Tonight I started reading the latest novel by a marvelous writer named Susan Vreeland.

The first book I read by her was called Girl in Hyacinth Blue and it followed a painting by Dutch master Vermeer back through time and showing its impact on its owners through the generations. The story of the Dutch Jewish family who owned it during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands was particularly moving.

The second book was called The Passion of Artemesia, and told the story of a great (and little known) woman painter. But her story also tells how an artist's greatest passion can be for his or her art, and how an artist can be married to the creative drive rather than to another human...wonderful stuff.

Here is the Barnes & Noble review:

Quote:
In her luminous debut novel, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Susan Vreeland told the story of a Vermeer painting that transformed the lives of its many owners with its beauty. Now, in her stunning new novel, she tells the story of a painter who transformed Renaissance Italy with the beauty of her work. The Passion of Artemisia chronicles the extraordinary life of Artemisia Gentileschi, the first woman to make a significant contribution to art history.

At age eighteen, Artemisia Gentileschi finds herself humiliated in papal court for publicly accusing the man who raped her -- Agostino Tassi, her painting teacher. When even her father does not stand up for her, she knows she cannot stay in Rome and begs to have a marriage arranged for her. Her new husband, an artist named Pietro Stiatessi, takes her to his native Florence, where her talent for painting blossoms and she becomes the first woman to be elected to the Accademia dell'Arte. But marriage clashes with Artemisia's newfound fame as a painter, and she begins a lifelong search to reconcile painting and motherhood, passion and genius.

Set against the glorious backdrops of Rome, Florence, and Genoa, peopled with historical characters such as Cosimo de' Medici and Galileo, and filled with the details of the life of a Renaissance painter, The Passion of Artemisia is the story of Gentileschi's struggle to find love, forgiveness, and wholeness through her art. At once a dramatic tale of love and a moving father-daughter story, it is the portrait of an astonishingwoman that will captivate lovers of Gentileschi's paintings and anyone interested in the life of a woman who ignored the conventions of her day and dared to follow her heart.

I was very excited and happy to see a new Vreeland book at the store the other day. It is called The Forest Lover and tells the story of a great Canadian painter, Emily Carr, who breaks out of the strict Victorian life expected of her in early 20th century British Columbia, in order to befriend and paint the Native Americans whose traditions and way of life are either rapidly changing or vanishing altogether. I have only read the first few chapters, but it looks as if Vreeland has delivered once again.

She is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors.

Today I did indeed run errands, do housework, and weed my vegetable garden. (I also picked the broccoli, which Bill and I ate raw on the spot ). I didn't get everything done, but I never seem to. But as long as there is food to eat, clean underwear, and the house is clean enough that people do not get sick from living in it, that's usually enough.

The kids are very happy to be out of school. And I was very happy because Dan went off and spent the day golfing with friends. I nag him to do that all the time (I might be the only wife in America who actually nags and begs her husband to go golfing .) He never has enough fun, and I was delighted that he went today. It was a charity golf outing, and if that's what it takes to get him to go out and enjoy himself, then  I wish they would have one at least once a month.