Beauty lends itself to more beauty for award-winning novelist Susan Vreeland. Art opens doors to new artwork, and life is a constant canvas for new perspective.

 

Vreeland’s passion for delving into the stories behind Old World art may have earned her a place in literary history, but she remains the starry-eyed high school English teacher standing on Pont Neuf 40 years ago. She has made good on the promise she whispered to the Parisian wind and water that day: to “keep a Gothic cathedral alive in [her] heart.”

 

Vreeland has been rather prolific since “Girl in Hyacinth Blue” became her first art-related novel in 1999, publishing five more books. Four of her novels have been New York Times Best Sellers. Currently, she is well into writing a novel about painters Chagall and Cézanne.

 

As it was to the brushstrokes of Vermeer, intimate detail is everything to Vreeland’s stories. Perhaps most striking about her authorship is the depth to which she explores her characters and their worlds. As she describes her foray into Renoir’s delicate late 19th century France, it becomes clear that her finger is squarely on the pulse of that time.

 

“The 10 years before he painted [“Luncheon of the Boating Party”],” she says of the subject of her 2007 novel, “those were 10 traumatic years. And by showing people enjoying themselves again, I think it displayed social healing.”

Just as she knows the painting down to the three vermillion embers Renoir dotted at the end of a cigarette, she understands the era the art captures.

This understanding is far from creative guesswork, however. When working on novels, Vreeland studies biographies and letters, journals and the writings of people who knew the artists. She then turns to the surrounding culture, researching everything from broad social changes to the flowers being sold in the streets.

 

Her writing is broad in scope, ranging from Artemisia Gentileschi’s 17th century Italy to the bustling turn-of-the-century New York City.

Spanning time and territory is Vreeland’s faith in the nature of great art and its ability to draw people in and reveal something within them.

 

“That’s the aesthetic experience,” she says. “It’s a love affair.”

It certainly has been for her. Each artist she describes seems to have challenged and changed the way she approaches art and – perhaps – life itself.

And writing it all down clearly brings her nothing short of joy.

 

It seems natural for her to speak in poetry, whether she is excitedly dropping hints about her latest book or describing the succulents in her San Diego garden.

 

Vreeland speaks of writing as a painter might speak of painting, describing the use of extended metaphor and the importance of re-working a piece.

“That devotion, like a saint is to his god — that’s what makes a great artist,” she says.

 

When asked if words ever fail to describe a painting, Vreeland is quick to express her confidence in writing as an art form in itself. She says it involves the same principles that govern painting, such as structure and balance.

 

“I paint with a palette of words, instead of colors.”

 

And it is always possible, she says, to find the right ones.

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1) You employ exquisite detail in your writing to bring art and eras to life. How

much is research and how much is imagination?

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I imagine based on my research. I would say that a good 80 percent follows that principle. Do research and then incorporate it in the narrative in a way that a fact doesn’t stand out as a noticeable item, but is integrated with the narrative and is organic with characters’ experiences. I research around the subject. For example, in “Clara and Mr. Tiffany,” I researched the new buildings that were going up, the changes in their cultural life, women in labor unions, boarding houses, neighborhoods, the Lower East Side, immigrants, tenements, Tin Pan Alley, the operas current at the time, Coney Island, what

that was like; flowers, I had to know a lot about flowers; clothing, streetcar lines, popular culture. And all of these are elements that make the setting and the time period come to life.

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2) In your autobiography, you write that visiting the Louvre for the first time moved you to pledge to make Old World art a part of your life. You say you “wanted to keep a Gothic cathedral alive in [your] heart.” Do you feel as though you’ve succeeded thus far?

 

I feel I have, yes. But I continue, of course, because this is so much a part of the way I think now. When I came out of the Louvre that first day on my first trip to Europe, I was just so full and overflowing with all of the culture, the painting, the sculpture, the architecture, the music, the religious and social history, that I was exposed to for the first time. It filled me with a great yearning to learn more and experience more. So I think that has informed my work. I have a Dutch novel, “Girl in Hyacinth Blue.” I have an Italian novel of Artemisia Gentileschi, the first woman to paint large-scale figures from history. My imagination has followed Modigliani’s daughter around Paris as she searches for shreds of information about her father. My short stories in “Life Studies” make use of many of the Impressionist painters, and even in a very fanciful, imaginative way, my 17th century Tuscan shoemaker went to Rome to see the Sistine Ceiling. So yes, I do feel that I have kept that Gothic cathedral alive in my heart. What is so extraordinary about Gothic cathedrals is their soaring achievement — I mean, physically they do soar, but it was also

such an achievement to build those with such a sense of permanence and style and commitment to an ideal. And I think that’s what I imbibed: the commitment to an ideal world of beauty and creativity.

