The Artist by Lucy Steeds review – mystery and romance in Provence
A love story wrapped in a mystery, Lucy Steeds’s vividly poetic debut novel begins cinematically and with a prophetic hint of myth: the arrival of a stranger on a dusty road, in his pocket a paper bearing the single-word summons, “Venez”. The year is 1920, in a Europe that is still under the pall of the war that should have ended all wars, and Steeds’s stranger is approaching a remote farmhouse in the Provençal village of Saint-Auguste where fabled painter Edouard Tartuffe – Tata, “the Master of Light” – lives with only his niece Ettie for company.
The newcomer is young Englishman Joseph Adelaide, a disappointed artist and aspiring journalist, in flight from the tragic consequences of a war that has robbed him of his beloved brother and estranged him from his family, after his overbearing father branded him a coward for his conscientious objection. Hoping to begin a new career as a writer on art, Joseph has petitioned Tartuffe for an interview. He asks more in hope than expectation, as Tartuffe is an enigma around whom myths swirl, and has shut himself away from the world for decades. But then the summons comes, and it seems that Joseph may begin his new life.
It soon becomes clear, however, that whoever scrawled that word of invitation, it was not Edouard Tartuffe. Joseph is far from welcome: the old painter, half-blind, monosyllabic and uncooperative, is at best indifferent and at worst violently hostile. Tata’s niece Ettie – motherless, illegitimate and weary under the burden of caring for a demanding and ruthlessly controlling old man – is shy, prickly, resentful and wary of all outsiders. But daily life revolves around the studio – even the oysters and peaches Ettie buys for their dinner are selected for their qualities as potential subjects for a still life – and when Tata decides that Joseph might serve as a model for his latest painting, the writer is permitted to stay, and even to write.
With lavish description, Steeds evokes the sensory environment: the smell of hot earth, the sound of crickets, sunlight on yellow stones
As Joseph makes a place for himself in the claustrophobic menage, his struggles are now with the blank page and the near-impossible task of finding the language to describe a creative activity that has no need of words. Thus he finds his attention turning instead to the increasingly insistent questions the household poses: not so much on art, but about the most private secrets of its inhabitants. Slowly he begins to peel away its layered mysteries. Where does Ettie go at night, and what happened to her parents? How did Tata lose the sight of an eye, and why did he withdraw from the world – from all its light and colour, and from eminent friends such as Paul Cézanne? Why does the painter keep Ettie almost as a prisoner – and under what imperative does she stay?
This slender but ambitious novel is something of a slow-burn. To begin with, its action feels almost entirely suspended, the appearance of Joseph barely a ripple in the Provençal heat haze and the household itself a still life like those Tartuffe has made his trademark, the picture of beauty tipping into decay. With lavish, luxurious description, Steeds evokes the sensory environment: the smell of hot earth, the sound of crickets, sunlight on soft yellow stones, “a constellation of fireflies … spreading and regrouping like a net of stars”.
This does occasionally, inevitably, veer into overripeness, and might feel frustratingly static if Steeds’s pacing were not also carefully considered. Painstakingly she conjures her nature morte into life, a detail at a time. Coaxing the characters’ many secrets into the light, with each revelation she brings just the right amount of new tension to bear on the narrative. Her characterisation too is vivid and sure-footed: the anguished Joseph, the fiercely determined Ettie, and at the centre of his shadowy lair, the great tortured brute Tata – half Cyclops, half Minotaur – each of them groping towards artistic expression. A seductive combination of romance, puzzle and poetry, The Artist also offers a considered interrogation of the value of art: to open windows in human existence, to push against limits, to bring freedom, perspective and light.
• The Artist by Lucy Steeds is published by John Murray (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
