Published: 02/20/2025
ISBN: 9781914148682
Price: £10.99
Format: Paperback with flaps
‘You will live beyond one lifetime and beyond even two in the painting he makes of you.’
In the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam, there is a painting called ‘Woman in Blue Reading a Letter’. Each day a man visits to gaze at it. He is irresistibly drawn to it. Obsessed by it. He studies the painting, in search of resolutions to his past and present loves, and the Woman in Blue studies him back. For there is more to the Woman in Blue than any of the men who gaze upon her realise. She has a story of her own to tell.
With a delicate balance of truth and fiction, past and present, Bruton masterfully explores the intersection between art, artist and viewer, arriving at a profound meditation on love and creation.
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‘Woman in Blue is a profound meditation on art, looking and love, skilfully interweaving the story of the Woman in Blue, posing for Vermeer in the seventeenth century, and that of a man visiting the painting every day in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. As the two figures silently converse, they share thoughts about the meaning of painting, beauty and memory. This slim novel asks the reader to slow down, to take time, and to allow subtle meanings to surface, from both the painting and Bruton’s elegant words. A book that celebrates quietness, beauty and love, it is one to savour.‘ — Victoria Mackenzie, author of For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain