Why am I passionate about this?
As an art historian and painter, I was inevitably drawn to the theme of artists and their muses when I started writing historical fiction. Female, passive, disempowered, and doomed sums up the fate of most muses. History is littered with their corpses - Rossetti’s model Lizzie Siddal committed suicide, Rodin’s model Camille Claudel went mad, Edie Sedgwick, made famous by Warhol, died of an overdose. The title ‘muse’ might offer immortality, but their lives were often hell on earth. My books set out to understand what drove these women, some of whom were artists in their own right, to make such huge sacrifices.
Lynn's book list on artists and their muses
Why did Lynn love this book?
How much of yourself are you willing to sacrifice, the book asks its heroine. It's time the victims had their say and it's a question Kerry Postle tackles head-on. Wally Neuzel was a model to both Gustave Klimt and Egon Schiele, giants of the Neue Sachlichkeit in Vienna in the early 1900s, artists who in today's terms, got away with murder. The novel highlights the delicate position a girl was in if she chose to model for an artist albeit a famous one. It might secure her a place in history, but models were regarded as little better than prostitutes, rejected (once they'd had their way with them, of course) by the very bourgeoisie who bought the paintings and often by the artists themselves.
1 author picked The Artist’s Muse as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
‘The author tells an evocative story that is both illuminating and engrossing at the same time.’ Allie Burns, author of The Lido Girls
‘Lush and evocative.’ Rosemary Smith
‘The writing elevates this beyond many historical novels.’ Joseph Morgan Vienna 1907
Wally Neuzil must find a way to feed her family. Having failed in many vocations, Wally has one last shot: esteemed artist Gustav Klimt needs a muse, and Wally could be the girl he’s been waiting for. But Wally soon discovers that there is much more to her role than just sitting looking pretty. And while she had hoped to…
- Coming soon!