#51: The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan

I was so excited when I found The Painted Girls.  It's the story of the van Goethem sisters, set in the late 1800's in Paris, and is based on the real van Goethem sisters, who were ballet dancers for the Paris Opera.  Marie van Goethem is probably best known as the most famous child model (Little Dancer Aged Fourteen) for Edgar Degas.  A book that combines my love of reading and my love of art--what could be better?

Truthfully, the book was painful to read.  Not that the writing was bad, it's just that the story was just so depressing.  It very much reminded me of Les Miserables.  The van Goethem girls have lost their father, their mother is addicted to absinthe, and Antoinette (the eldest sister) and Marie (the middle sister) are doing their best to earn money (in any way they can) to keep a flat for them to live in and food on the table for all plus the youngest sister, Charlotte, who truly has the best chance of working as a ballerina.  It is while they are trying desperately to stay afloat that Marie has the chance to model for Degas.  He draws, paints, and sculpts her and uses her as the basis of the most recognizable pieces of sculpture ever created: Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, which currently resides in the National Gallery in Washington, DC.

This work is mostly fiction and I certainly hope so.  When I was in high school and college studying art history, to the disappointment of most everyone in my family, I recall looking at Degas' ballerinas and imagining the delicate, sweet life they must've led as adorable, beautiful ballerinas.  Buchanan paints them (no pun intended) in a very different light.  And while I know she did her research and she created them accurately for their station in life for the time period, these sisters were poor, not educated, and they worked themselves to the bone.  These were not girls who were lavished with the finer things in life (unless they paid a favor for it).  These were girls who sold themselves for money, who "modeled" for money, and who loved the wrong boys, and who spend time in "jail."  Their lives were not easy and I certainly will never view one of Degas' works the same ever again.  These are not innocent ballerinas.  These are girls hardened by a life no young girl should have to live. Yes, this book was painful to read because it ripped apart every innocent thought I had of these girls when viewing the final pieces of art.  I guess when we look at art, we see what we want to see, or what the artist creates for us to see, rather than what really is.  And, I suppose it is just that idea that sparked Buchanan's idea for this novel, which is worth reading, just hard to swallow at times.

But then again, so is life.

Happy reading everyone!
:) Dodie