THE LADY WITH THE DARK HAIR

Erin Bartels never disappoints. Whether she is echoing her own life in, The Girl Who Could Breathe Under Water, or creating a story based in her state of Michigan, The Words Between US, Erin’s characters, story lines, and flowing use of language will pull you in page after page.

Bartels’ most recent work, The Lady with the Dark Hair, emphasizes her ability to take on bigger challenges, the novel requiring a great deal of research to bring flesh to her characters and reality to her settings. Yes, we are once again in Bartels state of Michigan, but this time it is East Lansing, home to Michigan State University, founded in 1855. Then, after what must have been months of research, Bartels takes us to places and times beyond present day: Southern France, 1879, 1880; Paris, 1880; Tunisia, 1881; Morocco, 1881; Gibraltar, 1881; the Bahamas and the Atlantic Ocean, 1881; and once again to Gibraltar, up to the present day.

In the novel, East Lansing is home to its main characters: daughter Esther Markstrom and her mother Lorena. Readers of Bartels previous work will be familiar with the author’s love and knowledge of Michigan and all it has to offer. The Lady with the Dark Hair explores the puzzle of discovering the history of a painting that currently hangs above the mantel in the home of the Markstroms. Esther is single, taking care of her mother, while wedded to her work running a small art museum in this Michigan college town.

Yes here she was, forty-four, single, childless, often regretting aspects of her life, her mother seeming not to understand, and thus failing to thank her daughter for giving up other life possibilities for her.

But though Esther is part of an uncommon family, early on this suited her. Not many people…could say that they worked for a respected…museum named for an eccentric relative who obsessively painted the same woman again and again, but whose own visage was a complete mystery, because he never completed a self-portrait.

And no one but Esther and her mother, the last living leaves on Francico Vella’s family tree, could claim ownership over his finest work—La Dama del Cabello Oscuro. The Lady with the Dark Hair.  

 BEGINNINGS

Early on, readers are introduced to Vivienne, living in Southern France in 1879, a brush in hand, but not for painting, but for scrubbing a copper pot, her first one that day. When later, she is posing for an artist named Renaud, she tells him she is Catalan.

“Ah, Catalan!” Renaud says. “Then we may find we have much in common. We are both from crossroads. My family is from Gibraltar. We’re Spanish and Genoese and Maltese and, rumor has it, just a little bit of English and Scottish.”

Yes! Bartels is immediately setting up a major theme of the novel, while also exploring the historic and human times of which she writes. Vivienne muses: “It wasn’t fair. Men could live rich and exciting lives if they wanted to, while she knew of few woman who even traveled outside their own towns. She only had…because of a mistake. And her adventures…were never pleasant. Not for the first time, she wished she’d been born a boy.

Concurrently, the novel explores the lives of Esther and her mother, both dealing with the task of enhancing their small museum, its second floor displaying a permanent exhibit of Francisco Vella’s work, the novel hinting at the connections between this Michigan family and a deceased but very famous artist. The reader wants to discover how these connections came to be, the novel allowing that some history is still missing, but with Esther’s intelligence, her eagerness to enhance the museum and their family fortune, the novel will eventually reveal all these  connections.

THE WRITING: Research and Beauty

Europe is a big place, but Bartels finds a way to connect the Lady with the Dark Hair to the artist who painted her. And there are many characters, who step by step reveal knowledge that will complete the mystery, the puzzle. Who was this woman? How and why was she the model for so many paintings? And Bartels doesn’t just focus on one artwork. The novel is expansive, so that we are drawn into the time period when women didn’t just want to be MODELS, they wanted to be ARTISTS. And certainly Bartels, who writes about women and their struggles, would focus on this aspect of history.

Thus the Lady with the Dark Hair, Viviana, back in history, must make a decision that might mirror one Esther will eventually be forced to make. …but neither was she bound to follow Francisco Vella the rest of her life like a concubine, dependent on his largesse for food and shelter and subject to his whims and wants. She had found her own way through the Pyrenees Mountains to Toulouse. She could find her way in Paris. She had lived as an unwanted child, an orphan, a model, a student. Surely, she could live as an artist.

The novel then returns to Esther, who has befriended two different men whose interest in art not only provides her with conversation, but also might change her life if she chooses one of them. Will Esther begin a love relationship, or forever live with her mother, charged with taking care of their art, her energy devoted to those quieter parts of her life. She has few friends, rarely spends an evening with someone of the opposite sex. But then there are two gentlemen, both involved with art, and in the eyes of the reader, both marriage possibilities. Bartels makes us guess.

ON TO GIBRALTAR, 1881

The novel moves back and forth from present day Michigan to the history of the painting that hangs above the mantel in Esther and Lorena’s home. It is the story of a time when the Lady with the Dark Hair, Vivienne, lived on the Rock of Gibraltar, before finding her way to the United States. It eventually becomes the story of Esther leaving Michigan to visit this amazing place. These chapters are highlights of the novel. I have been to Gibraltar, made my way to the top of the rock, watched but avoided the monkeys, then found my way through the caves and back down to the ocean. I have looked out to see Africa in the distance. In the novel, this adventure is a turning point for both Viviana and of course much later for Esther. Once again, Bartels never disappoints, her rendering of living on the rock in 1881 and then having Esther visit there in the present day is beautifully written and accurate.

Erin Bartels knows how to create echoes in her work, meaningful echoes that are inciteful and beautifully written. And yes, the novel does end in present time…fulfilling all story questions. Who was the lady with the dark hair? Why is she important to a story of art history? Those who have read Bartels previous works know she honors the role of women. This novel is no exception as it works its way back through history, creating the story of a woman, a painter the reader will admire and cheer on, a woman who learns her craft and is thus honored by other artists and art lovers. Yes, a woman who no longer models for some man’s canvas, but a female artist creating work worthy of admiration, that eventually finds its way into famous art galleries.

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