Whenever I'm in a shop attached to an art gallery or museum I make a point of looking at the novels they have for sale alongside all the non-fiction that you'd expect them to stock.
Today in the small shop at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art (No.2) they had - unsurprisingly - the excellent Gillespie and I
* by Jane Harris (post on it here), winning its shelf room because it features a painter who is a fictitious member of the Glasgow Boys, together with Life Class
by Pat Barker, her novel about the effects of the Great War on a group of artists from the Slade School, and The Hayburn Family
by Guy McCrone for which, frustratingly, I can find only the briefest of synopses, but if I remember correctly it has to do with the scion of a wealthy Glasgow shipbuilding family preferring to make his way as an artist rather than joining the business as is expected of him.
Only three novels about art and artists then, as far as I could see, but if they had space for more I'd hope they'd stock Earth and Heaven
by Sue Gee (quite masterly) and Francesca Kay's An Equal Stillness
(such an impressive debut), to name but two others.
*On the subject of art, any thoughts on the design of the paperback cover
compared to that of the hardback jacket shown above?
