The Underpainter
CBC Books | CBC | Posted: February 15, 2017 8:09 PM | Last Updated: July 11, 2017
Jane Urquhart
The Underpainter is a novel of interwoven lives in which the world of art collides with the realm of human emotion. It is the story of Austin Fraser, an American painter now in his later years, who is haunted by memories of those whose lives most deeply touched his own, including a young Canadian soldier and china painter and the beautiful model who becomes Austin's mistress.
Spanning decades, the setting moves from upstate New York to the northern shores of two Great Lakes; from France in the First World War to New York City in the 1920s and '30s. (From McClelland & Stewart)
The Underpainter won the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction in 1997.
From the book
The woman is standing near the window in the downstairs front room of a log house on the north shore of Lake Superior.
It is the winter of 1937.
She is wearing a grey tweed skirt and a checked woollen bush jacket. Her dark-blonde hair is pulled back from her face and hangs in a thick braid almost to her waist. Despite the fact that she has kept her fires — both in the Quebec heater in this room and in the stove in the kitchen — burning all night, it is cold enough that she can see her breath. In her hand she holds an unopened envelope with the words "Canadian National Tele gram" printed on it. Her head is bent and her shoulders are slightly stooped as she stares at this folded and glued piece of paper.
From The Underpainter by Jane Urquhart ©2011. Published by McClelland & Stewart.