 

3) You taught high school literature for 30 years. What effect did teaching have on your writing?

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I guess it taught me to love words and images and stories with substance. It taught me work habits. It taught me to perfect something through 12 drafts. If I expected my students to write two drafts of their essays, I had to write two drafts of a novel to follow that same principle: that improvement is possible when we reevaluate the work. I learned to finish what I start, and I also learned (and I remember this from Hamlet, teaching Hamlet especially) the power of extended metaphor. If you use a metaphor only once, that’s fine; it’s good, but it’s lost. If you refer to it in another sense, another aspect later in the work, it gains resonance. And by the third time, it’s really powerful. That’s what

Shakespeare did. Not that I’m comparing myself with Shakespeare!

 

4) The history behind an art piece seems as important to you as the art itself. Why is that?

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I think that’s where the people are; that’s where the dynamics are. I’ve done explorations of artists and of models. And for artists, their struggles and their exhilaration to create is exciting to me. The history of an art piece, I think, has to do with both the creator and the viewer. I followed the history of an imagined Vermeer painting in “Girl in Hyacinth Blue” through three and a half centuries. It meant different things to different people, and I think that was an important lesson for me when I was creating that.

 

5) When you are writing about a specific work, how often do you find yourself going back to the art itself?

 

Constantly. I use “Luncheon of the Boating Party” as an example. And readers do the same thing.… [The painting] has 14 people in it. I had to get to know each person through pondering their expression to draw out their personality and to invent, if I needed to. And then there are actual physical things that I notice in the painting each time. For example, what kind of earrings do each of the women wear? Little touches like that. What specific colors are reflected in that glass with a little bit of wine left in the bottom? There’s one character who’s holding a cigarette. Well, how does he hold it? He doesn’t

hold it like an American holds a cigarette. He holds it with the burning end toward him. It’s a different way of holding it, and when I examined that, I realized that Renoir has two tiny specks of red in the ashes at the end of that cigarette. Most people do not notice that when they look at the painting, because it’s very minute. I can just imagine Renoir being so excited to do that, to take a brush with maybe only three hairs to it and dot little vermillion embers within the ash. He was getting delight out of doing that, not that he

expected others to see that. That brought me closer to him and to understanding him.

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6) The complex relationship between artists and their work is central to several of your novels. How do you develop these relationships?

At first I study the work. Second, I study their biographies; I read their biographies more than once. And I read accounts by people who knew them; that’s very important. For example, for Renoir, his son, Jean Renoir, wrote a book called “Renoir, My Father;” very helpful to me. When I wrote the book on Emily Carr, “The Forest Lover,” I read her journal. She was a prolific writer herself, and I read everything she wrote. Whatever I learn from these sources has to be rendered through the characters’ interiority, as well as

through their action and dialogue. By interiority I mean their thinking. I have to imagine, but I bolster my imagination by this reading.

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7) Is there an artist you feel more personally connected to than others?

 

That’s such a difficult question! You wouldn’t choose one child over the other. But of the women, for example, I feel more personally connected to Emily Carr than Artemisia. She loved wilderness, the forest, and so do I. She was a spiritual seeker; so am I. She was independent and did not live her life the way society expected her to. I admire that. I admired her courage, and I admired her devotion to her art. And for the men in my own novels, I think I respond more to Renoir than Vermeer, even though Vermeer is Dutch, and my heritage is Dutch. Oh, how I love France. I felt what he showed me about France

in “Luncheon of the Boating Party;” those fourteen people were enjoying themselves and taking time, lingering over a meal. We all have to slow down a little bit, and that painting teaches that to me. It’s also, to me, evidence of healing that occurred in France, from the hurt and humiliation of the Prussian War. The 10 years before he painted it, those were 10 traumatic years. And by showing people enjoying themselves again, I think it displayed society healing itself.

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8) From what you’ve explored through your research and writing, what do you

think makes a truly great artist?

