The Lady with the Dark Hair
The Lady with the Dark Hair, a dual-timeline novel, immerses readers in the art worlds of the late 1800s and today. Following similar pathways traveled by Tracy Chevalier in Girl with a Pearl Earring and Marta Molnar in The Secret Life of Sunflowers, we see and feel the limitations imposed on young women involved in artistic endeavors and yearning to be painters in their own right.
Viviana Torrens, a young Catalan woman, is a servant in the home of an elderly French artist. Her employer asks her to model and teaches her to paint, but her future is bleak until she meets Francisco Vella, who sells paints. She poses as his sister and joins him to travel and paint. In the present, Esther Markstrom runs a museum devoted to Vella’s paintings while caring for her schizophrenic mother. The Markstroms know that Vella is a distant relative. His revered painting of the lady with dark hair hangs over their fireplace. With the help of her former art history professor, Esther searches for this woman’s identity and discovers questions about who actually painted this great work and how she is—or is not—related to the painter.
The story is carefully crafted with lots of historical detail, elegant language, and interesting twists. For example, as in Shakespearean plays, Viviana poses as a man to escape Vella. This young woman also has fascinating conversations with Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, and Marie Bracquemond. The book educates readers about the art world while absorbing them in a great story.
