These are three of my favourites that are based upon true events – with a little artistic licence?
Stu Roberts – History of Art Tutor
Edward Hopper
Buy on Amazon – The Narrow Land
In the late summer season of 1950 on Cape Cod. Michael, a ten-year-old boy, is spending the summer with Richie and his glamorous but troubled mother. Left to their own devices, the boys meet a couple living nearby – the artists Jo and Edward Hopper – and an unlikely friendship is forged.
She, volatile, passionate and often irrational, suffers bouts of obsessive sexual jealousy. He, withdrawn and unwell, depressed by his inability to work, becomes besotted by Richie’s frail and beautiful Aunt Katherine who has not long to live – an infatuation he shares with young Michael.
A novel of loneliness and regret, the legacy of World War II and the ever-changing concept of the American Dream.
Charles Rennie Macintosh
In 1914, a mysterious Scotsman arrives on the Suffolk coast. The locals call him Mac and whisper about him as he sets off on his walks at unlikely hours, and stops to examine the humblest flowers. He is seen on the beach, staring out across the waves as if he’s searching for clues. To Thomas Maggs, the son of the local publican he looks for all the world like a detective, in his black cape and hat of felted wool, and the way he puffs on his pipe as if he’s Sherlock Holmes. But Mac isn’t a detective, he’s the architect Charles Rennie Mac Macintosh Mackintosh. Yet just as Thomas and Mac’s friendship begins to blossom, war with Germany is declared. As the summer guests flee and are replaced by regiments of soldiers on their way to Belgium, the brutality of war weighs increasingly heavily on this coastal community, they become more suspicious of Mac and his curious behaviour…
Auguste Renoir
Buy on Amazon – Luncheon of the Boating Party
This novel focusses on gathering of Renoir’s real friends enjoying a summer Sunday on a café terrace along the Seine.
Narrated by Renoir and seven of the models, the novel illuminates the gusto, hedonism, and art of the era. With a gorgeous palette of vibrant, captivating characters, Vreeland paints their lives, loves, losses, and triumphs to bring the painting to life.
Vreeland’s ‘Girl in Hyacinth Blue’ painted a similar portrait of the girl (his daughter?) in one of Vermeer’s paintings.
Vreeland s most ambitious book yet. “The Philadelphia Inquirer”
If a trip to Paris is a bit outside of your price range, Vreelands new novel is the next best thing.”Parade”
A masterwork. “The San Diego Union-Tribune”
Exquisitely wrought . . . this summer s most satisfying historical novel. “The Seattle Times”
Vreeland takes the big bold brush strokes of Renoir s personal and artistic oeuvre and displays them with her usual vividness in this eponymous novel. . . . Sensual and provocative. “The Baltimore Sun”
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