The Beldonald Holbein

A dreadful warning perhaps of the havoc which can be wreaked by the artistic eye, The Beldonald Holbein is another of those tales, and there are many in James’s output, which has to be read with attention to what the first-person narrator leaves out, glosses over or just plain fails to notice in what ‘he’ says. You will have to decide how much the fate which afflicts the ‘Holbein’ and her unwitting patroness is brought on by the painter and his colleague Outreau and how much is unavoidable.