“Light” plays out almost entirely at the Monet residence, but the man of the house is often offscreen. For every passage describing his battle, waged on canvas, with the “luminous cloud of changing light” in which we all live, there are two passages showing us how the day looks and feels to the people around him: his wife, Alice; Alice’s children from a previous marriage; her grandchildren; Monet’s children from a previous marriage; their servants and visitors—for these people, Giverny was not a component of their lifework but, instead, a place where they happened to be employed, or to live some years of their lives. By moving between these perspectives, Figes attempts to bring Giverny to life—real life…

Peter C. Baker on the real world of Claude Monet portrayed in Eva Figes’s novel, “Light”: http://nyr.kr/Wwa3b1

Painting by Claude Monet/National Gallery of Art

Cartoon by Ariel Molvig. For more from this issue: http://nyr.kr/T0rtzt

Adventures in Mormon Art History: Neima Jahromi on similarities between Mitt Romney, Arnold Friberg’s painting of the Book of Mormon’s narrator, Nephi, and Raphael’s Plato and Aristotle: http://nyr.kr/Puc4Fm

Arnold Friberg painting courtesy More Good Foundation.

(Source: newyorker.com)