THE PAINTER

Rembrandt in England, locked in a fierce struggle with the poet Andrew Marvell for artistic preeminence—and the attentions of a beautiful woman: all in this outing from Davenport (a.k.a. British thriller writer James Long: Silence and Shadows, 2001, etc.).

It’s 1662, and the 56-year-old Rembrandt is bankrupt. Fleeing his creditors, the notorious homebody becomes an accidental stowaway on a ship bound for Hull (the evidence for Rembrandt’s residence in England is flimsy, but Davenport, otherwise, stays close to the historical record). Ship’s captain Dahl promises to pay Rembrandt’s passage home if he likes the portrait he has commissioned. Dahl’s intermediary is another passenger, the Dutch-speaking Marvell, at first glance a self-important parliamentarian. Painting the captain is a tedious chore; painting his wife, the beautiful Amelia, the challenge of a lifetime. And Marvell gives Rembrandt the opportunity. Working in different mediums, each man will pay tribute to Amelia’s beauty, and the subject herself will decide the winner. This may all sound rather loopy, and the identification of Amelia as the Coy Mistress of Marvell’s most famous poem may be several degrees too cute, but it works surprisingly well on the page. Davenport finds a convincing voice for Rembrandt, and the artistic rivalry becomes all the juicier thanks to the serenely manipulative Amelia. What works far less well is a storyline set in 2001 that gets equal time. Here, hot-blooded young artist Amy Dale, a descendant of Dahl’s, joins a crew that’s restoring the grand country house once built by Amelia. Amy seduces her scarred but sexy co-worker Don, who may or may not be bad news. The two stumble on Rembrandt’s wall paintings, but their subsequent sleuthing never blends with a surrounding melodrama that churns out two murders and one near-miss (all, curiously, involving a chain saw).

Although the contemporary story becomes an annoying distraction, Davenport does right by Rembrandt and his genius—and that gives his fantasy a glow of its own.