The Painted Girls, by Cathy Marie Buchanan

My grade six teacher, Madame Lesperance, was a huge fan of art, the Impressionists in particular.  While I don’t remember much about what we learnt that year, what I do remember is the art classes we had with her, and I think that was because she was so passionate about the subject.  Somehow, Mme Lesperance managed to capture the attention of a group of 11 year-olds long enough to teach us the history of the Impressionists, about their reasoning, about the composition in their works, and about their legacies.  All these years later, I still remember her teaching us about how to evaluate an Impressionist painting with a critical eye, gallery etiquette, and the history of Paris during the era.  When I look around my apartment, I see her influence still in the Monte prints over my desk and in my kitchen, and the four little Renoir prints in my bathroom – my love and appreciation for these works can be attributed directly to her.

The one Impressionist artist I never really cared for was Degas.  Even at age 11, his obsession with young girls creeped me out.  His body of work based on his study of ballerinas always struck me as somewhat perverted, and so I let my impression of the man shade how I saw his work.  When I found my latest read, The Painted Girls, by Cathy Marie Buchanan, at the book store, I knew right away what it was about based on the cover art – I knew it would be a novel of Degas and, even though I wasn’t a fan of the man, I’m always looking for historical fiction reads about different time periods, and it had been a while since I had read about 1870s/80s Paris, so I picked it up.  And was pleasantly surprised.

 The Painted Girls, isn’t, in fact, completely about Degas – it’s about the van Goethem sisters, Antoinette, Marie and Charlotte.  The book begins with the death of their father, and their need to find employment to sustain themselves and their alcoholic mother.  To this end, the younger girls are sent to the Paris Opera in hopes of being trained as ballerinas, a job which Antoinette had already failed at.  During this tenure at the Opera, Antoinette’s life is rocked by a series of incidents that she tries in insulate her sisters from, Marie becomes a muse for Degas and a putative star on the stage, and Charlotte tries to force a place for herself in the Opera (though she is a minor character).  The Painted Girls then, isn’t strictly about Degas, but about life in Paris during the era – both the realities of the lives of the washer women, and the realities of the lives of the bohemian artisans. 

In terms of character portrayal, I think Buchanan did an amazing job – the reader sympathizes and roots for Antoinette, they hope and dream for Marie, and they distain Charlotte’s behaviour, just as the main and secondary characters in the story do.  Buchanan has created a cast of engaging and dynamic characters, which helps bring 1870s Paris to life.  Plot wise, I felt this book did a great job in highlighting the nuances of everyday life by pulling in the mundane and the extreme – from learning about how washerwomen did their jobs, to how the French justice system worked, each piece of story development contributed to the telling of the story while also highlighting life in Paris during the era.  As this isn’t my era of expertise, I really appreciated Buchanan’s obvious research (the van Geothem sisters were real, and parts of their lives are easily traceable through archival materials) in bring this time period to life.

So, final verdict?  I would say this is a great book for anyone who enjoys historical fiction.  Between the characters and the research that went into the work, The Painted Girls is a wonderful account of an era during which, as Mme Lesperance taught us, some of the most ground-breaking pieces of art were created.