The big picture: two books on artists and their lives

Michael Peppiatt (born 1941) explains in the introduction to his new book of essays that he has from the start of his career been attracted to the lives of artists, as much as, if not more than, their work. Accordingly, he should find a ready audience with the British, who much prefer the written word to the visual image, and who always seem to spend more time on information panels than exhibits in museums, when not in a side gallery watching documentaries about the artists’ lives. In this book Peppiatt assembles a selection of biographical studies of some of the artists whose work quickens his heart. None of it is new material, but it is usefully gathered in one volume, with a very readable introduction and notes to each section.

The essays are beautifully written, suavely informative and thoughtfully inflected. In fact, Peppiatt’s early style is sometimes a little self-conscious and lapidary, as if he had almost too much time to polish and re-think. As he writes about Balthus: ‘The last asperities of personal quirkiness are smoothed away.’ Is it fair, when faced with such good writing, to wish for something a bit grittier?

Some of the pieces included here are very slight and their titles promise more than they give, such as ‘Picasso’s Trousers’, which could have done with more upholstering, and ‘The Darker Side of Pierre Bonnard’, which hardly does more than suggest its theme. But there is much to cherish and enjoy. Among the best are ‘Joan Miró: A Painter Among Poets’, expatiating on Miró’s belief that illustration should be ‘parallel invention’, not mere ornamentation; a fascinating account of an artist’s model and confidante, Alice Bellony-Rewald – though reading it, you’d have no idea that Peppiatt and she were once passionate lovers; the double portrait of Aristide Maillol and his patron Count Harry Kessler; an interview with Jacques Dupin, poet and art critic; and a provocative piece on R.B.