The Artist by Lucy Steeds

Lucy Steeds’ debut novel The Artist is a shimmering portrait of love, repression, and artistic self-discovery, set against the heat and (haunting) silence of post-war Provence. With remarkable assurance and a painter’s eye for detail, Steeds invites us into a clandestine world where ambition, grief, and desire simmer beneath face value. This is historical fiction at its most intimate—less concerned with sweeping events than with the slow burn of emotional awakening.

The novel opens in 1920 with Joseph, a young English journalist grieving the recent death of his mother and haunted by his brother’s traumatic war injuries. Hoping to interview the famously reclusive painter Edouard Tartuffe, Joseph travels to a remote farmhouse in the south of France. Upon arrival, he is swiftly rebuffed—Tartuffe has no memory of inviting him. But Joseph’s presence stirs something in Ettie, Tartuffe’s enigmatic niece and housekeeper, who proposes an arrangement: Joseph may stay if he agrees to model for a long-abandoned painting, Young Man with Orange.

So begins an exquisitely restrained dance between the three: the eccentric genius, the devoted niece, and the outsider who gradually disrupts the fragile order of their lives. But this is not Tartuffe’s story, nor is it Joseph’s. At its core, The Artist is Ettie’s novel—her transformation from a shadowy domestic presence to a woman who begins to glimpse her own artistic voice and claim her freedom.

Steeds’ prose is elegant and imagery-rich, and she evokes Provence with transportive clarity: the dry hiss of cicadas, the scent of rosemary on the breeze, the heavy light pooling in Tartuffe’s studio. But beneath this beauty lies a taut emotional narrative. The novel explores the psychological aftermath of the Great War—not in overt trauma, but in the characters’ hesitations, in what is left unsaid. Joseph and Ettie, though shaped by different forms of loss, each carry emotional wounds that deepen their connection.

While there is a romantic thread, Steeds wisely avoids cliché. The relationship between Joseph and Ettie unfolds slowly, without sentimentality. Their bond is forged less by romance than by mutual recognition: two people caught in the orbit of a great artist, uncertain whether to escape or to belong. Tartuffe himself—equal parts brilliance and cruelty—is never reduced to caricature. He is both a symbol of patriarchal suppression and a man wounded by fame and fading relevance.

Some readers may find the novel’s pacing deliberate, especially in the first half. But this is a feature, not a flaw. Steeds builds atmosphere with precision, allowing characters to unfold gradually. And while the book’s central revelation is telegraphed early on, the novel is not driven by plot twists but by emotional resonance. The joy lies in watching the characters come to terms with what the reader already suspects.

The Artist is a sophisticated debut and a quietly powerful contribution to historical fiction. It explores what it means to see and be seen, to give voice to the silenced, and to transform servitude into self-expression. Lucy Steeds has arrived as a debut voice to watch—her brushwork is already magnificent.

Reviewer: Chris Reed

John Murray