The Underpainter

A masterful novel by the highly praised author of Away, The Underpainter tells the story of a 75-year-old American minimalist painter who creates a new series of paintings as he remembers the details of his life and of the lives of those individuals who have affected him.

“Her language is pure, dazzling in its precision, like the etching of ice on glass.”  -  Globe and Mail

In Rochester, New York, a seventy-five-year-old artist, Austin Fraser, is creating a new series of paintings recalling the details of his life and of the lives of those individuals who have affected him. Fraser's painting teacher had indoctrinated him with the view that unless something could be turned into art, it simply was not worth his time. And in this, he included people. Austin applied the principle to Sara Pengelly, who lived alone on the northern edge of Lake Superior, and whom Austin travelled north to visit for fifteen summers. 

“A lyrical novel with a deep, unsentimental connection to ordinary life…[Urquhart’s] language is vivid enough to take your breath away.”  -  Boston Globe

“The detached eye of the narrator never falters, though passion hums beneath the surface like some vast primeval beast beneath the ice.”  -  The Independent UK

Spanning more than seven decades, from the turn of the century to the mid-seventies, The Underpainter - in range, in the sheer power of its prose, and in its brilliant depiction of landscape and the geography of imagination - is Jane Urquhart's most accomplished novel to date.