The Painter’s Girl
Paris, 1860s. A zebra bolts from the Cirque d’Hiver, terrifying people on the streets of Montmartre. Mimi, a poor 19-year-old laundress, manages to jump on his back and guide him back to the circus. In return, she’s hired to clean the stables and watch the shows. But because Mimi has acrobatic skills, she gets to try out the trapeze. She soon becomes a star performer. After an affair, she has a daughter, Colette, but is heartbroken when forced to give her up. She meets Édouard Manet at the nightclub Lapin Agile, a haunt for up-and-coming Impressionist artists. Mimi begins posing for Manet, which leads to intimacy between them. They frequent Paris’s can-can clubs and dance halls. Fortuitously, she spots Colette with a family Manet knows. Mimi implores him to regain her daughter. When he refuses, Mimi must return to the slums and begin her climb up the social ladder, again.
Helen Fripp has done a remarkable job of transporting us to 1860s Paris, particularly Montmartre, enabling us to experience life and the smells and sounds of the Belle Époque that was just beginning. Fripp notes that she based this novel on “an amalgam” of models who appear in the paintings of Manet and other Impressionists. The artists’ boisterous lifestyles and their works are described in some detail. Although photographs are not included in the book, readers will be delighted with the accuracy of Fripp’s word-paintings if they find the images online. The story narrates Manet’s painting of Mimi in his well-known works, such as Olympia and Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe, but Fripp uses an interesting technique to blend the model into the paintings. The novel explores how dedicated, hard work can lead to glory, and again following a setback, and yet again in a third chance. Highly recommended.
