“The Artist” ~ by Lucy Steeds

In search of an interview with a celebrated but elusive artist, Joseph, a young journalist and conscientious objector, travels to Provence during the scorching summer of 1920. The object of his quest is Edouard “Tata” Tartuffe who, after escaping Paris many years earlier – following a fight with Paul Cézanne over a woman, some believe – has hidden himself away in rural France, refusing the attention of the outside world.

Until Joseph begins uncertainly to enter their existence, Tata’s principal companion has been his niece, Ettie. Joseph is permitted to observe and write about Tata, albeit under certain conditions: he must be quiet, and must stay sufficiently still to be the model for the artist’s ‘Man with Orange’. Watching Tata paint, the younger man begins gradually to understand both the artist’s process, and Ettie’s role in it, as every day she creates the perfect conditions in which Tata can work.

Ettie remains silent for most of each day, occupied in choosing and preparing meals not for their flavour or nutritional value, but for their beauty to the eye of the artist. Meals are often snatched away mid-mouthful so that Tata can use them in a new composition. But at night, Ettie steals away to an outbuilding, herself to paint. Immersed in their strange artistic world, Joseph begins to peel away the layers of this isolated outpost, the creation as much of the niece as of her uncle. Observing the emotional trap in which the two are caught, Joseph himself comes to recognise his own inner imprisonment.

Setting her characters in the sweltering summer heat, Steeds exposes skilfully the degree to which each is trapped – whether it be physically, emotionally or mentally – confined in prisons to which only they hold the key. She shows that breaking away from the known can be deeply uncomfortable, no matter how unbearable the status quo has become, and that in small acts of defiance and rebellion we keep ourselves alive. The perfect book for a summer like 2026, the reader empathises with the characters’ struggle to think rationally and keep their tempers under a remorseless sun, searching for shade and a cool respite from the unrelenting march of time.

This review was first published in September 2026 by Tewkesbury Direct.