The Artist by Lucy Steeds Review 🎨 Art, Ambition and the Women Left Outside the Frame

Behind every celebrated artist lies a constructed mythology: the reclusive genius, the uncompromising vision, the life sacrificed in pursuit of art. But who cooks his meals, cleans his studio and quietly absorbs the consequences of that so-called genius?

In The Artist, Lucy Steeds dismantles the image of the solitary male painter by turning our attention towards the people who make his creative freedom possible. Set in the aftermath of the Great War, the novel follows journalist Joseph Adelaide as he travels to interview the elusive Tartuffe, known within his household as Tata, whose once-celebrated career is beginning to fade.

What begins as a story about a journalist attempting to understand a difficult artist gradually becomes something far more interesting. S character-driven examination of artistic legacy, women’s creative exclusion and the lives that disappear behind famous names.

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PROVENCE, 1920

Ettie moves through the remote farmhouse, silently creating the conditions that make her uncle’s artistic genius possible.

Joseph, an aspiring journalist, has been invited to the house. He believes he’ll make his name by interviewing the reclusive painter, the great Edouard Tartuffe.

But everyone has their secrets. And, under the cover of darkness, Ettie has spent years cultivating hers.

Over this sweltering summer, everyone’s true colours will be revealed.

Because Ettie is ready to be seen.
Even if it means setting her world on fire.

Joseph is a journalist, but his background at art school gives him a more personal interest in Tartuffe than the average interviewer. He understands the language of painting and artistic ambition, yet approaches Tata with the instincts of someone searching for a story.

His role becomes more complicated when he agrees to model for the artist in exchange for access. Joseph is no longer merely observing Tata’s creative process; he becomes part of it, both subject and potential material.

Joseph carries trauma connected to the Great War. Although he avoided active service, his brother returned profoundly changed by the experience. This gives Joseph a complicated relationship with guilt, suffering and the idea of who is entitled to claim trauma. He may not have fought, but the war has still shaped his family and his understanding of the world.

He arrives intending to uncover Tartuffe’s truth, yet Ettie’s early observation that he asks the wrong questions becomes increasingly important. Joseph is looking where history has trained him to look: towards the famous man in the room.

Ettie is Tartuffe’s niece and the person who quietly keeps his world together. She manages the house, anticipates her uncle’s moods and moves silently to avoid attracting his anger. At first, she appears almost as part of the background, just a domestic presence orbiting the great artist.

As the novel progresses, however, Ettie’s sections become longer while Joseph’s become shorter. This structural shift gradually brings her out of Tartuffe’s shadow. She is no longer merely his niece, assistant or housekeeper, but a person with her own interior life, creative instincts and desires.

Ettie’s development is one of the novel’s greatest strengths. Her quietness should not be mistaken for passivity. She notices everything, understands far more than Joseph initially realises and slowly becomes the true centre of the story.

Tartuffe is the novel’s fictional artist: celebrated, temperamental and increasingly out of step with the art world around him. Years earlier, he withdrew from public life after a falling-out with Cézanne. By the time Joseph arrives, Tata remains sought after but is beginning to lose some of his reputation. His isolation has protected his image while also allowing his worst behaviours to go largely unchallenged.

He represents the familiar figure of the male artistic genius whose devotion to his work supposedly excuses selfishness, volatility and cruelty. Tata can paint with such intensity because everything outside the studio is handled for him. Food appears, rooms are cleaned and practical problems are solved without him needing to think about who performs that labour. The novel does not deny his talent. But it does question the systems and sacrifices that have allowed that talent to flourish.

The novel opens with the idea that only one Tartuffe painting survived the fire that destroyed his home. A visitor encounters the work in a gallery, immediately establishing questions about artistic legacy, ownership and what survives after an artist is gone.

From there, the story moves into the past and alternates between Joseph and Ettie. Joseph arrives to interview Tartuffe, hoping to understand both the man and his mythologised career. The arrangement places him inside the artist’s household, where he begins witnessing the tensions between Tartuffe, Ettie and the wider world Tata has chosen to reject.

The novel carries a thread of mystery, but it does not attempt to conceal every answer until a dramatic final reveal. Instead, readers are encouraged to notice what Joseph overlooks. Ettie’s warning that he asks the wrong questions becomes a guiding principle for the narrative. The mystery lies less in discovering what happened than in recognising whose version of events has been allowed to matter.

The gradual shift towards Ettie reframes the story. Joseph begins as the apparent protagonist because he is the outsider entering Tata’s world, but Ettie becomes the figure through whom that world is truly understood.

The Artist is a character-driven novel with a strong emphasis on atmosphere, observation and sensory detail. Steeds writes particularly vividly about art and the physical subjects of Tartuffe’s paintings. One of the most memorable examples is The Feast, a work involving food arranged inside the studio. The display is initially described with richness and beauty before gradually becoming revolting as the food begins to rot and grow mould.

