploding. Water spilled from barrel containers, housing gooey slip used to join clay pieces, and formed puddles on the floor’s low spots. The holding tank of white iron-oxide cracked down the front, its contents oozed out. Stacks of clay blocks toppled, hitting the floor with loud thuds. Pails of wires, paddles, anvils, and ribs shimmered off back shelves, while the shelves themselves threatened to pitch forward.

Piloto dashed from spot to spot, arms outstretched, catching items and picking up others. He filled his arms.

What is going on?

The earth heaved again, a second more severe shock, a violent undulating ocean wave.

This scene uses the visually unique and exotic tile making factory to recreate what it might have been like for a tile maker the fatal day of November 1st, All Saints Day, when The Great Lisbon Earthquake leveled Lisbon, Portugal in 1755.

Mary F. Burns: “Seeing and thinking through the eyes and heart of the artist.”

A question for all historical fiction authors is: Do you have to be a (Fill in the Blank) in order to write about one as a character? Lawyer, Doctor, Midwife, Artist? No, but it helps if you have an affinity for the work that person does, and of course, you have to understand how that kind of person thinks, feels, sees, understands, communicates.

I learned enough about how John Singer Sargent painted—his style, his technique, his preferred media—to be able to realistically portray him in his studio and as an artist. He was very expressive and entertaining for his sitters—he fed them, played the piano and sang, dashed around the room with a cigar in his teeth, laughing and telling jokes.

But away from the canvas, I learned from biographies, he had a hard time with words, found it difficult to express himself, a very private person, genial, kindly, energetic. He loved light and shadow, as most painters do, and having a complicated personality himself, he wasn’t averse to showing both the lighter and darker sides of his subjects.”

However, he denied that he consciously depicted the “psychological” state of his subjects, said he “merely painted what was before his eyes.” But even his closest friends said otherwise. If he simply accurately painted what he saw, then it must be that our feelings, our principles, our character and background and griefs and joys are written upon our bodies, because that’s what appear in his portraits, which is why ultimately, I decided to write my novel with fifteen different voices telling the story, the voices of people who sat for portraits by Sargent, some of them dear friends, some one-time clients, but all providing different perspectives and clues as to who Sargent really was. As Oscar Wilde said, “Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.” And Sargent definitely revealed himself through his portraits.

* A special thanks to Mary for creating our artsy book trailers for the talk!

(All except Stephanie Cowell’s which was made by her talented son!)

Stephanie Cowell: “How much artistic ‘process’ to reveal in scenes – when is enough enough?”

You cannot write truly and deeply about anyone’s work (be it laundress, cellist, teacher, or painter) without showing them doing their work yet you must be careful how you write this. I try to reveal the work of my protagonist in scenes in which he is also living his life. In the panel, I read a scene where Monet has a fight with his wife, rushes off to paint to calm himself and loses track of the hours; when he comes back to his actual life, having been gone for a long time, he finds something bad has happened. So there is a contrast between the ecstatic, all-consuming hours of his painting and the relatively ordinary needs of the people he loves. In the case of an artist, the art is indivisible from the person. But the language of any profession is unique to that profession and you can’t go so far into the way an artist works that you confuse the reader with terminology. You also can’t have so much of the creation of art that you lose the plot tension. But you can’t ever just say that someone is anything without showing how it affects everything, even the aches in his body. Painting ruled Monet’s life; if he felt it didn’t go well he would be in total black despair and you couldn’t go near him. So you have to show that. Art was so huge for him it was like being drunk; it affected everything in him and everyone to whom he was close.

For the Love of Art in Historical Fiction!

To find out more about each author, their books, and to purchase their art-based historical novels:

Alana White: www.alanawhite.com

To buy: The Sign of the Weeping Virgin

Donna Russo Morin: donnarussomorin.com

To buy: The King’s Agent

Mary F. Burns: http://www.sargent-pagetmysteries.blogspot.com/

To buy: Portraits of An Artist

Stephanie Cowell: http://www.stephaniecowell.com/

To buy: Claude & Camille

Join Facebook group “Love of Arts in Fiction”!

Love of Art in Historical Fiction Series featuring Lisa Barr of Fugitive Colors

Posted on May 30, 2015 by admin

Some novels are an honor to read because the story is so vital to humanity and history, Fugitive Colors by Lisa Barr is one such story.

Written in bold and emotive strokes like the Expressionist painters and modern artists the novel tributes one can’t help but be deeply moved by this arresting and driving drama.Told with heart and precision, one is drawn into the Parisian and German art world at the onset of World War II.

Fleeing his American Jewish past, painter, Julian, enters the Paris art scene, having no clue the course his life will take when he is welcomed into an artist circle of friends made up of the talented couple Rene and Adrienne and German born Felix. Julian is young, talented and devoutly devoted to art. Barr reveals the Paris avant-grade modern art scene through the art studio of Dubois and Gallerie Rohan-Levi as the group of friends play out their passions, jealousies abound, while the Nazis rise to power. Lured to Germany to attempt to heal a rift in their their friendship with Felix, Julian and Rene find themselves at the doorstep of the local Expressionists’ plight to save their art and livelihood as Hitler and his henchmen are pledged to purge those connected with and creating modern art. A dangerous and devastating struggle unfolds, and the victims and the costs are beyond belief and will tear you at your very soul. If you love humanity and the arts, this novel will touch you at your core, as it gives passage into the eye of destruction and resurrection after all has been seemingly lost. You’ll be surprised as to what unravels in the end.

When your fingers to brush, to paint, to canvas are your life soul and line, what won’t you do to save that which connects you and others with the sublime, the divine?

Stephanie Renee dos Santos: Fugitive Colors features German Expressionist painters Ernest Engel and Max Kruger, are their stories based on historical facts?

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Otto Dix, War Cripples (45% Fit for Service), 1920, oil on canvas, lost work. Dix was a Dadaist painter and I (Stephanie) fell in love with his provoking works as a young artist.

Lisa Barr: Hitler and his posse despised the avant-garde — particularly Cubists, Dadaists, Surrealists, and especially his homegrown band of German Expressionists, who fell into two groups of artists — Die Brücke (The Bridge) and Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider). The Expressionists painted the emotion that a subject evoked, rather than the subject itself. Nature, people, architecture were a wild collage of chaotic and lush brush strokes. Nothing made sense, and yet the provocative imagery brilliantly impacted the viewer. Expressionism drove the orderly, neo-classical-loving Nazis crazy. Among the household name “Degenerates” were Beckmann, Kirchner, Marc, Dix, Nolde and Heckel. Two of my main characters, Expressionists Ernst Engel and Max Kruger, are based on a composite of these artists. Details were drawn from where they went to school, to where their work was shown, to experiencing a similar fate once they were forbidden to paint (and later, when their works were confiscated and destroyed) — suicide, murder, smuggling, hiding, fleeing the country, and sadly, in some cases, betraying one another in order for their own works to survive the Nazis cultural terrorism. Many of these Expressionists’ works were shown at the official Nazi exhibition of Entartete Kunst or “Degenerate Art”, which opened in Munich on July 19, 1937, to portray an age of “decadence and chaos.” This exhibition was also the most widely seen display of modern art ever. In Munich alone, there were more than two million visitors. Both Engel’s and Kruger’s artwork were also exhibited at that exhibition — mixed in with “real” artists of the day.

SRDS: What compelled you to include art and artist in your historical novel?

