The Pen and the Brush
How Passion for Art Shaped Nineteenth-Century French Novels
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A scintillating glimpse into the lives of acclaimed writers and artists and their inspiring, often surprising convergences, from the author of Monsieur Proust's Library
With the wit and penetration well known to readers of Anka Muhlstein’s work, The Pen and the Brush revisits the delights of the French novel. This time she focuses on late 19th- and 20th-century writers--Balzac, Zola, Proust, Huysmans, and Maupassant--through the lens of their passionate involvement with the fine arts. She delves into the crucial role that painters play as characters in their novels, which she pairs with an exploration of the profound influence that painting exercised on the novelists' techniques, offering an intimate view of the intertwined worlds of painters and writers at the time.
Muhlstein's deftly chosen vignettes bring to life a portrait of the nineteenth century's tight-knit artistic community, where Cézanne and Zola befriended each other as boys and Balzac yearned for the approval of Delacroix. She leads the reader on a journey of spontaneous discovery as she explores how a great painting can open a mind and spark creative fire.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With personable prose and erudition, Muhlstein (Monsieur Proust's Library) reveals seemingly all there is to know about the relationship between 19th-century French novels and painting. She cites the Louvre's open access policy, spurred by the French Revolution, and art's robust presence in French life as influences on the emergence of "the visual novel." The authors covered in this rich and detailed analysis include Honor de Balzac, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Guy de Maupassant, Marcel Proust, and mile Zola. While discussing their work, Muhlstein forms a new lexicon of literary devices used in the 19th-century French novel. She refers to Zola as the first "landscapist writer" because he drew from the Impressionists' use of light, and regards Proust's use of works of art to describe character traits as creating "pictorial allusions." Muhlstein shows how specific paintings Edouard Manet's "Olympia" or Giotto's "Idolatry" served as a foundation for visual descriptions or moved plot forward. She also explores the personal lives of the writers, adding fun tidbits about Zola's career as an art critic and friendship with Paul C zanne. Muhlstein's extensive knowledge of art and literature make for a fascinating, instructive, and absorbing read.
