Midnight Blue

In seventeenth-century Holland, Catrin is an artist who is instrumental in the founding of Delft pottery.

Rembrandt appears as someone who recognizes Catrin’s artistic talent, and Vermeer is also a minor character, though he is usually just referred to as Johannes. It was a lot of fun when I first realized who this Johannes was!

Through Catrin’s challenges, Van der Vlugt also explores the challenges that women faced at the time, including domestic violence and the difficulty of entering the art world. 

This is a lovely book about the origins of Delft Blue ceramics, and the role of a woman painter in creating it.

Simone van der Vlugt is herself Dutch, and the book has a wonderful atmospheric feeling that puts the reader into the world of 17th-century Netherlands. Like other books on this list, it explores a woman’s role in the art world, but it moves away from painting into the realm of pottery and commerce, as Delft Blue develops to compete with Chinese porcelain coming into Europe at the time.

Plague plays a major role in the book, too, for… show more.