The Painter's Daughters - by Emily Howes (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A "beautifully written" (Hilary Mantel), "fascinating" (The Washington Post) story of love, madness, sisterly devotion, and control, about the two beloved daughters of renowned 1700s English painter Thomas Gainsborough, who struggle to live up to the perfect image the world so admired in their portraits.

Peggy and Molly Gainsborough--the daughters of one of England's most famous portrait artists of the 1700s and the frequent subject of his work--are best friends. They spy on their father as he paints, rankle their mother as she manages the household, and run barefoot through the muddy fields that surround their home. But there is another reason they are inseparable: from a young age, Molly periodically experiences bouts of mental confusion, even forgetting who she is, and Peggy instinctively knows she must help cover up her sister's condition.

When the family moves to Bath, it's not so easy to hide Molly's slip-ups. There, the sisters are thrown into the whirlwind of polite society, where the codes of behavior are crystal clear. Molly dreams of a normal life but slides deeper and more publicly into her delusions. Peggy knows the shadow of an asylum looms for women like Molly, and she goes to greater lengths to protect her sister's secret.

But when Peggy unexpectedly falls in love with her father's friend, the charming composer Johann Fischer, the sisters' precarious situation is thrown catastrophically off course. Her burgeoning love for Johann sparks the bitterest of betrayals, forcing Peggy to question all she has done for Molly, and whether any one person can truly change the fate of another.

A tense and tender examination of the blurred lines between protection and control, The Painter's Daughter is an "engaging, transporting" (The Guardian) look at the real girls behind the canvas. Emily Howes's debut is a stunning exploration of devotion, control, and individuality; it is a love song to sisterhood, to the many hues of life, and to being looked at but never really seen.

Review Quotes

One of the BBC's Most Anticipated Books of 2024 "Emily Howes places the relationship of Peggy and Molly Gainsborough front and center. From the very beginning, it's clear there's something wrong with Molly.... Although one year younger, Peggy resolves to care for her sister by hiding her sporadic bouts of mental illness, terrified Molly will wind up in the 'madhouse.'... Interspersed with Peggy's account of her family is another narrative, set a generation earlier, that may explain the shameful mystery surrounding her mother's background and perhaps even the root cause of Molly's malady."-New York Times (A Best Historical Fiction book of March 2023) "As children, Peggy and Molly, daughters of English painter Thomas Gainsborough, are inseparable, cavorting through fields and spying on their father's work. Although Peggy is the younger of the girls, she instinctively knows she must look after Molly, who is prone to spells of confusion. When the family moves to Bath to improve their station, the demands of polite society make it harder to conceal Molly's condition. Meanwhile, each of the young women catches the eye of a man who, unbeknownst to them, courts them both, causing a rift that could destroy their bond. A dual storyline delves into their family's history and involves fascinating speculation about the possible origins of Molly's illness."-Washington Post "Howes delivers an immersive dive into the lives of Gainsborough's daughters but also provides an intriguing backstory about his wife's purported ancestry.... A thoughtful view of the real lives behind the pretty pictures."-Kirkus, starred review "Highly recommended, this novel is a true page-turner with an engaging, well-written narrative that will hook readers early and prove hard to put down." -Library Journal, starred review "It's ambitious to draw fiction from such beloved and well-known portraits but Howes's fictionalised Molly and Peggy don't pale in comparison to their painted counterparts . . . beguiling and convincing . . . sensitively handled . . . Howes portrays Molly's anguish - and her family's terror - incredibly well . . . Howes writes so knowledgeably on everything from Georgian pigments to the tensions of sisterly love . . . the novel shines when it comes to the spooky duality of portraits, of sisterhood, of private and public faces . . . The Painter's Daughters is convincing, engaging, transporting."-Guardian "An enthralling drama of sisterly devotion and deception...this artistically inspired debut novel is faithful to the factual details of the Gainsborough sisters' lives while deploying seductive literary embellishments to fill in for the unknowable gaps in their family history."-Shelf Awareness, starred review "The narrative glue is the complicated relationship between Molly and Peggy, a bond dominated by the specter of mental illness and what its discovery could do to the family's social standing and livelihood. Howes' debut is a work of absorbing biographical fiction exploring love, self-sacrifice, and codependency." -Booklist "[An] intricate and vibrant debut...Howes excels in her depiction of truth and rumors. Readers will want to linger in this singular world." -Publishers Weekly "Sibling bonds, arts and artifice, mental illness and marriage twine together in a story that was inspired by Gainsborough's portrait of his daughters, Peggy and Molly. Plunged into Bath polite society, their closeness is thrown into confusion as Peggy falls in love and Molly's illness threatens incarceration in an asylum."-The Daily Mail "A superb debut . . . a deft portrait of a family beset by madness, self-delusion and artistic temperament, a celebration of childhood innocence and a reminder of how fleeting it is . . . hugely impressive . . . a novel that heroically refuses to simplify anything . . . the pages fly by so readably that it's only thinking about the book later - or reviewing it - that you realise quite how rich it is . . . We learn a lot of