Books like Ithell Colquhoun

Letters to Gwen John is the artist’s mixture of memoir and fictional letters to Gwen John the artist.

Once a partner of the much older artist Lucian Freud, Paul’s life resembles Gwen’s love for the older French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Paul’s fictional letters provide moving insights into Paul’s life, Gwen’s life, and the role of art.

Uncannily Paul’s letters resemble Gwen’s to Rodin in their shared simplicity and devotion to art.

I just wish Paul’s book had been published before I wrote my book because Paul has so many insights into art techniques. 2023 is definitely Gwen’s year with the opening of the major exhibition of Gwen’s work at Pallant House Gallery, UK.

For me this is undoubtably the best biography of Francis Bacon.

It illuminates in detail the life of my mysterious and exotic neighbour, who lived only a stone's throw away over the wall from my flat in Manson Place, South Kensington, in the early 1960s.

Bacon's early struggles, to eventually becoming the lauded and celebrated genius in later life, encompass in this fascinating account, a plethora of characters from both high and low life, a cavalcade of lovers, an addiction to gambling and drinking spanning Soho to Tangier, with sojourns in Paris and the South of France on the way. He religiously painted in the mornings.

Many of the episodes and vignettes are unforgettable and a valuable insight into the machinations of the 'art world' in the 20th century.

This compelling and exhausting portrait of the artist, born in Dublin to Anglo-Irish gentry in 1909 and living to the age… show more.

Macneal is a go-to for me when it comes to grim reads set in the Victorian era. I found her writing so superb and her grasp of Victorian London and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood so enthralling, it was hard for me to believe The Doll Factory was her debut.

The book is about art and collecting, but the obsession of the book’s villain is what makes this beating heart of a story thrum.

I liked this historical fiction novel for many reasons. First, I recently visited Florence and was introduced to the story of the monk Savonarola, so I enjoyed the mentioned sights and historical context. Secondly, I appreciated the structure of the novel, with the main point of view being a young well-to-do woman married off to a much older man.

Through the conversations of husband and wife and those of the wife and her slave/maid, the political, religious, and societal events unfold. There's tension throughout as the rising puritanical tide overwhelms Florentine society.

Really well done and a fascinating story of the Renaissance.

I love books that validate spiritual creativity and ‘realign’ misconceptions in the annals of history. This inspiring biography documents the life of a 19th-century female artist, who not only dedicated her life to unique spiritual creativity, but also, is currently upending art history. It turns out that her art predates the establishment of the Modern Art Movement, which academia has attributed to men who painted several decades later. Hilma af Klint was a woman before her time. I also love the book’s color plates displaying her mastery of geometry and biology. This book is a well-researched jewel and a gift to art history. 

Spending is about a divorced artist and mom. It starts with a middle-aged protagonist reluctantly giving a gallery talk. She complains that male artists often have muses to do their laundry and supply sex, thereby providing practical and “therapeutic” support. A man in the audience stands up and offers to be the artist’s muse. The story is about what happens when this stubbornly independent woman takes him up on it. I totally related to the crusty heroine who has fought for everything she has and distrusts fortune when it offers abundant gifts. 

When I first saw the previews of this book, I had to read it the first day it was published.

Though friends had highly recommended Kostova’s more popular book, The Historian, this book spoke to me.

With the point of view shifting from current time to 19th century France, it checked all my boxes: painting, art museum, impressionists - all tied together into a fabulous mystery bow.

While reading, I wanted to peacefully wander an art museum and dabble with a paintbrush on canvas.

To me, the best books evoke a unique artistic mist or glow that I can still feel years later.

In this wondrous book on Caravaggio, the world of Naples unfolds from the inside through an electrifying reading experience. Written with grace, almost every sentence imparts an epiphany. The author challenges us to undertake soul-work, even if one is a secular reader. Reading becomes an act of empathy and passion. In the words of Wallace Stevens, potential readers will become ‘necessary angels’.

This noir pastiche is one long joke, a satire on art, art criticism, and art collecting.

James Figueras, a cad bachelor freelance art critic in 1960s Palm Beach, is tasked with stealing a painting by the (fictional) French artist Jacques Deberiue.

Deberiue was the founder of the Nihilistic Surrealism movement who retired after the creation of one work, No. One: an empty frame mounted around a crack in a wall. The trail leads to the dusty outskirts of Miami and a bloody murder in the Everglades, but the real mystery surrounds the artist and his art.

And the fun is in the comedy: "The fact that he used the English No. One instead of Nombre une may or may not've influenced Samuel Beckett to write in French instead of English, as the literary critic Leon Mindlin has claimed."

The brand of possession is fairly standard: a Drakhaoul possesses a man, enabling him to transform into a dragon—but the man must replenish his strength vampirically.

I like the interplay of personal responsibility and victimization, the use of supernatural powers to protect one’s friends at the cost of innocent suffering.

The Drakhaoul has a name and personality; it’s definitely a discrete being, but it’s also a part of the hero. But then the hero successfully exorcises his demon. But the demon’s memories are left behind, and the hero starts to wonder if he’s going mad.

The demon’s absence, not its presence, drives the hero to madness and despair (even though he hates the demon). The hero simultaneously hates and longs for a dark power, which is and is not uniquely his.