LB: It was 1991, and at that time I was serving as the managing editor of a woman’s magazine in Chicago. I was also 150 pages into another manuscript. I was sent by the magazine on assignment to cover the “Degenerate Art” exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. Entering the museum, I literally stopped in my tracks—I had found my story. I knew at that moment I would push aside the other manuscript. What I saw at that exhibit would later morph into the historical-fiction tale of my debut novel Fugitive Colors. Even as a daughter of a Holocaust survivor, I never knew about the Nazis’ relentless mission to destroy the avant-garde—particularly painters. Hitler and his henchmen went after the German Expressionists with a vengeance never seen before in art history. I am a writer not an artist, but I needed to understand what made someone like Adolf Hitler both a murderous madman and an artist. For Hitler, his hatred for the avant-garde was not political—it was personal. He was considered a third-rate artist who, once in power, wanted payback. I wanted to—had to— explore this in depth. Once the ideas began percolating, I knew that I was going to utilize my journalism skills to turn a little-known piece of Holocaust history into good fiction. It became an issue of no choice: I had to write this novel.

SRDS: What drew you to your specific visual art medium, artwork, and/or artist?

Great Exhibition of German Art catalogue cover, 1937 (left) and Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition, catalogue cover, 1937 (right)

LB: I love art, but I have no background in art, yet I do have a strong background in investigative journalism. Once I had my story line, I began to research the fate of the Expressionists under the Third Reich. Once I began exploring, it became a series of a-ha moments. My goal as a writer was to teach this piece of history through osmosis— to “bring it on” through fiction. Expressionism, which focuses on the emotion not the subject — had me at “hello”. Ask my kids and my husband — I do not run on logic — I’m emotional to the bone. This aspect of art spoke to me, drew me in. I wanted to create a story, a thriller, filled with drama, love, lust, friendship, and revenge to convey the most important quality of any artist: passion. I particularly wanted to explore how far would an artist go for his or her passion. Would he kill for it, like my “evil” character Felix von Bredow? Would he paint to his last dying breath, like the handsome and über-talented René Levi? Or would he protect art at all costs, like my protagonist Julian Klein. It was also immensely enjoyable as a woman to write about the fate of three young male artists, and how their passion for art both united and destroyed them. Of course, there are strong women in my novel (a non-negotiable), and plenty of lustful moments in between the brush strokes.

SRDS: What unique historical objects and/or documents inspired the story?

LB: I knew everything historical in this novel had to be true, verified, fact-checked. The research alone took me more than four years. I traveled to Europe, I researched testimonials, artwork, I spoke to survivors, I read everything I could get my hands on. Two major works — Lynn H. Nicholas’ masterpiece,“The Rape of Europe: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and The Second World War”, and Stephanie Barron’s powerful exhibit and book “Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Germany”, were my most important resources. I also interviewed the grandson of an aristocratic Nazi family for hours. I spoke to those who were investigating stolen art, as well as to those whose artwork had been stolen. I did not begin writing until I felt satisfied that no stone had been left unturned. My main characters are composites of real artists, real art dealers, real Nazis. And then . . . I was put on bed-rest for nine months (yes, nine!) while pregnant with my eldest daughter. That’s when I got down to business and wrote the first draft of Fugitive Colors, from my bed in Jerusalem (where I was then living and working as a reporter).

On an emotional/artistic level, I wanted to explore the concept of rejection and shame. There is no greater shame than being an artist without talent. One of my main characters, Felix von Bredow—like Adolf Hitler—wanted other artists to suffer because of his own lack of talent.

SRDS: Is there an art history message you’ve tried to highlight within the novel?

LB: I believe what was really going down culturally in Germany in 1933 was this: a division had been created—not of men, but of talent; the haves and have-nots—equally dangerous.

Jean_Metzinger,_1913,_En_Canot,_oil_on_canvas,_146_x_114_cm,_missing_or_destroyed

Jean Metzinger, 1913, En Canot (Im Boot), oil on canvas, 146 x 114 cm, exhibited at Moderni Umeni, S.V.U. Mánes, Prague, 1914, acquired in 1916 by Georg Muche at the Galerie Der Sturm, confiscated by the Nazis circa 1936 from the Kronprinzenpalais, Nationalgalerie, Berlin, displayed at the Degenerate Art Exhibition in Munich, and missing ever since

Ironically, Hitler’s War began with art, and it’s incredible to me that nearly 70 years after the Holocaust, stolen art is still making front-page news. I always say if only art could talk . . . thousands of stolen paintings have a hidden past just waiting for the truth to be exposed.

According to the Jewish Claims Conference, the Nazis seized an estimated 650,000 artworks and religious items from Jews and other victims. The artwork that has been returned to the rightful owners is just a drop in the bucket, if that. Yet, I truly believe that this country-by-country exposure of stolen art – Germany, Austria, Norway, Canada, France, etc., will soon travel from Europe to our front door – where similar murky “unknown” histories of beloved artworks hanging in major museum and private collections will surely be unveiled. Like everything else, it’s all just a matter of time. There is nothing black or white within the pages of “Fugitive Colors”. It’s all about the grey; a secret history that I am determined to unveil, in hopes of bringing THIS lost legacy to light.

SRDS: What fascinating information did you uncover while researching but were unable to incorporate into the book, but can share here?

LB: I started researching this book 18 years ago — this was before “Monuments Men” and “Woman in Gold” (fabulous by the way) came out — and it was back then a little known aspect of Holocaust history. Most provocative were my dealings with those who were trying to get their stolen paintings back from governments and museums who were determined to hold on to this precious artwork. My conversations with those seeking the return of their artwork were all off-the-record for obvious legal reasons — and now several of those who I had the opportunity to interview over the years have had their paintings returned. But this is a fight that’s going to continue for years to come. I had no idea how big this story was when I began writing, and how many countries are still harboring stolen artwork. I started with a “this subject is really fascinating” to Wow — this is way bigger, much more intricate than I’d ever imagined.

SRDS: Any further thoughts on art in fiction you’d like to expand on?

Dancer and Harlequin Emile Nolde – 1920

LB: I think all of us art-in-fiction types have had those moments, especially as children, imagining what it would be like to jump inside a painting (Forget Cabo —Give me Monet’s Giverny any day!). And then as a writer, you think, I can really make that happen, and bring my readers with me on that journey, inside that painting, inside the thoughts of that artist. I have three teenage daughters. So for me, as a Mom/Writer it all comes down to sharing your love of art with the next generation. Dig deep, and explore their imagination … show your kids that through art, they can release their anger, they can explore love, and most of all, they can self-reflect. Believe me, there is no greater truth than a this-is-my-family drawing by your five year old. Encourage expression, lead the way, and I guarantee we will create a new generation of art-in-fiction aficionados.

SRDS: Are you working on a new historical novel with an art tie-in? If so, will you share a little with us about your next release?

LB: I pondered writing a sequel to Fugitive Colors, and then I decided after spending so many years on this book, I needed a break do something entirely different— more contemporary yet still a historical page-turner— which is definitely my thing. I’m excited for this summer to really delve into my next novel. That said, “Fugitive Colors” will always be my baby. I cried when the book was finished, and I was (off-the-record) madly in love with my main character (though he is 20 plus years my junior … but hey, who’s counting?). What’s coming next will be passionate of course, historical without a doubt, visual — and what the hell, this girl can’t help it … you just may see a painting or two working its way into the pages.

About the author: Lisa Barr’s award-winning debut novel Fugitive Colors, a suspenseful tale of stolen art, love, lust, and revenge on the “eve” of WWII, won the IPPY gold medal for “Best Literary Fiction 2014″. Fugitive Colors was named one of HEEB Magazine’s “Top 10 Best Books” in 2014, and won first prize at The Hollywood Film Festival for “Best Unpublished Manuscript (Opus Magnum Discovery Award).

A journalist for more than 20 years, Lisa served as an editor for The Jerusalem Post for five years, covering Middle East politics, lifestyle, and terrorism in Jerusalem. Among the highlights of her career, Lisa covered the famous “handshake” between the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and President Bill Clinton at the White House.

