Unfinished Portraits

Stories of Musicians and Artists

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Pages: 102

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About this book

An unfinished face on a Florentine portrait draws a painter into the changing moods of Lady Lisa. In Jennette Lee's collection of stories about musicians and artists, the studio becomes a place where professional ambition meets feelings that resist being caught on canvas. The opening story follows a sitting shaped by music, a small wooden figure and the painter's urgent wish to capture an elusive expression.

Lee also brings music into intimate human encounters. A later scene places Schubert at the piano with a young countess, whose affection meets the limits imposed by her father. The collection's contents range across figures including Bach, Chopin, Titian and Albrecht Dürer. Readers interested in fiction about creative work will find attention to gesture, conversation and atmosphere, with artistic achievement bound closely to longing and the difficulty of understanding another person.