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There are some certain guidelines, I think, along with what truly makes a great piece of art. Aside from beauty, which I think goes without saying, a great artist develops a style unique to him or her over long periods of time and many experiments. Great artists have … great originality in the choice of a subject, but not everything that he or she ever painted has to be unique to him. But there is originality in how he looks at it. A great artist I think has some depth of connection to a subject.… I’m writing a novel that involves both Chagall and Cézanne, studying them and developing their characters.… Chagall painted scenes from his childhood — scenes from Russian fables and scenes

from his own dream world. That’s a very strong chord of connection. And he painted his wife, Bella, with such love. Cézanne painted Provence, his region of France, with equal love. He put the soul of Province in his work, because he was so completely devoted to each item in a painting. For example, imagine a still-life with apples. He sometimes sat in front of that apple, looking at it for hours at least, before touching brush to canvas. That devotion, like a saint is to his god — that’s what makes a great artist. As Cézanne once said … “I will astonish Paris with an apple.” I love that! Continuing with what makes a

great artist, I think he has to take risks in pushing forward to new insights, new innovations, always learning.… Nothing stale.

 

9) Why do you think certain works of art are cherished hundreds of years after

their creation, while others are nearly forgotten?

 

The genius work of art ignites our imagination. Some works take you into their world, embrace you, and a great work of art is capable of holding you there, in sort of a transfixed state, so you see beyond the surface and discover something in yourself, something in life, something about the world, in that work of art. That’s the aesthetic experience; it’s a love affair. And if I can show that by tracing the history of a particular work of art, which I did with the imagined Vermeer painting, that might encourage readers to have their own personal experience, an aesthetic experience, with a piece of art. It’s a question of giving yourself to a piece of art, even in a risky way, to open yourself, to be receptive to what that work of art can provide. Something very rich, something not part of an ordinary day, but something more elevated. That’s why James Joyce thought that art can heal the world if it makes each of us better.

 

10) It’s interesting that your latest novel, “Clara and Mr. Tiffany,” explores the

Tiffany lamp instead of the canvas paintings of “Luncheon of the Boating Party” and “Girl in Hyacinth Blue.” What inspired you to write about the lamps?

Well, you know, the book is not about lamps, per se. It’s about the women who made them. It’s about the world they lived in. It’s about women breaking out of limitations. It’s about exploration of a craft. At first, I did have the concern: Who would read a book about lamps? When I learned more about Clara Driscoll and read her letters and read about the history of New York at that time, I realized that the lamps are only a metaphor for saying something else about change, about love, about life, about tolerance and acceptance of people different from us. But the lamps are beautiful, and they are an icon

of America, because many of the young women [Clara] hired were poor. Some of them were daughters of immigrants. But who would buy these lamps? Only the rich industrialists that lived uptown. And so the lamp seems to me to be a bridge between social classes, and that’s what America is.

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11) Your novels about art give brilliant life to the time periods the works were

created in, from fashion and architecture to social injustice. What era have you most enjoyed writing about so far?

 

I do love that turn-of-the-century, 19th to 20th century New York. I loved researching it as well as incorporating it. But I also love late 19th century France in “Luncheon of the Boating Party.” And now, with my current novel, I’m loving the five years before, during and after World War II in France.

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3) Are words ever an insufficient medium for expressing what’s on a canvas?

 

No. That’s a simple answer. No. I think it’s possible to find the words.

 

14) Do you consider writing an art form on par with painting, or crafting a Tiffany lamp?

 

Oh yes, of course. It involves some of the same principles: form, structure, color, movement, balance. They’re all in writing, too; that’s what’s exciting. And writing, like the other art forms, involves study, devotion, exploration. Again, this moving forward.… I paint with a palette of words, instead of colors.

 

15) Outside of writing, what is something you enjoy?

 

I can tell you two things. One is travel, immersing myself in the culture. It’s easier to do that when I know the language, but to the extent I’m able to. Cultural travel, not recreational travel, not resort travel, not cruises. Exploratory travel of a culture is what I love. And then at home, I enjoy gardening. I’ve become quite enamored of succulents. Here in San Diego, we have a water shortage, so gardening with succulents has become

rather popular. And what an amazing array of types of succulents; they’re not like each other at all! So, I’m having fun doing that.