Following the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, Lisa profiled his wife Leah for Vogue magazine, and they maintained a friendship until Mrs. Rabin’s death. She later served as managing editor of Moment magazine based in Washington, DC, which was co-founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel. Most recently, she worked as an

editor/staff reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, covering lifestyle, sex & relationships, and celebrities. She earned her master’s degree from the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University.

Lisa is also the creator of the popular website and blog “GIRLilla Warfare: A Mom’s Guide to Surviving the Suburban Jungle” (girlillawarfare.com) which launched in May 2012. Her greatest joy is raising her three beautiful daughters, and “coffee time” with her husband David Barr. She lives in Chicago with her family, two dogs, and lots of girl drama—fodder for her next novel.

For more about Lisa’s works: Amazon: tinyurl.com/pdav8ym ; Book Site: www.fugitivecolorsthenovel.com ; Twitter: @lisabarr18 ; Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FugitiveColors

To buy: Fugitive Colors

Join us here June 27th for an interview with bestselling author Lynn Cullen, author of The Creation of Eve!

Interview posting schedule:

2015: January 31st Heather Webb, Rodin’s Lover (new release), February 28th Alyson Richman, The Mask Carver’s Son, March 28th Maureen Gibbon, Paris Red (new release), April 11th M.J Rose, The Witch of Painted Sorrows (new release), April 25th Lisa Brukitt, The Memory of Scent, May 30th Lisa Barr, Fugitive Colors, June 27th Lynn Cullen, The Creation of Eve, July 25th Andromeda Romano-Lax, The Detour, August 29th Frederick Andresen,The Lady with an Ostrich Feather Fan, September 26 Nancy Bilyeau, The Tapestry (new release), October 31st Laura Morelli The Gondola Maker

Join Facebook group “Love of Arts in Fiction”!

Love of Art in Historical Fiction Series featuring Lisa Burkitt & The Memory of Scent

Posted on April 25, 2015 by admin

This art-based historical mystery The Memory of Scent by Lisa Burkitt is set 1883 Paris, France. It is a story of two French women, Fleur and Babette, both artist models, and how their lives diverge when the painter they both pose for is found dead. Fleur lives her life on the fringes of the Impressionist movement listening in on artist conversations of Degas, Renoir, Monet and Toulouse Lautrec, spending time in the turpentine fumed artist studio, and haunts of Paris’ nightlife where bohemians convene. Beautiful Babette’s lucky star falls after the death of the artist as she is subsequently thrust into the underbelly of Paris and into dark corners and streets. This novel focuses on the senses and upon the deep reflections of protagonist Fleur and Babette, revealing nineteenth century Paris life and the art scene in all its various colorful and not so colorful shades. Scent, memory, love, and loss are explored, and where it appears the ties which hold people together can also tear people apart.

Two models, two contary lives…”Patchouli is Paris. Lavender hinted at warm bread and plump maternal women.” ~ The Memory of Scent

Stephanie Renee dos Santos: Your main protagonist Fleur is an artist model and how does she exemplify models of the day? From what social classes were most models from and how were they regarded socially in 1883?

Lisa Burkitt: Fleur was typical of the type of young working class, Montmartre dwelling model who would have moved from job to job. Modelling was not a regular source of income – though when they were paid, they could make what was considered good money, sometimes ten francs a day. Some models would find work in Institutional and academic settings, but artists would often look to hire them from the ‘model markets’ one of which was on the Place Pigalle. Young girls would be accosted by artists in the street or in cafes and asked to pose, which of course was an income boost, but in many cases, there was a thin and fluid line between modelling and prostitution. Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec chose prostitutes as models and also painted in brothels. Modelling was often viewed more critically than prostitution. Girls initially prized as models, were rarely used as they began to age and this often became another route to prostitution.

SRDS: What compelled you to include art and artist in your historical novel?

“Self Portrait” by Suzanne Valadon

LB: About 25 years ago, I had this idea to write about a female model who wanted to be an artist. I was always interested in the Impressionist era and knew that this would be my setting. I took myself off to the library (this was pre internet days!) and cross-referenced the various artists of the era to get a sense of the life of a model…and this one name kept popping up; ‘Suzanne Valadon’. She sat for Puvis de Chavannes, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and many others, and it can be assumed also became lover to several of the artists. She was an instinctively talented artist herself. I was fascinated to find out that this woman in my head actually existed in real life and I became intrigued by her. What did I do about it? Absolutely nothing. I carried on my day job and then several years later, I came across June Rose’s fascinating biography; Suzanne Valadon; The Mistress of Montmartre.

The desire to write a novel stayed with me and when I decided to just get on with it, I knew I had to keep Suzanne involved somehow, so instead wrote her up as a secondary character in the book using available facts of her life.

SRDS: What drew you to your specific visual art medium, artwork and/or artist?

LB: In choosing to make The Memory of Scent a strong character study of the Suzanne Valadon and her contemporaries of the day, some real, some fictionalised, I have used a very specific timeline, that of the year 1883. I have concentrated events within this timeline and referenced actual paintings that would have been created within it. (pg 88. ‘I stop by Maria’s on my way home and she beckons me into her cramped one-room apartment. She wipes her hands on an old cloth and steps back from the easel. Staring defiantly at me is a self-portrait in pastel that she has been working on. This chin is slightly raised, almost scornfully; the hair severely parted in the middle and tucked behind the ears; the neckline of the dress is conservative and prim. The general effect lacked even a hint of flattery. It was a powerful drawing, bold and unforgiving.’)

SRDS: What unique historical objects and/or documents inspired the story?

Cafe Guerbois, a 19th century hangout for artists and art lovers

LB: Because The Memory of Scent is embedded in such a specific year, several sources were available to me to draw events as authentically as possible. ‘The Timetables of History’ by Bernard Grun is a very useful reference volume as it maps out what is happening ‘simultaneously’ in the world of science & technology, politics, philosophy and religion, arts and musical happenings within a given year. This was how I knew to have the young courtesan, Lily, be taken to the opening night at the Opéra Comique of Léo Delibes, Lakmé which that night, starred the American singer, Marie van Zandt.

Archived newspapers are always a useful tool to set the tone of an era and I find that advertisements are very revealing as to the preoccupations of the day, so I have Fleur distractedly looking at an advertisement for things like ‘Curling Fluid’ and ‘Bloom of Roses for giving beauty to the lips and cheeks.’

The Memory of Scent has been described as a novel of the senses and food was always to be a part of the story – both the lack of it and by contrast, the indulgence of it through the gourmand character of Walrus. I was hugely informed by the luscious approach to food of the 19th century food critic, Grimod de La Reynière.

SRDS: Is there an art history lesson you’ve tried to highlight within the novel?

Renoir’s ‘Dancing pictures’

LB: I think I have always been fascinated by the lives of artists and how their lifestyles inform their art. I am always curious about that balance between bravery and self-absorption. My preference is to read biographies on artists and then to place their art within that. I like to try to visualise what they were doing when a particular work was created and who was in their circle that may have had any influence on their choices and decisions. I can bring nothing new to the table when it comes to writing about the Impressionist era so it was really just a question of trying to immerse myself in the sounds and smells of 1800s Paris, to pull up a chair at the Bonne Franquette bar in Montmartre and down some absinthe.

SRDS: What do you think readers can gain by reading stories with art tie- ins?

LB: Sometimes the art world can be too precious. It can have its own language, vocabulary, terminology, and fraternity. It can be divisive – the initiated versus the uninitiated. Art is organic and stories with art tie-ins give a more honest insight into that reality. They lift the corners and do not restrict us to simply being ticket-buying spectators forced to stand behind the rope.

SRDS: What fascinating information did you uncover while researching but were unable to incorporate into the book, but can share here?

LB: When I sent one of my girls to prison…that became an eye-opener! There was a lot about prison life for women that I could have gone off on a tangent on. Lesbianism was a given; the problems of menstruation were handled with little care or concern (straw was swept in on the floor for the women’s use); syphillitic women were identified by their headgear. A whole microcosm of humanity existed on the fringes.

SRDS: Any further thoughts on art in fiction you’d like to expand on?

LB: Art in fiction is an endless vein to mine. There’s the work itself, how it came about, who brought it into existence, what became of it. It spans genre’s (thrillers/historical/romance/drama/literary). Art can act as a minor plot point in fiction or as its central theme. And the best thing about art in fiction is that it tends to inspire further curiosity. It often piques your interest enough to check into something further or more closely.

SRDS: Are you working on a new historical novel with an art tie-in? If so, will you share a little with us about your next release?

LB: I am currently finishing a crime thriller, Anatomy of a Jump which is set in modern day New York with no art tie-in (other than a few visits to the Museum of Modern Art!) but am constantly researching female protagonists within the art world that I can build my next novel around. It is a genre I will definitely return to.

About the author: Lisa Burkitt worked in the media for eighteen years in both print and broadcast journalism. She also wrote for several years as a weekly columnist with the Johnston Press group. She is now a fulltime writer and artist based in Co. Donegal, Ireland. Lisa has been anthologised in ‘Best Paris Stories’ and The Memory of Scent is her debut novel.

For more about Lisa’s work: www.lisaburkitt.com/ Lisa’s artwork: http://www.newirishart.com/irish-artists/lisa-mcgill-artist.htm & https://www.facebook.com/LisaMcGillatSea

To buy: The Memory of Scent

Join us here May 30th for an interview with Lisa Barr, author of Fugitive Colors!

Interview posting schedule:

2015: January 31st Heather Webb, Rodin’s Lover (new release), February 28th Alyson Richman, The Mask Carver’s Son, March 28th Maureen Gibbon, Paris Red (new release), April 11th M.J Rose, The Witch of Painted Sorrows (new release), April 25th Lisa Brukitt, The Memory of Scent, May 30th Lisa Barr, Fugitive Colors, June 27th Lynn Cullen, The Creation of Eve, July 25th Andromeda Romano-Lax, The Detour, August 29th Frederick Andresen,The Lady with an Ostrich Feather Fan, September 26 Nancy Bilyeau, The Tapestry (new release), October 31st Laura Morelli The Gondola Maker

Join Facebook group “Love of Arts in Fiction”!

Love of Art in Historical Fiction Series featuring Maureen Gibbon of Paris Red

Posted on March 28, 2015 by admin

The artist and muse, the electric spark for high art, and in the case of Paris Red — high literature. This novel is artistic, poetic, exotic, and reflects deep care to reach perfection of prose, multi-dimensional characters and stimulating scenes. It’s as if this book was polished by a brunisseue, a “silver burnisher”, and their bloodstone, achieving a gleaming finish. It is an intense and bold story set in 1862 Paris of a young working-class woman, Victorine Meurent, who honors her internal pulse, despite the unknown and risks as she enters the world of wealthy painter Édouard Manet. This is a novel of discovery and an exploration of what drives and binds the muse and artist. Paris Red is like no other art-based historical novel I’ve read, it stirred not often accessed emotions and bodily drives, it is juicy in a way I could never have imagined nor expected. The story delves into brazen human and artistic hungers, but also lays bare an empowered female in protagonist Victorine, an adolescent coming into her own.The inquiry into the artist’s vision and how one sees and views the world and comes to understand what art means to oneself spoke deeply to me.

Drop the cloak, assume a pose on the divan, expose your essence, you feast, he devours and see if he and she can capture and reveal each others souls…

Stephanie Renee dos Santos: What special challenges did you encounter to embody your protagonist, the artistic seventeen year old Victorine Meurent and the escapades she and her dear friend Denise find themselves exploring after meeting painter Édouard Manet?

Maureen Gibbon: When you’re young, you share so much with your best friend; the two of you really count on each other. I wanted to bring the closeness of female friendship to Paris Red. Before my fictional version of Victorine meets Manet, she is sharing a room with her best friend Denise in order to make ends meet, but also because the two are a great team. They are their own little family.

The day Victorine meets Manet, Denise is with her, so Manet meets both of them. He’s intrigued by the two young women, and by their intense friendship. That’s something I drew from my own experience in order to portray.

In 1983 when I was twenty years old, I studied and traveled in Europe. One day in Venice, a friend and I met an older man on the street, and we began to spend time with him. We walked the quiet city for hours, talking, laughing and teasing. There was a kiss on the street.

I never forgot the tension of our triangle, or the sensuousness of those summer walks in the dark. All of that went into Paris Red—along with plenty of research about how young working class women made their way in Paris in the nineteenth century. In many ways, their lives were not so different than the lives of young women today: they had to earn a living, they worried about unwanted pregnancies, and they craved independence.

Fiction is like that for me. I borrow anything I need for the sake of the story, and I blend research, memory and imagination. And I hope the result is an intoxicating mix for the reader.

SRDS: What compelled you to include art and artist in your historical novel?

detail from “Olympia” by Manet Musée d’Orsay in Paris

MG: Édouard Manet’s Olympia was the starting place for the novel. I always had strong feelings about the nude in the painting, even before I knew anything about Victorine Meurent. After I read Eunice Lipton’s Alias Olympia and learned a little about Victorine’s life, I could not stop thinking about her. Victorine was a working class girl, just seventeen when she met Manet – but her story did not end with Manet. She became an artist, too, and that alone is astounding because she didn’t have resources. But she still found a way to make art, and she even exhibited in a Salon where Manet exhibited. She survived Manet by forty-four years, living into the 20th century

SRDS: What drew you to your specific visual art medium, artwork, and/or artist?

MG: As I learned more about Victorine Meurent, I learned more and more about Manet and his work, and I fell deeply in love with both people. Manet had to break away from the lessons he was taught in order to come to his own style of painting. He began something so new and provocative with Olympia that he infuriated people, and they were vicious in their attacks on him. And still he went on painting.

So the initial draw for me was a single painting, but after I got just a little way into the research, these two specific people, artist and model, kept me involved. I love and revere both Manet and Victorine as individuals. I admire the way they lived their lives.

SRDS: What unique historical objects and/or documents inspired the story?

“Maitre albert from Place Maubert” photograph by Charles Marville’s of Paris

MG: In addition to Manet’s paintings, I relied on Charles Marville’s photographs of Paris, as well as detailed maps of Paris in the 1860s. I was also moved by the erotic photographs of Félix-Jacques Antoine Moulin, and a collection of photographs compiled by Dr. George Henry Fox, a dermatologist who studied syphilis in the late 19th century.

SRDS: Is there an art history message you’ve tried to highlight within the novel?

MG: The relationship between artist and muse is a two-way street.

In the past I felt uncomfortable with the word “muse,” but I’ve come to my own understanding about it as a result of writing Paris Red. From my own experience as a writer, I know I cannot wait to be inspired by an outside source in order to do my work – sometimes it’s work itself, writing my way into something, that brings about “inspiration.” But there are sources and practices I turn to in order to keep myself in touch with my own creativity, or with a story, and I think those sources and practices might be viewed as muse-like.

“Portrait of Victorine Meurent” by Manet, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

But if we really are talking about an artist inspired by a particular person, as Manet was so clearly inspired by Victorine Meurent, I think it’s essential to see that relationship as active. Whatever transpired between Manet and Victorine in his studio was profound and took on a life of it’s own; it’s why he was able to push through into a new style of painting. I don’t think that kind of energy could have happened if Victorine had been a passive figure or inert body. She was active and involved.

SRDS: What do you think readers can gain by reading stories with art tie-ins?

MG: My book would not exist without an art tie-in. I think people are tremendously interested in creativity, in where paintings and poems come from. Books that discuss the creative process are compelling to many people – and not just people interested in the arts. I loved The Imitation Game because I think it depicted how a creative mind works. Alan Turing created a computer and not a painting, but the machine came from the wellspring of his creativity, and from his utter focus. When we’re creative, we tap into something that is us and is also larger than we are, and I think people are fascinated by that, by the multitudes we all contain.

