ABSTRACT
Internationally eminent as an art historian and critic, Anita Brookner is author of Watteau, The Genius of the Future Greuze and Jacques-Louis David. In 1968 she was the first woman ever to be Slade Professor at Cambridge. She is Reader at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Brookner’s heroines nurse the idealistic and romantic illusions encouraged by art, and they are nonplussed when their sincerity and virtuous intent come face-to-face with the ways of the worldly. Naive expectations, self-deception, dishonesty and flagrant disingenuousness: such are her subjects, and the small scale of her novels should not mislead us into thinking that her themes are narrow. Brookner’s unflinchingly clear-eyed inspection of personal conduct and motive, and her exceptional stylistic gifts, make an adroit and painful combination.
