A historical novel based around Jules Bastien-Lepage's obsession with the creation of his painting of Joan of Arc that today is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Set against the backdrop of the emergence of the French Third Republic and enmeshed in the political battle between Catholicism and Secularism, the context of the painting as a politically disruptive work is exposed. From Bastien-Lepage's days at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, his establishment of the naturalist school of ...

Sarah Bernhardt persuades The Prince of Wales to have Jules Bastien-Lepage paint his portrait. The physical barrier of the English Channel terrifies Jules, almost as much as his friends overestimation of his abilities.How does a French Republican paint a man who is both the leader of the Masonic movement and future King of England, Emperor of India?When the choice is between a portrait commission for a future King and being at a ceremony to receive a Legion d'Honeur which i...

The War of 1870 between France and Germany has been over for a year. In the turmoil of a defeated France, rebuilding with an uncertain form of government, still occupied by the armies of the newly formed German Empire, a young artist emerges. Recovering from wounds, finding allies in all classes, developing self understanding and building alliances inside the Academic art world, presents a series of obstacles to the young man's progress. The greatest obstacle is the one he must solve himse...

The book is built around the relationships of leading artists and actors in London starting in the 1880s. The independent life of an unfinished portrait that is now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, becomes the story as the people that create it fade from popular memory.Sarah Bernhardt, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Laurence Alma Tadema, Jules Bastien-Lepage, Bram Stoker, all play a part in the creation of the portrait and its' survival.The interactio...

In 1880 the French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage was one of the rising starts of modern art and a fi ne portraitist. Henry Irving on the other hand was acknowledge as the fi nest Shakespearian actor in England. The two met at a dinner in the Beefsteak Room one evening and set out to create what would become one of the best unfi nished works in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London.This story, written by a portraitist, brings out the inevitable tensions that exist b...