SRDS: What fascinating information did you uncover while researching but were unable to incorporate into the book, but can share here?

Manet

MG: Manet went on painting almost until his death. He worked on small canvases of flowers up until about a month before he died. I learned this from The Last Flowers of Manet, by Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge, with translations by Richard Howard. Manet created art as long as he could. He is my hero.

SRDS: Any further thoughts on art in fiction you’d like to expand on?

MG: I’ve been in this love affair with Manet and Victorine for more than a decade. Paris Red enriched my life personally and artistically. I don’t know who I might have become without this book in my life, without Manet’s art, without his and Victorine’s story.

SRDS: Are you working on a new historical novel with an art tie-in? If so, will you share a little with us about your next release?

MG: I have three new projects going, and one of them has a tie-in to a film. In some ways, it also addresses the role of the muse. I hesitate to say more because I don’t want to jinx myself. I believe in doing the thing and not talking about it until it’s done.

About the author: Paris Red is Maureen Gibbon’s third novel. It will be published in the U.S. by W. W. Norton in April 2015. Christian Bourgois, Éditeur published the French translation, Rouge Paris, in October 2014.

Gibbon is also the author of the novels Swimming Sweet Arrow and Thief, which have been published internationally, and the prose poem collection Magdalena.

Her short fiction, nonfiction, and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Daily Mail, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Playboy, Byliner, The Huffington Post and other publications.

A graduate of Barnard College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Gibbon was awarded a Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship in 2001, and Loft McKnight Artists Fellowships in 1992 and 1999. In 2006, she received a Mill Foundation Artist Residency at the Santa Fe Arts Institute.She lives in northern Minnesota.

For more about Maureen’s works: http://www.maureengibbon.com/

To buy (debut’s April 20th!): Paris Red

Join us here April 11th for an interview with M.J. Rose, acclaimed author of The Witch of Painted Sorrows!

Interview posting schedule:

2015: January 31st Heather Webb, Rodin’s Lover (new release), February 28th Alyson Richman, The Mask Carver’s Son, March 28th Maureen Gibbon, Paris Red (new release), April 11th M.J Rose, The Witch of Painted Sorrows (new release), April 25th Lisa Brukitt, The Memory of Scent, May 30th Lisa Barr, Fugitive Colors, June 27th Lynn Cullen, The Creation of Eve, July 25th Andromeda Romano-Lax, The Detour, August 29th Frederick Andresen,The Lady with an Ostrich Feather Fan, September 26 Nancy Bilyeau, The Tapestry (new release), October 31st Laura Morelli The Gondola Maker

Join Facebook group “Love of Arts in Fiction”!

For more on Paris Red, visit Sarah Johnson’s blog review at “Reading the Past”.

Love of Art in Historical Fiction Series featuring Alyson Richman & The Mask Carver’s Son

Posted on February 28, 2015 by admin

The Mask Carver’s Son by Alyson Richman is poetic and stirring, with tender and revealing artistic, cultural, and historical details. The story begins in 1890 near the Daigo mountains within the walls of Kyoto, Japan just before the onset of a turning point in Japanese history. Richman takes us inside the fragile paper walls of customs and those of sad luck.Through the ancient arts of the Noh theater and the constellation of artistic traditions that made up and supported this high art form we meet Ryusei, the tormented and gifted mask carver , and the renowned Yamamoto family. From an arranged marriage and subsequent tragedy Kiyoki is born, a son with longings that mirror the country’s changing times. Instead of desiring to carry on his father’s craft of mask making, he wishes to embrace oil painting. An ambition which will bring him great pleasure and anguish as he dreams of studying in Paris, France with the inspiring and vibrant Impressionist painters.

The rhetoric, the art history, the philosophy, the superstitions, and intimate details of this novel left me awed and at moments stunned by their exquisiteness. The scenes are evocative and emotive set in various places in Japan and Paris making one long to travel back to this time. One feels intensely the profound struggle between honoring tradition and family and the longings of the adventurous creative heart and the price paid for following one’s dreams. What can one do when you know in the depths of your soul that you must break away from your heritage? And how to honor one’s father, and yet fulfill one’s own destiny?

Many creative purists have their price, and the leaving behind of a way of life, one time-honored and as beautiful as the Noh theater is no light feat…Let the crowd gather, the actors grace the stage, with hand-carved masks infused with the souls of ancestors….a legacy with deep roots that cling to old bedrock as change abounds above… the great pine tree dying, branch by branch as a new sapling of another takes hold and grows forth, producing new blooms….but all at a cost of the magnificent venerable tree that has given so much…

Noh theater stage with revered old pine tree

Stephanie Renee dos Santos: What kinds of special challenges did you encounter while writing The Mask Carver’s Son since the story is set in a time and place and focuses on an art form that is little known outside of Japan? How did you meet these challenges?

Alyson Richman: This is a wonderful question, Stephanie. You’re right. I couldn’t assume that the majority of my readers would be familiar with Meiji period Japan or the artistic traditions of the Noh theater when I was writing “The Mask Carver’s Son.” So right from the beginning, I tried to create a strong visual world for the reader. Since the novel is written in first person, Kiyoki’s voice allows the reader to see everything through his “artistic lens.” You feel as though you’re in the room with him as he watches his father carve the Noh masks. You can see the father’s hands as he grasps his chisels or grinds his pigments. In a sense, I wanted to create a world where my sentences painted a world for the reader.

The greatest challenge was trying to convey the silence between Kiyoki and his father. The Japanese culture avoids confrontation, so I knew I had to find another way to communicate the sense of strain between these two men. Both of them are artists, so I tried to create different ways they could communicate their emotions through their work since it was culturally impossible for them to use words.

SRDS: What compelled you to include art and artist in your historical novel?

Noh mask made by the author! (Yes, Alyson!)

AR: “The Mask Carver’s Son” was my debut novel and it originated after I spent my junior year in college as an apprentice to a Noh mask carver in Kyoto, Japan. I remember sitting in the tatami room with my teacher and four other apprentices and thinking to myself: “here I am a young Western woman studying a traditional Japanese art form, when did the reverse occur? When did the Japanese first begin to study European art?” After I returned to college for my senior year, I applied for a grant to research the first Japanese artists who traveled to France to study painting in the European tradition.

SRDS: What drew you to your specific visual art medium, artwork, and/or artist?

AR: I spent nine months in Kyoto carving a single mask. I wanted to incorporate my own artistic experience into this novel. I decided to create the character of Kiyoki, a young man who is born the son of one of Japan’s great mask carvers, but decides to forsake his ancestry and follow his own artistic path to Paris. I loved writing the scenes of the novel that drew upon my own background with mask carving. I savored the chance to bring to life the smell of freshly carved cypress wood, the silver gleam of a set of carving chisels, and the intimate space of a tatami studio.

SRDS: What unique historical objects and/or documents inspired the story?

20090807-Japan Arts Council Kabuki Kamakura Gongoro 1895 img_4_01-04

Famous Noh theater actor Kabuki Kamakura Gongoro (1895)

AR: I really wanted to show the internal conflict within Japan during the Meiji period. Up until 1868, Japan practiced an isolationist policy – no one was allowed to enter or leave the country except for the Dutch traders who were allowed to enter the port of Nagasaki. “The Mask Carver’s Son” is not just a novel that explores the relationship of a father and son with two different artistic passions, but also the conflict between the old and new generations of Japan. The nation was split between those who wanted to advance into the modern world and those who wanted to cling to ancient traditions.

SRDS: Is there an art history message you’ve tried to highlight within the novel?

AR: I think the journey of the artist is often fraught with personal perils. Kiyoki sacrifices his relationship with his father and struggles with a sense of outsidership as he pursues his life as an artist. He cannot escape the fact that he’s visibly different from his European colleagues, even though his artistic interests are the same as theirs. And when he returns to Japan, he cannot escape that he’s different from his fellow Japanese because his experience in Europe has changed him. In the end, Kiyoki exists as an artist caught between two worlds.

SRDS: What do you think readers can gain by reading stories with art tie-ins?

AR: I hope readers learn about the history of the time period as well as the dedication and sense of craft of required to be an artist.

SRDS: What fascinating information did you uncover while researching but were unable to incorporate into the book, but can share here?

Arttist Tsuguharu Foujita

AR: It’s a wonderful question, Stephanie. I based the character of Hashimoto on a real life artist by the name of Tsugharu Foujita. He had such an interesting life. He married a French woman, converted to Catholicism, and spent much of his life living in France. I wish I could have covered more of his life in the novel.

SRDS: Any further thoughts on art in fiction you’d like to expand on?

AR: I love the ability to explore the creative life of an artist in my writing. I wanted to be a painter when I was little and now I feel as though I’ve been able to incorporate my love of art with my love of writing.

SRDS: Are you working on a new historical novel with an art tie-in? If so, will you share a little with us about your next release?

AR: My next book, “The Painted Dove” explores the mystery surrounding the nineteenth century French courtesan Marthe de Florian and her Paris apartment that was kept as a time capsule for over seventy years. When the apartment was finally unlocked, a magnificent portrait was discovered of Madame de Florian by the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini. Stay tuned for that novel in 2016!

About the author: Alyson Richman is the internationally bestselling author of The Lost Wife, as well as four other historical novels: The Mask Carver’s Son, The Rhythm of Memory, The Last Van Gogh, and the recently published The Garden of Letters. As of next year, her novels will be published in eighteen languages. The daughter of an abstract painter and an engineer, her novels are known for weaving art with extensive historical research. The Lost Wife is now being adapted to be a major motion film by Relativity Media. Ms. Richman is a graduate of Wellesley College and a former Thomas J. Watson Fellow. She lives with her husband and children in Long Island.

For more about Alyson’s works: http://www.alysonrichman.com/

To buy: The Mask Carver’s Son

Join us here March 28th for an interview with Maureen Gibbon, author of Paris Red!

Interview posting schedule:

2015: January 31st Heather Webb, Rodin’s Lover (new release), February 28th Alyson Richman, The Mask Carver’s Son, March 28th Maureen Gibbon, Paris Red (new release), April 11th M.J Rose, The Witch of Painted Sorrows (new release), April 25th Lisa Brukitt, The Memory of Scent, May 30th Lisa Barr, Fugitive Colors, June 27th Lynn Cullen, The Creation of Eve, July 25th Andromeda Romano-Lax, The Detour, August 29th Frederick Andresen,The Lady with an Ostrich Feather Fan, September 26 Nancy Bilyeau, The Tapestry (new release), October 31st Laura Morelli The Gondola Maker

Join Facebook group “Love of Arts in Fiction”!

Love of Art in Historical Fiction Series featuring Heather Webb & Rodin’s Lover

Posted on January 31, 2015 by admin

Some stories pierce parts our lives, our secrets, our wishes, and the characters stay with us for a lifetime, this is one such story. Heather Webb’s Rodin’s Lover is a novel that will enrapture creatives and captivate those curious about art, artists, and the world of art during the Belle Époque era in France. This life story of sculptor Camille Claudel fully embraces her beginnings, family connections and conflicts, paranoid-abrasive spirit and social challenges, and her voracious passion for sculptor and the tempestuous but informing and agonizing relationship with fellow sculpture Auguste Rodin. Wholeheartedly, Webb ventures into the trails and triumphs of Cauldel and Rodin’s lives, the toil, dedication, works and opposition of being a talented cutting-edge artist female and male. The novel explores and exposes the unique concerns and hurdles the gifted and driven Caudel weathers and contends with while struggling to create masterful works in a tradition-bound male-dominated arena of competitiveness and connections, jealousy and gaming — one plagued by patriarchy. Claudel’s story is the heroine’s journey with monstrous obstacles, some overcome, others endured.

The novel’s mental illness thread of the gifted creative stalked by the disturbances of the mind tore me at the core as I have also lost a dear talented friend to mental illnesses. Webb has heart-piercingly rendered with perfection the devastating process of a troubled mind and how mental affliction slowly begins and takes over little by little, then consumes the precious person one has laughed with and loved for years.Through precise prose, Webb’s story undulates and flows like the surface of one of Camille’s burnished bronze cast pieces, shinning bright at the edges and going dark in the folds. This book is written with passion and love and with deep reverence for the call to create against all odds. I wept bitter-sweetly at the end of the novel because of Caudel’s fate, and because Webb expresses aptly the essence of the pursuit of the creative life.

Enter into the artist studio…throw the clay, knead and roll, feverishly pinch and shape and score and mold and smooth and shave and cut and labor away on your life works, as did Camille Caudel, as does this story infused with raw heart and soul…

Stephanie Renee dos Santos: After spending so much time researching and writing about sculptor Camille Claudel’s art and world, what would say is the most important thing you learned from her life story? What has she left you with?

Heather Webb: The most important thing I learned from Camille’s story is to take pride in the beauty we create, both in our personal lives and in our professional lives. When all is said and done, it is that beauty which transcends the tragedy of our lives and leaves a meaningful mark on the world–or at the very least, on the people we have known and loved.

SRDS: What compelled you to include art and artist in your historical novel?

HW: I’ve always been an art lover, even as a kid. We did a lot of moving with the military and I have to say, my parents did a great job of making sure we hit the big museums in every town we lived in, as well as any special exhibitions. To research more about sculpture was a natural extension of my interest.

SRDS: What drew you to your specific visual art medium, artwork, and/or artist?

Sakuntala by Camille Claudel–private collection that rotates through the Musee Rodin as well.

HW: I’ve adored Camille Claudel’s story since I saw the film Camille Claudel in my French film class in college. Camille’s struggles haunted me. As for sculpture, I’ve always been intrigued by it as an art form. It isn’t just inspiration and years of work, but brute strength and stamina that’s needed for all of the lifting, scrubbing, and building that goes along with being a great sculptor. To create this pearly structure that seems to breathe, leap from the stone, is just mind-boggling to me still—even after all the time I’ve spent researching it.

SRDS: What unique historical objects and/or documents inspired the story?

HW: Several of Camille’s works inspired the narrative including Sakuntala, The Waltz, and La Petite Châtelaine, as well as her Bust of Rodin. As for Rodin’s pieces, The Gates of Hell, Burghers of Calais, The Eternal Idol, and Monument to Balzac, among others.

SRDS: Is there an art history message you’ve tried to highlight within the novel?

The Burghers of Calais by Auguste Rodin, Musee Rodin

HW: I tried to show how art defines a creative’s view of the world, their passions, their dreams, as well as how those views shape their works. In addition, I’ve highlighted one political scandal in particular—the Dreyfus Affair—and how that affected both Rodin’s state of mind and his later pieces, as well as how the politics of art affected other artists during that time. His Monument to Balzac was groundbreaking in terms of beginning the revolution of modern art.

As for Camille’s works, she was caught in a web of male-dominated critics and artists, and I highlight how this affected her career and her mental instability. I believe if she were toiling today, she would have great success, which makes this book very relevant and era-specific.

SRDS: What do you think readers can gain by reading stories with art tie-ins?

HW: For one, they can learn all of the fascinating backstory behind different pieces—it creates a bond between the work and its viewer that is unique and cherished. It’s a special thing to be transported into the heart and mind of a creative. I think, on some level, we all wish we possessed one of these extraordinary talents and it’s truly intriguing to see how an artist views the world. Readers can also learn a bit about the politics of art and how the culture of the day impacted an artist’s pieces.

SRDS: What fascinating information did you uncover while researching but were unable to incorporate into the book, but can share here?

The Waltz by Camille Claudel, Musee Rodin

HW: So much! I learned a ton about sculpting in general—about the different types of stone and where they’re mined, loads about Claudel’s and Rodin’s contemporaries including painters and writers from the day. I was dying to include more about Victor Hugo, for example, as well as Emile Zola, but I had to stay true to the book’s point of view and vision, which meant those two men could only be included as they intersected Camille’s and Auguste’s lives.

SRDS: Any further thoughts on art in fiction you’d like to expand on?

HW: I adore reading books with artists myself, so I hope authors continue to write them!

SRDS: Are you working on a new historical novel with an art tie-in? If so, will you share a little with us about your next release?

HW: I can’t say too much at the moment, but I can share that my next book doesn’t have a visual arts tie-in, but a performing arts emphasis. It’s shaping up to be somewhat of a Gothic thriller, and a retelling of an old popular story.

About the author: Heather Webb is the author of historical novels Becoming Josephine and Rodin’s Lover (Penguin 2015), a freelance editor, and blogger. In addition she contributes to award-winning writing sites WriterUnboxed.com and RomanceUniversity.org. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association.

For more about Heather’s work:

website www.heatherwebb.net Twitter @msheatherwebb

To purchase: Rodin’s Lover

Join us here February 28th for an interview with Alyson Richman, author of The Mask Carver’s Son!

Interview posting schedule:

2015: January 31st Heather Webb, Rodin’s Lover (new release), February 28th Alyson Richman, The Mask Carver’s Son, March 28th Maureen Gibbon, Paris Red (new release), April 11th M.J Rose, The Witch of Painted Sorrows (new release), April 25th Lisa Brukitt, The Memory of Scent, May 30th Lisa Barr, Fugitive Colors, June 27th Lynn Cullen, The Creation of Eve, July 25th Andromeda Romano-Lax, The Detour, August 29th Frederick Andresen,The Lady with an Ostrich Feather Fan, September 26 Nancy Bilyeau, The Tapestry (new release)

10 Favorite Historical Novels of 2014

Posted on January 12, 2015 by admin

This is my 2014 list! These novels all in some way brought joy, intrigue, further understanding and richness to my life. I can’t thank the authors enough for your efforts to bring these stories to life, to us, to your adoring readership!!! Thank you! Endless Gratitude!!!

The Collector of Dying Breaths by M.J Rose

For sheer fast -paced memorizing and exotic atmospheric reading I loved this novel. With scenes full of inspired and unforgettable images like butterfly footprints and evocative settings and characters, one can’t help but love this rich and ambient novel. And I loved how Rose ended with a clear resolution to the question of reincarnation, bringing all the novel’s threads seamlessly together, and on a positive note — very Buddhist! I also loved the wisdom woven throughout and I highlighted a lot of passages. I think it is a stunning time-slip novel that crisscrosses time as a sixteenth-century monastery trained perfumer, René le Florentin, and a modern day mythologist, Jac L’Etoile, seek the razor edge between “potion and poison, poison and passion…past and present.” I highly recommend this engrossing read.

Lisette’s List by Susan Vreeland

Thoughtful, well-researched, carefully-rendered and moving, these are the words this novel conjures. With a scene mid-book that touched on the universal, giving me reason for pause and to deeply contemplate, what all great literature strives for. Vreeland’s mastery of language and descriptive images are on every page. The first word that comes to mind after reading the book: Exquisite. I loved Vreeland’s characterization of Parisian and Provençal life, along with learning about Marc Chagall and his wife’s plight and his thoughts on the effects of war on art and artists and culture. Throughout the novel I enjoyed the reflections and explanations of art materials and works and the meanings behind paintings such as Picasso’s “Guernica” and “Weeping Woman”. For anyone who appreciates vivid settings, specific time period details, characters and writing with soul and heart and a focus on art, you’ll love and revel in this novel. Once again, Vreeland has created an important story, one written as finely as a Pissarro painting, but in the rich colors of Cezanne’s palette.

The Spoils of Avalon by Mary F. Burns

This unique two time period historical mystery is told through distinct characters and voices, all accomplished through polished and witty prose. Burns to my blessed surprise and honor, asked if I’d write an endorsement for this novel, my very first ever which marks a milestone for me. This revealed, here’s what I have to say about The Spoils of Avalon:

“An artist, a writer, a murder, a mysterious tome, a dissolving time, a crime, Arthurian legends, ancient saints books and bones. Burns’ prose drives and is sublime, with characters and settings that live on in your mind. This is an original historical mystery connecting the Age of Industry with the Age of Miracles.”

The chapters alternate between late eighteenth-century England’s Age of Industry, opening with a reunion of American portrait painter John Singer Sargent and his lifelong British writer friend Violet Page, both of whom are called upon to unravel a disturbing murder. Then we are transported back to the sixteenth century, the Age of Miracles, during King Henry the VIII’s reign and at the crucial moment when he was disbanding the Church island-wide. Burns takes us into the secluded stone chambers and the souls of the clergy in one of the last great standing monastery’s heart-wrenching saga of dissolution. Magically Burns weaves these seemingly disparate time periods and stories in the most astonishing way! Truly her storytelling is masterful and imaginative, keeping you quickly turning the page!

The Interview by Patricia O’Reilly

In this fascinating time-slip read which investigates the lives of Irish designer/lacquer painter Eileen Gray and “The Sunday Times” reporter/art aficionado Bruce Chatwin, the story recalls a real intimate exchange between the two important figures. The characterizations of both personas was exemplary and the storytelling deep and insightful, with many wonderful sentences and original metaphors. If you like to read well-written books that explore the heart and soul of innovative art and artists you’ll revel in this novel. Eileen Gray was creating in Paris at the same time as Picasso and working also in the south of France. Gray’s works and story are world-class. The Interview shares with us the behind-the-scenes and looks into the heart of the courageous artist’s life story of Eileen Gray. I loved learning about Gray and imagining this moment in time when Gray was at the end of her artistic life and Chatwin interviewing her, and what in the end he decides to report on.

The Goddess and the Thief by Essie Fox

This novel captured my attention because of its ancient Hindu lore reference. I can’t resist a novel that touches on the pantheon of Hindu Goddesses and Gods! I found the British Victorian time period perspective fascinating, along with the spiritualist medium thread. I loved learning about the priceless and sacred Koh-i-Noor diamond, claimed by the British Empire at the end of the Anglo-Sikh wars and the story of its original owners. It was said to be a stone both blessed and cursed, exerting its power over all who encounter it. What unravels in the novel is the story of a living maharajah who is determined to reclaim his rightful throne and discover the secrets of eternity, a widowed queen who hopes the jewel can bring back her husband’s spirit. All while India born, British Alice finds herself in midst of others madness over the stone and must discover a way to regain control of her life and fate. This is a sensual Victorian novel of theft and obsession and spirit.

The Mask Carver’s Son by Alyson Richman

If you want to be floored, left with your jaw dropped in awe because of original and exquisite metaphors and similes this art-based novel is for you! Beginning and set in 1890 Japan is the story of Yamamoto Kiyoki, son of a famous Japanese mask carver who longs to embrace oil painting instead of his family’s traditional craft. Yamamoto dreams of studying in Paris with the inspiring and vibrant Impressionist painters.

With gorgeous, intimate and evocative scenes set in various places in Japan and Paris one longs to travel back to this time. And one feels intensely the profound struggle between honoring tradition and family and the longing of the adventurous creative heart and the price paid for following one’s dreams. What can one do when you knows in the depths of your heart that you must break away from tradition? And how to honor one’s father, and yet fulfill one’s own destiny?

