The Artist and the Feast (2025) is the debut historical fiction novel by Lucy Steeds. Selected as a Reese’s Book Club pick, the novel is set in 1920s Provence, in the aftermath of World War I. It follows Joseph Adelaide, a young English journalist who travels to the south of France to write a profile on the reclusive and celebrated painter Edouard “Tata” Tartuffe. Instead of securing an interview, Joseph is coerced into becoming the model for Tartuffe’s next painting. As he becomes enmeshed in the volatile household, he is drawn into a web of secrets surrounding the artist and his quiet, enigmatic niece, Ettie. The novel explores themes of Appearances Versus Reality, Patriarchy as Rot, and Subversion and Destruction as Feminist Resistance.

Steeds, who has a master’s degree in world literature from the University of Oxford, draws heavily on the historical context of the early 20th century to frame the narrative. The story is informed by the real-world institutional barriers faced by female artists, who were largely excluded from formal training at prestigious institutions like the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. It also engages with the deep traumas of World War I, addressing both the societal condemnation of conscientious objectors like Joseph and the brutal medical mistreatment of soldiers suffering from “shell shock,” a condition now recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder. Steeds began writing the novel while living in France, and the setting of Provence, a region famously inspirational to many modernist painters, is a backdrop for the story’s central artistic and personal conflicts.

This guide refers to the 2025 Union Square & Co. eBook edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of gender discrimination, sexual harassment, cursing, substance use, sexual content, child abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, illness, death, mental illness, suicidal ideation and self-harm, and animal cruelty and animal death.

Plot Summary

In 1957, a woman stands in London’s National Gallery before Edouard Tartuffe’s famous 1920 painting, Le Festin (The Feast). The gallery plaque states it is the only piece to survive a fire that destroyed the artist’s studio. The woman, however, remembers the fire vividly, because she was the one who set it, and she recalls the original of this very painting burning to ash.

The narrative then shifts to 1920, where a young English journalist, Joseph Adelaide, arrives at Tartuffe’s remote farmhouse in Provence. He hopes to write the definitive profile of the reclusive “Master of Light.” The famously cantankerous painter, whom he is told to call Tata, denies having invited him. It is only when Tartuffe’s quiet niece, Ettie, intervenes and explains that Joseph can serve as the model for a new portrait, that Tartuffe allows Joseph to stay and write his article. Tartuffe insists that Joseph must leave once the painting is finished, and he accepts these terms. Joseph is installed in a dusty attic room and begins a tense life in the household, posing for hours in silence for the painting Young Man with Orange and trying to glean information from the volatile artist and the enigmatic Ettie.

Joseph struggles to write his article, as Tartuffe rebuffs all questions about his process and his past, particularly his rumored feud with his mentor, Paul Cézanne. Joseph’s attempts to befriend Ettie are met with cool distance, though she reveals her mother, Gabrielle, left for New York and died soon afterward. An extended look into Ettie’s past reveals a childhood of neglect and cruelty under Tartuffe’s guardianship after her mother’s departure; he isolated her and even killed her pet goldfinch, teaching her to be silent and invisible.

The household’s fragile equilibrium is disrupted by a visit from Tartuffe’s Parisian art dealer, Raimondi, who dismisses Ettie and nicknames Joseph the “vautour,” or vulture, but recognizes his writings improve Tartuffe’s publicity. Joseph is desperate for material for his work, and Ettie teaches him how to truly see the painting. This insight allows him to write a brilliant article. After Young Man with Orange is completed, Joseph and Tartuffe celebrate with absinthe. That night, a feverish Joseph follows a light to a remote outbuilding and witnesses Ettie setting fire to his portrait. The next morning, however, the painting is perfectly intact in the studio and collected by Raimondi, leaving Joseph to doubt his senses.

Joseph’s article is a great success and convinces Raimondi that Joseph’s writing is good for business. On the dealer’s advice, Tartuffe allows Joseph to stay to write about his next major project, a large canvas to be called The Feast. With his stay extended, Joseph’s relationship with Ettie deepens. He learns she served as a nurse during World War I, and he confesses that he was a conscientious objector, a source of shame in his family. Their fragile bond is tested when he attends a village dance, and, believing Ettie is not coming after Tartuffe deliberately delays her, dances with another woman just as she arrives. Ettie flees, but Joseph follows her to a stream, where they reconcile with a passionate kiss. They begin a secret affair, their clandestine meetings a stark contrast to the oppressive atmosphere of the farmhouse, which is soon invaded by a group of boisterous American artists and a wealthy collector, Peggy Guggenheim. During a chaotic dinner party, Peggy challenges Tartuffe on the historical exclusion of female artists, and he ends the evening in a rage by throwing Ettie’s handmade hazelnut tart against a priceless Corot painting.

The dinner party inspires Tartuffe to begin work on the large canvas for The Feast. Joseph, haunted by his vision of the burning painting, seeks answers from Ettie. She leads him to the outbuilding late one night and reveals her secret: She is a masterful forger. For three years, she has been creating perfect replicas of Tartuffe’s paintings. After he finishes a work, she swaps his original with her copy and burns the real one, passing her forgeries off to Raimondi as authentic Tartuffes. This includes Young Man with Orange. It is her quiet revenge on Tartuffe and Raimondi, who both ridiculed her artistic ambitions, and the only way she can get her art into the world. Joseph becomes her confidant and accomplice, watching her secretly work on her own version of The Feast each night. Their relationship intensifies, and Joseph begs her to run away with him.

The web of secrets tightens when Tartuffe reveals the truth of Ettie’s parentage: Her father is Paul Cézanne, the source of their infamous feud. The climax is triggered when Tartuffe discovers a hidden photograph Joseph took of a naked Ettie. Believing he has been betrayed by them both, he flies into a violent rage, destroying Joseph’s belongings and strangling Joseph on the terrace. As he storms through the house searching for Ettie, they smell smoke. Ettie, having orchestrated the photograph’s discovery, is in the studio setting fire to Tartuffe’s version of The Feast and the rest of his works, burning her past to the ground before running away from the farmhouse forever.

The narrative returns to 1957. The woman in the gallery is Ettie, now a celebrated artist preparing for her own solo exhibition. The painting in the National Gallery, Le Festin, is her version, which survived the fire because it was hidden in the outbuilding. It is officially attributed to Edouard Tartuffe, which she accepts as his twisted acknowledgment of her as his equal. She reflects on her new life of freedom with Joseph, who is by her side as a writer and photographer. She has escaped the shadows and claimed her place in the world, not as a forger or a muse, but as an artist in her own right.