That transformation reflects the wider novel. What first appears beautiful, prestigious or artistically meaningful begins to reveal neglect and decay beneath the surface. The descriptions of painting are detailed without becoming impenetrably technical. Rather than treating art as decoration, Steeds uses it to reveal character. What Tartuffe paints, how he views his models and what he is willing to destroy in pursuit of an image all tell us something about him.

The changing balance between Joseph and Ettie’s perspectives is also beautifully handled. As Ettie takes up more space on the page, the novel itself begins correcting the imbalance within Tartuffe’s household. She moves from the margins towards the centre, both structurally and emotionally.

One of the novel’s strongest themes is the historic exclusion of women from artistic life. Women were not simply discouraged from becoming artists. They were often denied the training, freedom, time and financial independence required to create. Meanwhile, male artists could devote themselves entirely to their work because women handled the domestic labour surrounding them.

Tartuffe is able to live solely as an artist because Ettie and other women ensure that the rest of his life continues without his involvement. His supposed singular devotion is therefore not an individual achievement but something made possible by invisible labour.

The novel asks how many women might have become artists if they had been given the same opportunities and how many instead became assistants, models, muses or footnotes in the stories of men.

The Artist questions how much society is willing to excuse in the name of genius. Tartuffe’s talent does not erase the harm he causes. His work may be beautiful, but beauty cannot entirely disguise the control, neglect and exploitation involved in creating it. The novel invites readers to separate admiration for an artwork from unquestioning reverence for its creator.

The War sits in the background of the novel, but its effects reach deeply into the characters’ lives. Joseph and Ettie experience the war indirectly, yet both have been shaped by the suffering and losses of people close to them. The novel acknowledges that trauma does not remain neatly contained on the battlefield. It enters homes, marriages, families and future generations. Those who did not fight may still carry guilt, grief and the emotional consequences of loving someone who returned profoundly changed.

Joseph comes to look at Tartuffe, while Tartuffe insists on looking at Joseph as a model. Ettie, meanwhile, sees both men more clearly than either sees her. The novel repeatedly explores the difference between observing someone and truly recognising them. Who is considered worthy of study? Who becomes the subject of art? And who is treated as part of the background?

The opening mystery surrounding Tartuffe’s surviving painting raises questions about how an artist’s reputation is created after death. Legacy depends on what survives, but also on who tells the story. The Artist is deeply interested in the people erased when history chooses to focus on one celebrated name.

Despite the presence of a romantic subplot, The Artist is not primarily a romance. The relationship elements are understated, without the structure, heat or conventional happily-ever-after expected from genre romance. Readers approaching it for a love story may therefore find something much quieter and more ambiguous.

It fits more comfortably within historical and literary fiction, particularly for readers interested in art, gender and the construction of creative legacies. There are also elements of mystery, although the novel does not rely heavily on secrecy or an elaborate final twist. Readers can assemble much of what has happened relatively early. The real tension comes from watching Joseph slowly recognise that he has been asking the wrong questions and that Tartuffe may never have been the most important person in the story.

Lucy Steeds creates a compelling fictional artist in Tartuffe, but wisely refuses to allow his personality or reputation to consume the entire novel. Instead, the story gradually opens around Ettie, revealing the person who has always existed beyond the edge of his canvas.

The vivid descriptions of art, thoughtful dual perspective and interrogation of women’s creative exclusion make this an absorbing and intelligent read. Its mystery may be relatively easy to unravel, but the novel’s power lies less in surprise than in perspective.

Positives of The Artist

• Beautiful, sensory descriptions of art and artistic subjects
• Ettie’s gradual emergence as the novel’s true centre
• Strong examination of women’s exclusion from creative careers
• Thoughtful portrayal of the Great War’s wider emotional aftermath
• Clever use of shifting POV lengths to reflect character development
• Engaging and accessible despite its literary themes

Negatives of The Artist

• The central mystery is relatively easy to piece together
• Readers expecting a traditional romance may be disappointed
• Joseph occasionally feels less compelling as Ettie’s role expands
• Tartuffe’s behaviour can make sections deliberately uncomfortable

The Artist begins by asking readers to look at a famous painter and ends by questioning why we were looking at him in the first place. Through Joseph’s imperfect investigation and Ettie’s gradual emergence from the margins, Lucy Steeds examines how artistic legends are constructed and how often they depend upon the labour, silence and sacrifice of women whose names history neglects to preserve.

Evocative, intelligent and quietly furious, The Artist is not just a novel about painting. It is a novel about who receives the freedom to create, who pays for that freedom and who deserves to be remembered.