The Muralist: A Novel

Danielle Abrams who works in museums and at auction houses discovers a carton of paintings. They seem similar in style of those of her aunt, Alizee Benoit, who disappeared in 1940. The story goes back and forth between the past and the present. We learn a lot about Alizee and her work as a muralist for the Works Progress Administration (WPA). She meets Eleanor Roosevelt who likes her controversial abstract work and helps to get her work displayed. There are a lot of references to artists of this time period: Mark Rothke, Lee Krasner, and Jackson Pollock. Alizee has a Jewish family living in German-occupied France. Sadly, her family is unable to get visas to come to the U.S. There is reference to the ill-fated voyage of the St. Louis that was forced to return to Europe. The man in charge of granting visas, Assistant Secretary of State, Breckinridge Long, an ardent isolationist and nationalist, had deliberately stopped and blocked the emigration of Jews to the U.S.

Spoiler alert: Danielle is able to find Alizee who is alive and had fled to Europe. In the author's note we learn that so much of this is based on real events. I learned a lot about the art world in the 1940s.

Mystery about a missing artist who painted during the Depression years, and her family in France under German occupation.

This was an intriguing book that entwines the lives of historical figures with fictional charters in a cleverly crafted story. Rich in historic detail, it traces specific events in two lives; Danielle, an art assistant at Christie's Gallery NYC in 2015 and Alizee, Danielle's great-aunt that suddenly disappeared while working as a young artist for the Works Progress Administration at the brink of WWII in the late 1930's.

I learned a great deal from this book; mainly about Roosevelt's WPA program and the beginning of abstract impressionist art and artists, which I knew close to nothing about. I was inspired to seek out images of the art and artists and to bake some delightful, delicious Pain d'Amande for my book club friends. It took me a few chapters to really get into the book but once I did, I was eager to continue reading at any free moment. Even though I didn't love this book as much as I hoped to, I still enjoyed it.

My thoughts are often drawn back into the story as I ponder the desperation felt by families trying to bring their loved ones to America before the war broke out, and it sadly occurs to me, given current day political affairs, that some things never seem to change. I am reminded of the poem written by Martin Niemoller, who had lived in Nazi Germany, a copy of which Malala Yousafzai states that her father kept tucked in his pocket:

“First they came for the communists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the socialists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak out because I was not a Catholic.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”