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Recently, I finished reading Little, a novel by Edward Carey (Riverhead Books, An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC; copyright 2018.)  Little is the part factual/part fictional account of the life of Marie Grosholtz, the famous Madam Tussaud, and takes place mostly in Paris and largely during the French Revolution in the late eighteenth century.  This book received good reviews, and the few poor reviews it got were mostly people saying the writing style and speech patterns of the odd characters were "grotesque ... strange and baffling."  I had no problems with this book, and in fact found it a fascinating historical account of the life of a woman artist.

Young Marie is orphaned early on and goes to work for her guardian, a doctor who makes wax replicas of body parts.  Through him, Marie masters anatomy and all the functions of the human body.  She draws constantly and, without giving away too much of the book, eventually winds up in a teaching position at the Palace of Versailles with the royal family.  The book is illustrated with pen and ink drawings (by Mr. Carey) and realistic though at times repulsive, descriptions. 

Throughout the book Marie learns, in addition to drawing and anatomy, sculpture, fashion, hairstyling, architecture, and even about how glass eyes are made and fitted into wax faces.  She draws secret portraits of the queen, who refuses to permit anyone to take a wax mold of her face.  Marie manages to shape a wax face of the queen from her drawings.  Later during the revolution, she must hide much of her work completed at Versailles or be condemned as a royalist.  Anything bad that could happen to a person seems to befall poor Marie, and yet during famine, prison, deaths, rotting body parts, and the worst kind of human suffering, she soldiers on.  

By the end of the book, Marie has made casts of the king, the queen, a plethora of famous politicians and entertainers, including Robespierre, and even Napoleon.  But the one cast that has stuck with me two weeks after finishing the book is the cast of Jean-Paul Marat.  Marie is called to the house of Marat, a journalist, revolutionary, and member of the National Convention, after he has been assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a woman he assumed was an ally.  Here Marie must cast his face while interacting with the artist Jacques-Louis David.  David plays only a bit part in all of this, but the passage made me want to look up the famous painting The Death of Marat.  You can view the painting here:   https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Death-of-Marat   

The Death of Marat is a simple, beautiful, and powerful painting of a famous murder, and probably the painting that David is best known for.  David was a close friend of Marat, and the work is a prime example of emotion made visible in two-dimensional art.  

I loved studying this painting as I read about Marat's politics, his skin disease, the frequent baths he was forced to take, the way he wrote at a portable table as he soaked his pained body in the hot water.  While the book describes all of this in the heat of July and the way Marat's body is quickly decomposing as Marie makes his cast, the painting is frozen in time at the very pinnacle of the drama's aftermath, at the split second after the murder has been committed, as life leaves Marat's body and the bathtub fills with his blood.  I am mesmerized by this image; I cannot look away from it easily.  And I am able to feel deep sadness and shock through what Jacques-Louis David has conveyed.  The look on Marat's face is tender and sad, peaceful in implicit knowledge that life's battle has ended.  

Deep breath.  Contemplation.  

As I struggle to reconcile the two art forms of novel and painting, I realize how very much I enjoyed them at the same time, how much they enhanced each other.  If only all paintings and novels could partner together so beautifully!  Many famous paintings have their origins in novels, and I hope to find more that move me as much as these two did.  Until next time - go enjoy a good novel!