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Summer holidays: deck chair, favourite drink, and a good book, twinkling blue sea in the distance or maybe a pale view of the hills. For most of us it may well be a stay cation in our own home this year, but the good news is that we can have more and bigger books in that pile next to our deck chair!
In keeping with our group name, I have put to collection a pile of fiction with an arty theme to get you started. There is nothing too taxing because we all need a little relaxation. Neither are they particularly new. Some you might like to read again and some might be discoveries.
The Miniaturist
Jessie Burton
Set in Amsterdam in the 1800s, a young girl arrives at her new husband’s house which is governed by his stern older sister. For a wedding present, she receives a dolls house which replicates their home. A miniaturist is engaged to make the furnishings and packages arrive, but some are unexpected and mimic events happening in the house.
Nineteenth Century, Holland, Dolls House
The Girl with a Pearl Earring
Tracy Chevalier
Couldn’t miss this one out: Chevalier was inspired by the Vermeer painting by the same name and so tells the story of Griet, the servant girl who through her interest in art becomes close to her employer.
Seventeenth Century, Holland , Painting
The Lady and the Unicorn
Tracy Chevalier
This stars not a painting but six medieval tapestries often referred to as the Mona Lisa of woven artworks. The tapestries were commissioned by a nobleman for his chateau hoping that they would impress the King. He envisaged battlefields but instead received a seductive world of women, unicorns and flowers.
Tapestry, Medieval, France
The Last Supper
Rachel Cusk
Described by The Times as “a rich meditation on separation, on possession, on Renaissance artists and inevitably on the transformative nature of travel”. The Guardian commented that whether considering language, food or national habits, Cusk has an amazing ability to strike at the heart of things, to look afresh and not overlook…
Italy, Art, Renaissance art, travelogue, family life, Twentieth Century escape
What’s Bred in the Bone
Robertson Davies
Part 2 of the Cornish Trilogy. This traces the life of Francis Cornish. He attains an international reputation as an art connoisseur and collector. In this novel, he studies the restoration of old paintings in Germany before WW2. He is recruited by British Intelligence and is involved in a scheme to defraud the Nazi’s of Old Masters.
(The Rebel Angels, What’s Bred in the Bone, The Lyre of Orpheus)
Twentieth Century, Germany, Picture Restoration.
The Birth of Venus
Sarah Dunant
Off to the fifteenth century Florence of the Medici for this ‘memoir’ of a 15-year-old who was drawn by an artist when he was commissioned to paint the walls of the family’s chapel. She wants him to teach her to paint but this cannot be allowed. However, an older man, who understands her desire to paint offers to marry her but all is not as it seems.
Italy, Medici, painting
The Collector
John Fowles
Not about a painting, but revolving around pretty things. Frederick Clegg is the collector of butterflies when he becomes obsessed with another pretty thing. Miranda Grey is a student at the Slade and Frederick wants to add her to his collection. A psychological thriller.
Twentieth Century, Britain, Collecting, Obsession
Headlong
Michael Frayn
Fake or fortune? Martin Clay becomes obsessed with an unidentified painting in a neighbour’s country house. Convinced he’s discovered a lost painting by Bruegel the Elder’ his obsession sends his life and marriage into disarray.
Twentieth Century, Art History, Family
The Line of Beauty
Alan Hollinghurst
This title won the man Booker Prize and takes us to the 1980s and Thatcher’s Britain. Nick Guest, a recent graduate, moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of a Tory MP. Nick is soon swept into their world but also pursues his obsessions with art and beauty.
Twentieth Century, Britain, Art
What I Loved
Siri Hustvedt
Leo Hertzberg discovers an extraordinary painting by an unknown artist in a SoHo gallery. He buys the work, tracks down the artist and so begins a lifelong friendship. Set against the artistic backdrop of Manhattan the book explores 25 years of the interwoven stories of the two families. Described as teeming with ideas about contemporary art and aesthetic meaning in addition to love, loss and betrayal. ( This is a wildcard. I haven’t read it and there are few reviews. It might be terrible though she has been longlisted for the Booker)
America, Art, Painting, Family and Friendship
My Name is Red
Orphan Pamuk
Pamuk tells the story of the Ottoman miniaturist painters from multiple viewpoints. But it is so much more – a murder mystery, a description of Islamic society, the relationship between art and life.
Turkey, Ottoman Empire, Miniaturist Painters, Islam, Mystery
How to be Both
Ali Smith
Interwoven tales of the present and the fifteenth century. George is the teenage girl in the present whose mother has recently died and Francesco del Cossa is the Renaissance artist.
Italy, Fifteenth Century, Ferrara, painting
The Goldfinch
Donna Tart
The painting at the centre of this book is The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius. It is the favourite painting of Theo Decker’s mother who is killed while showing it to him in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Theo is urged to take the painting by a dying man and secretly keeps it…
Girl Reading
Katie Ward
A novel in sections, each section based on a separate woman and her portrait. The book spans six centuries and explores art, reading and what it means to be a woman in the past, the present and the future.
Art History, Feminism, Portraits
The Vivisector
Patrick White
This is the chronicle of painter Hurtle Duffield’s tempestuous life. It has been suggested that it might be based on the life of John Passmore or Sydney Nolan.
Australia Twentieth Century, Contemporary Art
The Picture of Dorian Grey
Oscar Wilde
This needs no introduction: Dorian Gray poses for a portrait by the celebrated Basil Hallward. Through Basil, he meets Lord Henry Wootton and becomes enthralled by the hedonistic life…
