Books about art and artists

I’m absolutely loving Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal, translated from French by Jessica Moore. The writing - about art-making but also about being in your early twenties and pinging around Europe (sob!) - is sumptuous and sensuous, with whole paragraphs so beautiful I have to read them a few times. (Plus utter kudos to my colleagues at MacLehose Press for creating an artwork of a goldie-looking book - honestly, she’s a stunner.) So I thought I’d gather some other writing about art and artists I have loved for my newsletter (sign up here if you like that sort of thing) and put it here too.

The Naked Muse by Kelley Swain

I worked on the publicity for this beautiful little book from indie publisher Valley Press in 2016. It’s an elegant, thought-provoking memoir of Kelley’s time as an artists’ model. She’s a poet, and the writing is delicious. She talks about how it feels to disrobe in a room full of clothed strangers, and to see yourself as others portray you. I learned so much from this book about art, the act of looking and being looked at, and our relationship with our bodies.

The Doll Factory by Elizabeth MacNeal

Set among the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in Victorian London, this wonderful novel is drenched with great period detail. Elizabeth is brilliantly eloquent on artistic ambition and the weight of male expectation and attention - and obsession - on women, and there are fun cameos from Millais, Rossetti and Lizzie Siddal and a suffocatingly tense and gripping denouement.

The Bellini Madonna by Elizabeth Lowry

A lost Old Master, a stifling heatwave, a crumbling English country pile, its innocent - or is she? - young custodian and a corrupt art sleuth. All this AND Robert Browning in Italy. I had the pleasure of working on Elizabeth’s Mantel-approved gothic masterpiece Dark Water, and I’ll read everything she ever writes. Get into her - you won’t regret it.

Desperate Romantics by Franny Moyle

This was the book that kick-started my interest in the Pre-Raphaelites. For a while I was a book reviewer for BBC Radio Oxford, and this was one of the books that was sent to me for consideration. I just fell in love. It’s non-fiction (so doesn’t take all the liberties with the history that the entertaining BBC series based on it did) but it’s deeply researched, lively and fascinating.

Fake Like Me by Barbara Bourland

A book I loved working on, Fake Like Me is a dark, sharp, feminist art-world satire boasting a gang of infamous, crazily talented young artists, legendary parties, a no-name artist desperately re-making her most triumphant works and an eerie but opulent house designed by her dead artistic hero. But… a lot still needs to be explained about Carey Logan’s tragic death. And, just in case you’re not already sold, the book is a sly modern take on Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. Delicious.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

It moves so slowly! How did she keep me so completely entranced? This Pulitzer Prize winning novel about Theo Decker’s life after he is orphanned in the bombing of a museum is a many-splendoured thing. It’s adorned with fantastic writing and intriguing plotting and at its heart lies a tiny painted masterpiece.

The Italian Teacher by Tom Rachman

I recommend this book A LOT but it deserves it! It’s darkly funny but agonisingly acute on humiliation, loneliness and need. Tom is a spectacular writer. He asks what makes a great artist, and what damage might they be permitted to wreak due to their talent. It’s a delicious satire on connoisseurship, too. The sections with larger-than-life artist Bear painting and partying in glamorous bohemian 1950s Rome are especially wonderful.

Effie by Suzanne Fagence Cooper

I loved this lively biography of Effie Gray, who married John Ruskin - the foremost art critic of the Victorian age. The marriage was never consummated and was eventually scandalously annulled, freeing Effie to marry wunderkind painter John Everett Millais, with whom she had fallen in love during a peculiar Scottish trip during which he painted her husband’s portrait. It’s a fascinating look at Victorian high society and the art world. I loved it so much I was quite starstruck when I worked on Suzanne’s book on Ruskin’s writings, To See Clearly - a brilliant introduction to this incredibly prescient thinker who was interested in conservation, the value of work, the natural world, responsible travel and so many other issues that resonate today. She is now working on a book about Jane and William Morris that I cannot wait to get my paws on.

‘Not My Best Side’ by U A Fanthorpe

I love poems about art and artists (and perhaps that’s another blog) but here’s one that always tickles me: ‘Not My Best Side’. It’s inspired by Paolo Uccello’s eerily beautiful painting George and the Dragon, which can be seen in the National Gallery. I love the knight’s assertion that

‘I have diplomas in Dragon

Management and Virgin Reclamation’.

So… what did I miss?

I’ll get kicked out of the booklovers’ club for saying this, but I wasn’t blown away by Ali Smith’s How To Be Both, which boasted some lovely writing but somehow it didn’t quite hang together for me.

Please note that this article includes affiliate links, which means I earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you) if you buy through them. I only link to books I really love.