Letters from Monet

Publishers are rarely mentioned in book reviews, but an exception ought to be made for Thames & Hudson and their growing collection of artists’ letters. In 2020, there was Van Gogh: A Life in Letters. Selected, illustrated, and contextualized with intelligence and care, it fulfilled the subtitle’s promise, giving the measure of Vincent’s inner life and aesthetic philosophy. Their task was aided by his drawings, which complement and enliven the text, and by what he called his “irresistible passion for books.” Vincent’s references are wide and keenly felt, from the Bible and devotional literature to Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Then, in 2022 and 2024, arrived the letters of Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon. Thanks to Freud’s affected dislike of the telephone, we glimpse on paper the development of his mind and persona into his early 30s, from childhood letters written in his native German in colored pencil to the drunken scribbles of maturity. (In Freud’s case, I use the word loosely. The volume covers 193954.) Bacon’s words are, meanwhile, as astute and revealing as the best of his portraiture.