Can anyone recommend a novel with art as the subject?

[SamJohnsMum]

I want to buy my mum a novel for Christmas that centres around early modern European art - the novel can be set at any time though.

Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

athena by john banville is about an art historian... but might not meet your needs exactly though!

girl with pearl earring is lovely - but earlier (vermeer)

can't think of early C20th, if that's when you mean

The Moon and Sixpence by Somerset Maugham is about the Post Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin. Somerset Maugham is my favourite writer. The book was written in 1919, and set in Paris and Tahiti in the second half of the 19th Century. I loved it.

I can recommend 'Headlong' by Michael Frayn
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Headlong-Michael-Frayn/dp/0571201474/ref=cm_lmf_tit_12 here]

I haven't read 'girl with a pearl earring' but I think it's about a painting.

x posts Sobernow. It took me ages to remember the title.

here

Keeping the World Away by Margret Forster is about a painting by late 19th C painter Gwen John. I enjoyed it.

the agony and the ecstasy - a biographical novel of michelangelo- (Irving Stone)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Nabis

more what you are looking for i think

A lot of lovely suggestions, thanks!

Although Headlong wasn't the period I initially suggested, she is also a fan of Bruegel, so that's great.

I think I may to read some of the others though, now that I looked into them!!

Still Life by A.S.Byatt. In a rather subtle way.

Notes From an Exhibition by Patrick Gale is a good novel about an artist through her life, based in cornwall ( Babara hepworth makes a cameo appearance too...)

Port Mungo by Patrick McGrath is a really good book, but quite harrowing in parts. Very atmospheric- about a painter.

What I loved by Siri Hustvedt too which is a novel around the art world- also a bit on the harrowing side though!

I enjoyed Tulip Fever which has a portrait sitting as a narrative device.

I really like Chaim Potok's "My Name is Asher Lev" and the sequel "The Gift of Asher Lev". Unusual Orthodox Jewish setting, but about a painter - set in the 40s/50s + in New York and then in France, very steeped in modernism (Picasso, Braque etc) - these are among the handful of books I read repeatedly. If your friend enjoys them the good thing is there are lots of other novels by him too (though no others about art).