Chiaroscuro

Charming talk at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival by two novelists who had written novels about artists.

The event was a well chaired discussion between the authors, led by Nicolette Jones, bringing out the reasons they wrote the books and their different approaches. This made it much more dynamic that just each talking about their own book in isolation. They had obviously each read and enjoyed the others books which led to a good conversations.

Amy Sackville talked about “Painter to the King” about Velazquez at the Spanish Court. She said she started by wanting to invent a court painter at a Baroque court as a painter is an observer plus she wanted to use the world of Jacobean plays. In the end she felt she just kept inventing Velazquez so just used him!

Elizabeth Macneal talked about “Doll Factory” a novel based in the world of the Pre-Raphaelites but using imagined main characters. She said she began by looking at the famous painting of Ophelia and wondering what led to someone being a muse. She also mentioned her dissertation on clutter in 1850s literature and art! She said that she’d kept a spreadsheet to plan the narrative and plot what needed to happen in each chapter which I though was a brilliant idea.

They both said that as novelists they enjoyed going into the mind of someone who was creating in a different medium.  As you can see from the picture I liked the talk so much I bought both books!