Luncheon at the Boating Party

I went to see Susan Vreeland at Stacey's Bookstore today. She is well known for other novels, particularly "Girl in Hyacinth Blue". This is a novel of historical fiction about Auguste Renoir's significant painting, "Luncheon at the Boating Party" which I find intriguing being a fan of Impressionist's and of France. Plus it's a different genre for me to read.

This is from her inside front page:
"Instantly recognizable, Auguste Renoir's masterpiece portrays fourteen lively, diverse, and elegant Parisians enjoying a summer Sunday along the Seine. An art collector, an Italian journalist, a war hero, a wealthy painter, a celebrated actress, and Renoir's future wife are among those sharing this joyous moment of la vie moderne. But who were they really and what were their lives truly like? Narrated by Renoir and seven of the models, and using settings in Paris and along the Seine, Susan Vreeland's vibrant novel recreates their lives, loves, losses, and triumphs to illuminate the gusto, hedonism, and art of the era."

From what she read and shared with us, it sounds like a lovely written and compelling story. For example, in the very beginning this scene is of Renoir with his right arm in a cast making his way to the river in a three-wheel cycle, when he lost balance and tipped over and crashed. "How different the colors from this low angle, the contrast between tips of ripples and valleys between them more pronounced now - a deeper forest green for the furrows, with shifting patches of yellow-green and ocher on the humps, and the silver highlights more transparent than he'd ever seen them. My God! To show that to the world!"

This is what she signed in my book:

"There's no remaining still, in art or in life."