Spiral by Judith Schara

I was immediately drawn into this time-slip novel and found I couldn’t put it down. I was excited each evening to dive into the book and to see where it went. The story goes between 2006 England and the Iron Age, time periods I’m not usually drawn to. I found the story line fascinating, along with the time period details. In addition, there are some wonderful metaphors and similes throughout the book. In 2006 England, a secret society of Druids on accident expose an ancient burial ground, a Celtic scabbard is found that hints at more treasures possibly abound. Troubled archaeologist Germaine O’Neill is called to the site to investigate, and in an attempt to salvage her career she takes a hasty risk with repercussions, but uncovers an unknown chamber dating back to the Iron Age of a Celtic queen. O’Neill’s discovery alters her life and possibly costs her it while discovering a new twist to the history of prehistoric England. After an accident, O’Neill is in a altered state and travels back in time to the fifth century, entering the life of Sabrann ap Durot—the woman whose burial O’Neill has just discovered and her far distant ancestor, for the two women are joined across time by identical mitochondrial DNA. Sabrann posses the special gift of “sight” and is feared for it, and will be plagued and possibly saved by her clairvoyance? The protagonist Germanie/Sabrann is interesting and intriguing, along with her yet to be revealed life purpose (of which I suspect with be reveal in the forthcoming sequel!). The story is told in the omnipresent voice and it takes the reader eventually all the way to Carthage of old. I’m already looking forward to the next book in the series! I recommend this novel if you like female protagonists, exotic settings and characters, and the idea of genetic destiny.

The Woman Who Heard Color by Kelly Jones

This is a well-told story which left me in tears at a couple of points…that says a lot! When “art detective” Lauren O’Farrell sets out to unravel and potentially recover works of art stolen and absconded with by the Nazis during World War II, she comes into contact with elderly Isabella Fletcher. Is Isabella the daughter of a renowned German art gallery dealer, Hanna Fleischmann, whose life story holds mysteries and quite possibly the answers Lauren seeks, decades after masterpieces by modern artists have gone missing, the likes of Wassily Kadindskys, Franz Marcs, Gabriele Munters, Otto Dixs and many more. Through alternating chapters set in New York City in 2009 and back to between the two World Wars and through Hilter’s reign in Germany, Jones exposes the cutting-edge German art scene before World War II, the sweeping changes the population was confronted with, and the horrors that followed. And how modern art and artists were cast as “degenerative” and what that meant and what was lost. In this touching and tearjerking novel one comes to understand how destructive darkness was wreaked upon modern art in Germany during World War II and what would eventually be lost forever and what would be saved, but at great personal risk and costs. Through Hanna’s and Isabella’s stories we learn and see how those who were gifted and talented were forced or coerced to serve Hitler and make decisions none of us hope to ever have to make for life, for family and for the freedom to create what the spirit calls forth.

I, Hogarth by Micheal Dean

In this novel Dean flawlessly reveals the rogue risqué life story of eighteenth century, British painter and engraver William Hogarth. Hogarth defined his period with works such as “Gin Lane” and “The Rake’s Progress”, depicting the ebullience, enjoyments and social iniquities of London. Dean takes us from Hogarth’s childhood spent in a debtor’s prison, his struggle to make a name for himself, his time as England’s preeminent portrait painter, his fight for artists’ rights instigating the Copyright Act, his unfortunate brush with politics, and to his deathbed in his wife’s arms. Told in the first person through the eyes and heart of the artist we come to learn Hogarth’s deepest desires, his frustrations, his triumphs, his downfalls. Dean brings to life Hogarth and his epoch, blending facts with fiction, revealing the man behind his famous and effecting work of art. Recommended.

Floats the Dark Shadow by Yves Fey

This is a historically fascinating novel with macabre moments set during the Belle Époque era in Paris. Children are disappearing in the “City of Lights”, as American born painter Theodora Faraday struggles with her painting and illustrating poems for the Revenants, a group of poets inclusive of her cousin, Averill, with whom she’s romantically infatuated. When Inspecteur Michel Devaux suspects the poets are somehow tied to the disappearance of the innocent youths, Theo’s world goes starless. Fey takes us into the underbelly and mysterious of Paris: poetry readings in the catacombs, Tarot card fortunetellers, the asylum, a black Mass, and could it possibly be true that France’s most evil historic serial killer Gilles de Rais from the fifteenth century has somehow reincarnated?

Paris is exquisite, beautiful, but not all its inhabitants embody and live for virtuous elegance, others celebrate wickedness, live for sot obsessions, and morbid delusions. If you are looking for an original and the shadow-side of the Belle Époque era this novel is if for you!

Madame Picasso by Anne Girard

Love stories have inspired art and literature since time immemorial, and Girard’s novel marries both, in telling the untold life-altering love affair between Eva Gouel and artist Pablo Picasso at the end of the colorful Belle Époque era in Paris, France. Eva, an aspiring seamstress, who will become a designer, a creative in her own right, works behind-the-scenes in the famous Moulin Rouge under the adopted name of Marcelle Humbert. One evening, she spies the rising star Picasso in a group of show goers and is Instantly entranced by the painter’s persona. A chance meeting at an art exhibit brings them into each other’s aura, where a lifelong connection begins, but one with complicated obstacles to surmount and navigate in order for them to realize their love: doubt, another woman, a protective group of artist friends, illness and death.

Girard takes us into the cabaret and cafés, the artist’s studio and chic salons, countryside hideaways, under the sheets, and into the unexposed chambers of the heart of twentieth-century artist icon Pablo Picasso; revealing a compassionate, loving and devoted man behind his notorious womanizing character. Through the story, we learn how Eva’s relationship with Pablo affected and inspired his works, visibly noted as Picasso left the Rose period (prior relationship with Fernande Oliver) and evolved into the epicenter of his Cubist era (involved with Eva Gouel). There’s stability, a confidence, a grounded structure in Picasso’s Cubism during his involvement with Eva, reflecting those attributes she quite possibly brought to the artist’s life. Also, the novel explores a plausible artistic influence she, whom he called his ‘Ma Jolie’, may have had on him too, which I really enjoyed speculating about. Madame Picasso is a love story exploring how passion sparked form and was recorded in masterful works of art.

These novels are currently on my highly anticipated 2015 reading list, some are newly released or soon-to-be-released…delicious….can’t wait! Euphoria by Lily King, The Witch of Painted Sorrows by M.J Rose, The Rebel Queen, by Michelle Moran, Rodin’s Lover by Heather Webb, The Lady with an Ostrich-Feather Fan by Frederick R. Andresen, Vanessa and Her Sister by Pirya Parmar, Paris Red by Maureen Gibbon, The Tapestry by Nancy Bilyeau, Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier (released 2008), and Race for Tibet by Sophie Schiller.

And already in print novels part of the ongoing “Love of Art in Historical Fiction Series”: The Memory of Scent by Lisa Brukitt, Fugitive Colors by Lisa Barr,The Creation of Eve by Lynn Cullen, The Detour by Andromeda Romano-Lax.

Stephanie Renée dos Santos

Writing about Artists & Mystics | Author. Artist. Yogini.

Tag Archives: art-based historical fiction

VICTORINE by Drema Drudge

Love of Art in Historical Fiction Series featuring Frederick Andresen & The Lady with an Ostrich-Feather Fan

Love of Art in Historical Fiction Series featuring Andromeda Romano-Lax & The Detour

Recap of the 2015 Denver Historical Novel Society Conference panel-talk “Art and Artists in HF”

Love of Art in Historical Fiction Series featuring Lisa Barr of Fugitive Colors

Love of Art in Historical Fiction Series featuring Lisa Burkitt & The Memory of Scent

Love of Art in Historical Fiction Series featuring Maureen Gibbon of Paris Red

Love of Art in Historical Fiction Series featuring Heather Webb & Rodin’s Lover

10 Favorite Historical Novels of 2014