Month: September 2008

Susan Vreeland again explores the life and times of an artist in this novel which, while taking some liberties with the facts, delightfully reveals Pierre Auguste Renoir and his friends (models, other painters experimenting with Impressionism, and the restauranteur’ family (La Maison Fournaise) on the Seine where this most famous of his paintings was created.

I was reminded of our pleasant strolls on the Seine and picnics in the Bois du Boulange as well as of all our river experiences in the boating accounts.  It was enlightening to learn of the Parisian interest in simple pleasures at this time, the customs of artists and models, and the struggles of the Impressionists to gain acceptance.

This novel is a largely fictitious but possible story of Emily Carr, the British Columbia painter who began to depict magnificent Northwest Indian totems and their forest settings when the Impressionists had begun to experiment in France but were not appreciated on this side of the Atlantic.

For many years her lushly pigmented and powerfully outlined representations were not appreciated.  In fact, all native art was scorned.  But finally museum collectors widened their horizons and she was exhibited in her fifties.

Meanwhile she endured rain and mosquitoes, made friends with the Indians, ( impoverished, almost wiped out by white man’s diseases, punished by missionaries for practicing their culture,) and struggled to make a living despite the disapproval of her own family.  The most terrible part of the story depicts a young man crippled and driven almost insane by his own missionary father for playing with his Indian friends.