Novelist inspired by art
Novelist Born: January 20, 1946 Racine, Wisconsin, US Died: August 23, 2017, San Diego, California, US SUSAN Joyce Vreeland was a popular and well- regarded novelist who blended her love for literature and visual art in Girl in Hyacinth Blue and other works of fiction.
Vreeland’s agent Barbara Braun said the author died after undergoing heart surgery. “She remained optimistic until the end, confident that she would survive and continue her active life with her devoted husband, Kip,” Braun said.
A native of Racine, Wisconsin, and a graduate from San Diego State University, Vreeland ( pictured) was in her mid- 20s when a visit to Paris changed her life. She was so dazzled by the Louvre Museum that she vowed that the art of the Old World would be her “life companion”. She wrote about everyone from French artist Pierre- Auguste Renoir to Canadian painter Emily Carr and centred her novel Girl in Hyacinth Blue on the journeys of an alleged Vermeer painting.
Girl in Hyacinth Blue came out in 1999, a good year for art- themed novels, with other releases including Tracy Chevalier’s Girl With a Pearl Earring and Michael Frayn’s Headlong. Braun recalled that Vreeland worked on Girl in Hyacinth Blue while being treated for lymphoma and the novel was released by a small Coloradobased press after several New York publishers turned it down. The book became a word- of- mouth success, was translated into 26 languages and was adapted into a 2003 TV movie, Brush With Fate, starring Ellen Burstyn and Glenn Close.
Vreeland grew up in Racine, Wisconsin, and her father, William Vreeland, was a manager in the Advertise in the paper and online. VISIT placemyad. com. au