The Underpainter [Paperback]

Jane Urquhart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1998

In Rochester, New York, a seventy-five-year-old artist, Austin Fraser, is creating a new series of paintings recalling the details of his life and of the lives of those individuals who have affected him--his peculiar mother, a young Canadian soldier and china painter, a First World War nurse, the well-known American painter Rockwell Kent, and Sara, a waitress from the wilderness mining settlement of Silver Islet, Ontario, who became Austin's model and mistress. Spanning more than seven decades, from the turn of the century to the mid-seventies, The Underpainter--in range, in the sheer power of its prose, and in its brilliant depiction of landscape and the geography of imagination--is Jane Urquhart's most accomplished novel to date, with one of the most powerful climaxes in contemporary fiction.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Jane Urquhart's The Underpainter is a very modern novel preoccupied with the power of the past. Austin Fraser, born in 1894, is a modernist who relentlessly paints over his canvases, much as he tries to eradicate people from his life. Though he insists that he has forgone emotion and love, when he receives news of a women he once knew, he can no longer stop memories from encroaching.

Urquhart's novel ranges from late-century Rochester, New York, to Ontario to Paris to New York City. And not since Patrick White's The Vivisector have there been such disturbing scenes of the painter in action: "I believed that I was drawing--literally drawing--everything out of her, that his act of making art filled the space around me so completely there would be no other impressions possible beyond the ones I controlled." Amazingly, by exposing Fraser's emptiness, Urquhart makes us pity him. Though she has said that she was "quite angry with Austin" while writing The Underpainter, the author's language incises his reluctant humanity and turns his life into a work of art. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

From the perspective of advanced age, Austin Fraser looks back over his life as an artist and his summers spent in the lakeside town of Davenport, Ontario, and in the abandoned mining town of Silver Islet on the north shore of Lake Superior. Fraser's artistic method consists of underpainting a realistic depiction of a scene to which he then applies layer upon layer of obscuring detail. Urquhart (Away, LJ 6/1/94) uses this technique in reverse to tell her protagonist's story by gradually peeling back layers to reveal truths that lie hidden beneath. An emotionally hollow man, Austin experiences life vicariously through others. When World War I breaks out, he watches from the sidelines as his friend George joins up to fight in Europe. George returns haunted by his experiences and by his attachment to a young nurse shattered by her own wartime losses. Although Fraser never comes fully alive, the stories of his friends are compelling enough to give this quietly affecting novel its forward momentum. An elegantly written addition to collections of literary fiction.?Barbara Love, Kingston P.L., Ontario
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140269738
• ISBN-13: 978-0140269734
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.7 x 7.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #994,765 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Underwhelmer, September 21, 2002

By 

Matthew Hovious (London/Madrid) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Underpainter (Paperback)

As a painter, books about artists naturally appeal to me. But even with such a head start, "The Underpainter" became one of those novels I only finish reading by skipping from section to section, trying to catch sight of those threads of the story which still held my interest. "The Underpainter" is a fictional first-person memoir told in the voice of Austin Fraser, an elderly abstract artist looking back on his life as the 1970s draw to a close. With unusual locales such as Rochester, New York, and a Canadian mining town; with the requisite celebrity cameos, in the form of Robert Henri and Rockwell Kent; and with the potential for romantic conflict, when the same girl catches the eye of both Austin and his summertime friend George, the ingredients for a good story were probably there.

In trying to figure out what went wrong, I'm inclined to cast the blame on the supporting characters. Austin in a different setting might still have come across as cold and uncaring, but his performance might have been more interesting on a different stage. His artistic education was credibly described, and his peculiar relationships with both his mother and his father were well explored. But George Kearns comes across as such an unambitious loser that he becomes unsympathetic, a trend that accentuates steadily right up to the book's conclusion. And we learn far, far more about George's lover Augusta Moffat than we really need to know - page after page describes her childhood before she ever crossed George and Austin's path, yet while her importance to the storyline is high, her actual protagonism is quite brief. On the other hand Sara, Austin's lover of fifteen years - fifteen summers, Austin would hasten to interject - never really comes alive. We never get even the slightest hint of why their relationship lasted so long. Was he just that good looking? Was she so plain no one else was interested in her?

Jane Urquhart writes well, and in her hands Austin sometimes speaks with resonance. Ultimately, though, in my opinion this book was let down by the direction its plot took, spending far too much time on a mediocre parochial supporting cast and not enough showing us Austin's performance in the art world he is supposed to have succeeded in.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars beautiful prose, but story falls flat, October 18, 2002

By 

"cathst" (Toronto, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Underpainter (Paperback)

Austin, an American painter, looks back at his life, and the people whose lives are intertwined with his memories. George, the serious and thoughtful china-painter, Sara, his quiet summertime model and lover, Augusta, who was a nurse during the war, who tells him her life story in one night while sitting in a china hall.

This contained some of the most beautiful writing I've ever read, and I've taken note of a dozen of the loveliest passages from the book. But as a whole, as a novel, I could barely finish. I had absolutely no sympathy for the protagonist, and the plot was unapparent to me until the last fraction of the book. As beautiful as those passages were, they weren't enough to keep me entertained through the rest of this novel. Writing style deserves 5 stars, characterization 3 stars, and plot and storyline 0.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly exposes the selfishness of the artist's world, July 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Underpainter (Paperback)

Don't mistake "The Underpainter" for an airy fairy novel with a soft underbelly for its languid pastel coloured prose belies a diamond hard centre. In this beautifully evocative 1997 winner of the Governor General Book Award, Jane Urquhart pierces the cerebral exterior of successful modernist artist Austin Fraser to reveal a cold callous soul, whose inability to give or receive love leads to unconscious acts of cruelty to those closest to him. Only upon reflection as an old man does he acknowledge his part in their fate but he has only memories to taunt not console him. Sara, his model and lover of many years, proves to be nothing more than a handy object holding a mirror to his own soul. She doesn't really exist for him, hence when they break up, he looks back upon a relationship spanning fifteen summers, not fifteen years. Not surprisingly, the fox in Sara's garden - a metaphor for Sara's inner self - doesn't exist in his mind simply because he has never seen it. When his mentor Rockwell critiques his paintings, it turns out to be an indictment of the painter himself. Austin is furious but finally unable to deny Rockwell's judgement. Vivian, heartless and vain, is Austin's spiritual twin in the novel. They are an anathema to George and Augusta, whose lives are deeply rooted in reality. George is also an artist, but unlike Austin, doesn't despise industry but works in his father's china shop and has survived the war. Augusta is a farm girl, warm, practical and disciplined, and the perfect partner for George until Vivian, with Austin's help, re-enters their lives one evening with devastating result. "The Underpainter" brilliantly exposes the selfishness of art for art's sake. It is a chilling reminder that art unless tempered by humanity ultimately conceals more than it reveals. Jane Urquhart is a tremendous novelist. "The Underpainter" is a gorgeously written and incandescent piece of work that leaves an indelible impression long after it's read.