The lives, subjects, and passions of great artists as depicted in a popular fiction format can be traced back to at least the 1934 publication of Irving Stone’s Lust for Life, based on the life of Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh.
Twenty-five years later, Stone revisited this approach with his novel about Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy.
Both works were adapted into successful films.
The format experienced a resurgence with the 1999 publication of the novels Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier and Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland.
Both titles were extremely well-received by readers, and the popularity of this style of fiction continues to this day.
If you are interested in art and artists, the titles below, including these two classics, are sure to be of interest.
–– Chevalier, Tracy. Girl with a Pearl Earring (1999).
Set in 17th century Delft, Netherlands, Chevalier intertwines the life of artist Johannes Vermeer with a fictional 16-year-old girl who comes to work in his household, and who may have posed for his famous painting.
–– Cowell, Stephanie. Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet (2010).
An unforgettable portrait of the Impressionist painter Claude Monet and the two passions that framed his life: his beautiful, tragic wife, Camille, and his pursuit of art.
–– Essex, Karen. Leonardo’s Swans (2006).
Isabella and Beatrice d’Este are ambitious but very different sisters, and their competition over men, attention, and the chance to be immortalized on canvas by Leonardo da Vinci is at the heart of this novel set in Renaissance Italy.
–– Elizabeth Hickey. The Painted Kiss (2005).
Based on two actual historical figures, this is an imagined account of the unusual relationship between artist Gustav Klimt and Emilie Floge, who first met when she was a privileged 12-year-old reluctantly taking drawing lessons and he was her starving artist teacher.
–– Vreeland, Susan. Girl in Hyacinth Blue (1999).
In eight independent but chronologically linked chapters, Vreeland traces the history of a lost Vermeer painting and the lives it touched over time.
Her second novel, The Passion of Artemisia (2002), also tracks a particular painting through time: in this case, the post-Renaissance painter Artemisia Gentileschi’s violent masterpiece, Judith.
Artemisia is known as the first woman admitted to the Accademia dell’ Arte in Florence, but also well documented is her public humiliation in a papal court after an accusation of rape against her painting teacher, who was also her father’s friend.
Vreeland continues her examination of female artists with the 2003 publication of The Forest Lover, a novel based on the life of Emily Carr.
The French Impressionist artist Auguste Renoir is the subject of Vreeland’s 2007 bestselling novel, The Luncheon of the Boating Party.
In this carefully constructed novel, the author follows Renoir and the group of Parisian acquaintances he brings together as models for his 1880 masterpiece.
In Vreeland’s most recent novel, Clara and Mr. Tiffany (2011), the author once again examines the life behind a famous artistic creation—in this case the Tiffany leaded-glass lamp. She tells the story of Clara Driscoll, who ran the women’s workshop at the New York studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany and who many art historians now believe conceived the idea, unacknowledged in her lifetime, of Tiffany’s famous lampshades.
